The Cu De River

The Cu Đê River begins in the Trường Sơn range. It is also called the Trường Định. Its source lies in the Hòa Bắc area, west of Da Nang. From there the river flows from west to east for nearly 40 kilometers and empties into the sea at the Nam Ô river mouth. From its first mountain stream to the sea, the whole river lies inside the city. We will look at it through two pictures, one from long ago and one from today.

The first picture was taken in the years before 2010, when the village of Trường Định still had no bridge. The village lies squeezed between the mountain on one side and the river on the other. In flood season, nobody dared to run the ferry, and the whole village was like an island cut off from the rest of the city. Students often had to stay home from school each time the water rose. In the two villages of Phò Nam and Nam Yên, people crossed the river by ferry in the dry season. In flood season no ferry ran, the river seemed to grow as much as 100 meters wider, and the far bank became a faraway place.

Farther down toward the river mouth, the old picture holds one more village, Nam Ô. It is a fishing village right at the foot of the Hải Vân Pass. It was the last place to rest for people traveling by land from the south before they climbed the pass to the north. In those days the pass had two routes. The lower road is the one people still use today. The upper road climbed high, then came down to the Bầu Bàng area of Trường Định, right beside this river. Older people in Nam Ô still tell a story about the early settler's tomb beside the border guard post. They say it holds a general who came here in the days when Princess Huyền Trân went to marry into the land of the Cham. The village also has square wells left by the Cham people, and the water in them is still clear.

At night the men of the area go out on the river to cast their nets. In the morning the women carry the fish to the Nam Ô market. In the rainy season the villagers go to the river to scoop up the firewood that drifts down from upstream. They give that season a very down-to-earth name, the season of flood firewood.

If we follow the river upstream, the picture takes us to the place where its two branches meet. The two branches are the Bắc River and the Nam River. They flow together at Cầu Sập and only then form the main stream. If we travel about 20 kilometers up the Bắc branch by boat, we pass names that sound like people calling to one another across the forest. The first are Hố Giếng and Lỗ Cối. Next come Khe Giao and Thác Xếp. Last is Thác Rễ. On that branch lie two villages of the Cơ Tu people. The Cơ Tu are a people who live mainly in central Vietnam, near the border with Laos. The villages are Tà Lang and Giàn Bí. Tà Lang has a gươl, the communal house of the whole community. The Cơ Tu here still keep the tân tung da dá dance, along with their own language.

The second picture is the one of today.

In this picture, the two banks of the river have bridges. A permanent bridge was finished in 2010, together with concrete roads, and it links the village of Trường Định with the center of Da Nang. At Phò Nam there is a cable-stayed bridge, so people can go to trade more easily and no longer wait for the ferry. The village of Trường Định has also begun raising livestock and brackish-water shrimp. The Hòa Liên water plant draws its water from the river itself and carries it to the taps of the city.

At the end of June 2025, right beside the Cu Đê, a community tourism and cultural center opened. Its architecture follows the style of a Cơ Tu house, and the roof is made of natural materials. A cây nêu pole was set up in front of the office building. The center serves 240 Cơ Tu households. They live in the resettlement area of Tà Lang and Giàn Bí. In 2018, Giàn Bí began offering community tourism.

At the end of the river, the railway bridge of the north-south line crosses the river mouth, and the village of Nam Ô is now famous for nước mắm, or fish sauce. Fishermen first sold their fresh anchovies. Then they set aside a portion and cured it with salt in large jars, so that no fish would be wasted. This cured fish is called chượp. The craft is hundreds of years old. In 2019 it was recognized as a national intangible cultural heritage. In 2024 Nam Ô fish sauce received a geographical indication, the first one in Da Nang. But anchovies near the shore are growing scarcer. Many families must travel more than 15 kilometers to the Thọ Quang fishing port, or buy fish from neighboring waters. Most of the people who keep the craft are over 50.

The river mouth is changing too. For many years now, in each northeast wind season, big waves have been gnawing at the south bank of the river mouth. The latest erosion began in December 2024. On June 21, 2025, the city declared an emergency, because the water was threatening the abutment of the railway bridge and a power pole nearby. Residents say that the wave-blocking embankment built for the new park has made the current at the river mouth change direction. The technical agencies mention strong northeast monsoon winds, big waves and the complex terrain of the river mouth. As for the real cause, the city has asked the responsible agencies to assess it.

On a closer look, the two pictures are not strangers. It is the same water going from the mountains to the sea, the same fishing village at the foot of the pass. The only difference is that the banks now have bridges and a new Cơ Tu roof. The river once carried flood firewood down to the village of Nam Ô, and today it flows beneath the spans of its bridges.