Ta Van Chu

The trip begins in the center of Bắc Hà, in Lào Cai province, on a morning in plum blossom season, while the mist still lies low over the rooftops. From here, Tả Van Chư is more than 10 kilometers to the northwest. It sounds close. But ten kilometers of mountain road are not ten kilometers of flat road, and the whole trip today fits inside that difference.

Just outside the town, the road begins to climb. It is not a steep climb, only a steady slope that makes anyone sitting in the car lean back a little without meaning to. Then the first bend arrives, swinging to the right. A short stretch. Then the second bend, swinging back to the left.

The mountain roads here never agree to run straight. They cling to the hillsides and wind back and forth like a thread wrapped around a tree trunk. After a while, the trip shows a rhythm of its own: a bend, a straight stretch, then another bend. Each time that rhythm comes around, the mountain ahead sinks a little lower, and the valley behind falls a little farther away.

The sounds along the way change with the height. Down low, there are still people calling to one another, the buzz of motorbikes, the noise of buying and selling by the road. Higher up, those sounds drop away behind. In the end there is only the steady growl of the engine and the wind running along the rock face, and now and then a very short birdcall that stops as soon as it starts.

The cold climbs too. At first it only touches the nose. Then it finds the fingertips. Then comes the moment when a hand put out of the car window feels a light sting and is pulled straight back in.

The mist comes last. Here it is thick and dense, and inside it the land on both sides of the road blurs away, as if someone had just drawn a thin cloth across the eyes. The trees by the roadside become gray streaks. The bend ahead shows itself just in time to be taken.

Then, just as the eyes have grown used to all that gray, a patch of white appears on the hillside to the left. It is whiter than the mist, and it has a clear shape. It is a plum tree in flower, standing alone, covered in blossom from the foot of its trunk to its crown.

One more bend, and a second patch of white. Then a third. Then a whole hillside of white, then the slope beside it, then the slope across the valley. By the time the patches can no longer be counted, the car has arrived. This is Tả Van Chư.

The Tả Van Chư area has more than 100 hectares of Tả Van plum trees. Of those, about 80 hectares are bearing fruit. More than 100 hectares is hard to picture when the number is only read aloud. Standing here, it is easy. It is the white that covers the hills from foot to shoulder, spills past the front porches, then curves around behind the mountain, so far that one person standing in one spot cannot take it all in.

These plums are not only lovely in flower. At the end of 2023, the Tả Van plum was certified as a three-star OCOP product at the provincial level. OCOP, short for One Commune One Product, is a national program that rates local products with stars. Three stars may sound small. But they mean that the fruit picked on these slopes now has a name of its own and a place of its own. It is no longer a fruit that nobody calls by name.

The trip does not end there. From here, one more stretch of road leads to the hamlet of Lả Dì Thàng.

Lả Dì Thàng has old orchards of Tả Van plums, with trees between 45 and 50 years old. That figure is much easier to grasp when it is set beside a human life. Those trees were already standing there before the parents of many of today's children were born. They have lived through all those seasons of mist, of blossom and of ripe fruit.

It is easy to tell which trees are old. An old plum trunk is rough, its bark cracked into plates, gripping the soil and stones like a hand holding on to the slope. The branches do not reach straight up to the sky. They spread sideways, far out from the trunk, and some crowns are wide enough to shade almost a whole yard. In flower, an old tree does not offer a single cluster of blossom. It offers a whole roof of blossom. Standing beneath it and looking up, even the sky overhead turns white.

The hamlet has also been recognized by the Lào Cai Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism. The department names it as a hamlet that keeps its original architecture and its distinctive traditional culture, and as one that needs to be preserved. In other words, the houses of the Hmong families here still keep their old form. That old form is seen as something worth keeping, not something to be replaced.

That is also why visitors usually walk very softly through the hamlet. They keep to the footpaths and do not step into gardens that are being tended. They do not go into a yard or a house uninvited. Before photographing someone in the hamlet, they ask first. If the host shakes their head, they smile and put the camera away, and that is all.

People around the area like to call Bắc Hà the white plateau. It is only a familiar name, given for the color of the plum blossom and of the mist in this season, not a term used by geologists. But only by standing in Tả Van Chư at the right time of year does it become clear why the name clings so tightly to this land. It also becomes clear why no one has ever come up with a better one.

At the end of the visit, there is one small thing left to do. Turn away from the plum orchards, walk to the edge of the hamlet, and look back down the way you came up.

The road of more than 10 kilometers that felt so long earlier now fits inside a single glance. It is only a thin line laid across the mountainside, showing and hiding among the white crowns of the plum trees. At every bend, that thin line sinks into the mist, then rises again one step lower, then lower still, and lower still, until it melts completely into the white below.