Son La Hydropower Plant

Dams stand on the Đà River like steps on a stair. The river runs down from Yunnan, crosses the high mountains of the Northwest, and joins the Red River. Along its course, people have built a cascade of hydropower plants. Lai Châu is the top step. Hòa Bình is the bottom step, and Sơn La lies between them. Each step is a dam, and each dam holds back a reservoir. Each reservoir is a page of history.

The Sơn La Hydropower Plant is the middle step. Since 2012, it has held the title of the largest hydropower plant in Southeast Asia.

The dam is nearly a kilometer long. Inside are six generating units of 400 megawatts each. Together they come to 2,400 megawatts. In a year, the plant supplies about 10 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity to the whole country.

Work began on December 2, 2005. The plant was inaugurated on December 23, 2012, three years ahead of schedule.

What people are proudest of is neither the power nor the height. Altogether, 13 Vietnamese construction companies did all the work, with no foreign contractor. The Hòa Bình plant, built earlier, relied on Soviet experts in the key roles. By comparison, this was a big step forward. Vietnamese engineers designed Sơn La, Vietnamese crews built it, and Vietnamese operators run it. That is why people often call it a symbol of Vietnamese skill and strength in building, in the 21st century.

Behind the engineering lies a heavy story about people.

To form the reservoir, more than 20,000 households had to leave the places where they lived. They were more than 93,000 people from three provinces. Sơn La was one, and the other two were Điện Biên and Lai Châu. In Sơn La alone, there were more than 58,000. It was the largest resettlement in Vietnam in peacetime. Houses, fields, temples and ancestral graves all lie beneath the lake now. By April 2010, every household had moved. Six months later, the reservoir began to fill.

What remains above the water are the old administrative markers of Quỳnh Nhai, rising from the surface like a reminder. The people who left look down at the lake and see their memories.

To make up in part for the loss, two temples were moved and rebuilt. The Linh Sơn Thủy Từ Temple honors the spirits of the river and the mountains. Its roots go back to before the 17th century, and it was inaugurated in May 2012. The Nàng Han Temple honors a woman general of Thái legend. The Thái are one of Vietnam's ethnic groups, and Sơn La is one of the provinces where they mainly live. In the legend, Nàng Han dressed as a man to lead her villagers against enemies. It is a folk tale and not a recorded historical event. Still, for the Thái, Nàng Han stands for courage and love of the land.

Together, the temples stand on a hill above the Quỳnh Nhai lake. From there, the water lies below, and the layers of culture the Thái kept after the great move can be felt.

Not far away, in the Mường La area, there is one more story. Out in the middle of the lake, a sturgeon farm has been working since 2014. The Siberian sturgeon is a fish of the cold northern waters. It has been raised here successfully, thanks to the altitude and the temperature of the lake. The farm has more than 150 cages with more than 140,000 fish. The harvest is between 150 and 200 tons a year. Sturgeon roe from here has an export brand.

The reservoir can be called Biển Hồ Tây Bắc, the Sea Lake of the Northwest. That is a tourism name and not an official one. Beyond the name, this is a place where an engineering feat and human memory lie one layer upon another. More than 93,000 people gave up all of their valleys, villages and fields, which now lie under the silent green water, so that lights could burn across the country.