The Reality of Bandits and the Fight Against Bandits by the Mountain People

Labor edition reprinted in 2010), Bandits - Novel - Writers Association Publishing House 2010).

Doan Huu Nam not only writes prose and poetry, he also participates in writing film scripts and is quite successful in this field. His scripts on the subject of the Mountainous Region and ethnic groups have been produced and published by major film studios, namely: Forest Love - TV series (2 episodes) - Saturday Afternoon Cinema - Vietnam Television Station, Comrades' Mementos - VIDEO Film - People's Army Film Studio, Spring Has Come - VIDEO Film Script - Vietnam Feature Film Studio I, Sacred Land - TV series (6 episodes) - Sunday Arts Film - Vietnam Television Station, Sacred Forest - TV series (15 episodes), Forest Fire - TV series (15 episodes) - VTC Digital Television Station and many other artistic documentary film scripts.

Literature has repaid him. His books and scripts have brought him to readers, making him a member of the Associations: Vietnamese Writers, Vietnamese Cinema, Vietnamese Folklore, Literature and Arts of Vietnamese Ethnic Minorities, and have brought him many achievements such as: First Prize in the 2003-2004 essay and short story contest organized by the Ethnic Culture Magazine; 1 A prize, 1 C prize - Award for writing film scripts on ethnic minorities organized by the Ministry of Culture in 2007, 1 A prize, 1 B prize, 2 C prizes, - Annual awards of the Vietnam Association of Literature and Arts of Ethnic Minorities (2000, 2002, 2008, 2010), 1 Second prize - Competition for writing film scripts on environmental topics organized by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in coordination with the Vietnam Cinema Association, the Vietnam Cinema Department, and many local Literature and Arts awards with prizes, literature and with the excellent completion of his civil servant duties, he was elected Vice President of the Lao Cai Literature and Arts Association, was awarded a Certificate of Merit by the Prime Minister, and the Third Class Labor Medal by the President.

Doan Huu Nam's literary career officially and regularly appeared in poetry in the 90s of the 20th century and early 21st century, but the writer's most successful work was in novels. Writing novels is indeed a very difficult job, because novels require the writer to have a deep knowledge, life experience, and cultural background. Doan Huu Nam's novels come to readers very simple, very genuine, but contain within them his whole life, dedication, and passion for literature. He has painstakingly studied the folk culture in Lao Cai, the festivals and traditional customs of the Dao, Mong, and Phu La ethnic groups, and then incorporated into his works unique and vivid values, typically the Red Dao's Cap Sac ceremony in the novel Doc Nguoi Va Tho Phi , the Giay's Ghost Worship Ceremony in Tinh Rung and Tren Dinh Deo Gio Bao ... Readers cannot help but be surprised when witnessing their unique and equally strange and mysterious and attractive customs... But hidden within them is a profound value about humanity, about spiritual life, about people, about customs and cultural lifestyles of ethnic minorities in the border areas of the Fatherland, where the waves and winds blow, where "the Red River flows into Vietnam". There is a strong vitality that is blooming and green, with mysterious mountains and forests with the majestic Phan Shi Phang peak evoking the strong latent vitality of this beautiful land.

Although the novels of writer Doan Huu Nam cannot avoid shortcomings and clumsiness in some aspects, his novels have certain strengths and have contributed to the development of prose writing about the subject of ethnic minorities in the mountainous regions of Vietnam.

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The novels of Doan Huu Nam that are known to readers are : Love of the Forest - Novel - People's Army Publishing House - 2000, Doc Nguoi - Novel - People's Police Publishing House - 2001, On the Peak of the Stormy Pass - Novel - People's Army Publishing House - 2004, Labor Publishing House reprinted in 2010, Bandits - Novel - Writers' Association Publishing House in 2010.

2010. Among them, the novels Forest Love and Bandit were adapted into film scripts... These are his remarkable achievements.

For writer Doan Huu Nam, writing poetry and prose is a lifetime and is closely linked to his life experience. He exudes a burning faith and love of a writer, an artist and a tireless creator. Although his contributions are not many, they have contributed a unique part to the development of the rich and colorful ethnic prose garden of the mountainous region and to the general development of contemporary Vietnamese literature.

Chapter 1 summary:

So we can say that along with the ethnic literature of the mountainous region in a short time, there have been significant contributions to the country's literature. Those achievements have indeed made certain contributions to the development of minority literature and to the country's literature. First steps to learn and explore the life and literary creation process of writer Doan Huu Nam. Especially his contributions to the prose of ethnic minorities in the Northwest mountainous region, in which novels are one of the writer's quite successful fields. In that journey of artistic creation, Doan Huu Nam has constantly strived, researched, explored and is one of the outstanding writers who have contributed to the development of minority literature in particular and Vietnamese literature in general.

Chapter 2

REALITY OF LIFE AND PEOPLE IN THE NORTHERN REGIONS IN NOVELS BY DOAN HUU NAM

2.1. Vivid realistic picture of the mountains

2.1.1. The reality of bandits and the fight against bandits by the mountain people

Every writer through the world of art in his works wants to convey a certain artistic concept about the reality of life. Writers who write about ethnic groups and mountainous areas also want to convey their messages about the vivid reality of the mountainous areas.

Around the early 30s of the 20th century, along with the emergence of modern literature, a number of works about the mountains and ethnic groups with a wild and mysterious world also appeared in the literary world. This is a fertile land that creates momentum for writers to freely unleash their imagination. The attraction of this topic is the strangeness and mystery of the customs and lifestyles of the mountain people with a nature that is fierce and mysterious, but sometimes also very poetic and lyrical. The writer Lan Khai who wrote the most about this topic must be mentioned with a series of works: Late night forest, Barbarian, Call of the deep forest, Hong Thau, Suoi Dan, Dinh Non Than, Nguoi La, Ma Thuong Luong, Doi Vit Con, Nguoi Hoa Ho, Go Than ...; In addition, other authors also contributed a few works such as: Wild orchids by Nhat Linh, Tan mountain peak, Co Do by Nguyen Tuan, The sound of the panpipe by Khai Hung, Looking for agarwood in the mouth by Thanh Tinh, Blue smoke in the afternoon by Luu Trong Lu...

In the years after 1945, some writers such as To Hoai (with works: A Phu's Wife, Cuu Dat Cuu Muong ...), Ma Van Khang ( White Silver Coins with Xoè Flowers ) also paid attention to the topic of the mountainous region. The reality reflected in their works is deeply historical, closely linked to the revolution, with the fierce struggle to change the lives of the people in the highlands. Especially in

The works of Ma Van Khang and some other writers such as Mac Phi (with the work Dong Rung ), Phuong Vu (with the work Miss of Muong land )... reflect the reality of the struggle of the people in the highlands against bandits and denounce the barbaric crimes of bandits against ethnic minorities in the mountainous areas of our country quite richly.

In this vein, Doan Huu Nam's novels also focus on reflecting the historical reality of the struggle against reactionary forces by ethnic minorities in the mountainous provinces of the North.

It can be said that Doan Huu Nam was a “late bloomer” when it came to writing about bandits, but the writer “knew how to renew” an old topic. Readers can encounter in his novels “ customs, practices, and initiation ceremonies, as well as sinister plots, evil schemes, and barbaric acts of bandits such as disembowelment, liver removal, beheading, ear cutting, eating alive, and swallowing alive, scenes of abandoned villages, people in dire straits, and rape …” (Lam Tien). These are realities that have been reflected by writers such as Mac Phi, Phuong Vu, and Ma Van Khang in their works about the mountains. But what is worth mentioning is that Doan Huu Nam “ connected events and characters to create a fairly complete, quite profound, and quite vivid picture of bandits. No novel about bandits has been so focused ” (Suong Nguyet Minh). That is the author’s valuable contribution.

Overall, the novel Bandits has an epic feel, a heroic poem written from the historical tragedy of a painful land at the border of our country. Through this work, the author has recreated a vast and meaningful reality.

In Bandits, the author has created a period of persistent and arduous struggle, with brothers killing each other in the Northwest region of the country. That is the context of fierce fighting in the suppression of bandits in the Phong To region, a land with a particularly important strategic position in the situation of the resistance war against the French, the suppression of bandits of the country.

Through the bandit uprising in the Ho Thau - Phong Tho area, Doan Huu Nam has built up a series of ideological struggle scenes between us and the enemy, between us and us, between the enemy and the enemy, overturning and overturning the bandit uprising and the suppression of bandits, focusing on explaining the bandit uprising and the arduous struggle for land and people of revolutionary soldiers in the historical period of the 50s and 60s of the 20th century. "From 1950 to 1955, the Northwest had four bandits uprisings, four times they were suppressed, but no matter what was suppressed, no matter what was fought, the seeds and aspirations were still the coals buried in the hearts of the people, in the heart of the forest" ( On the top of the stormy pass ) . This reflected a real historical event: Under the support of the French and the Americans, bandits in Phong Tho - Lai Chau rose up simultaneously, established an autonomous front, robbed, killed, raped civilians, and overthrew the government. Then they were suppressed, defeated, and captured, down to the last one.

Through the writer's artistic thinking and fiction, through his novels, Doan Huu Nam has created a dark, evil bandit world of counter-revolutionaries. Along with the image of majestic mountains, honest, kind, brave mountain people, who believe everything to the end, the author has been very successful in recreating the crimes of bandits. That is a truly tragic reality: " In just one night, the whole bustling village turned into a dead village. The whole village was empty of people, not even a buffalo, horse, pig, or chicken " [25, p. 296]. What was left after a clash with bandits? " The village chief's house was burned down at night, now only the pillars were smoking. The smell of fire, meat, corn, and burnt rice were everywhere. A buffalo had all its meat stripped off, leaving only its skeleton lying on the crushed grass. Flies. Lots of flies. They flew everywhere, they landed black on pieces of bones, pieces of skin, on scattered dung ” [25, p. 296]. That was the cruel reality of the scene of burned villages, deserted fields, desolate, dead people lying like fallen straw: “ Corpses were bent over the dry stream. Corpses huddled at the base of trees. Blood. Blood from the trapped corpses made the stream red. Blood stuck to the sand. Blood sprayed red, dyeing the grass and trees along the stream, at the foot of the forest ” [25, p. 403].

In particular, the novelist painted a world of terrible crimes caused by bandits. The people, children of ethnic minorities, were miserable, emaciated, languishing in a scene of bloodshed. Evil openly existed, rampaged, and wreaked havoc in the bandit chaos: “ Ta Thang village, with more than a hundred houses, was normally bustling with dogs barking, horses neighing, people crying, people calling each other, but now it was as quiet as a deserted village. On a tree, two corpses were hanging, naked as silkworms. One corpse had its eyes gouged out, its two eye sockets were deep and black like a zombie skull. The other corpse had its stomach cut open, its chest cut open, its whole body covered in blood, its intestines hanging loose, its stomach and chest hollowed out …” [25, p. 357]

The reality reflected by the author shows the brutal, barbaric, and inhuman actions of the bandits, a strong accusation of the bandits' crimes and also shows the pain that ethnic minorities in the mountainous areas had to endure during the years of bandit uprising.

Unlike other writers when writing about bandits, through his novels, Doan Huu Nam has clearly and specifically deciphered bandits through vivid artistic images. Who are they? They are a small group of Mong, Dao, Tay, Nung, Giay and Kinh people... All of them are Vietnamese citizens. Bandits only exist in the wild, remote mountains and forests. Their leaders are savage, ruthless criminals who commit crimes over a long period of time, not just days or months. Doan Huu Nam - through the reality reflected in his work, gives readers a full and vivid perception of the nature, activities and deeds of this group. The path that leads them into the forest to take up arms against the people is not because of their own ideals but only because of darkness, gullibility, incitement, greed, misunderstanding or coercion...

In Bandits , Doan Huu Nam clearly recreates a systematic organization of bandits. Trieu Ta San is the Commander-in-Chief, under him is a staff consisting of Hoang Seo Lung, Ban Van Sing, Ly Van San, shaman Ban A Quay... Behind him is

The French and Americans supported and nurtured him. They used counter-revolutionaries in the country, a group of ethnic minorities in some areas who rebelled against the achievements of the revolution. The bandits were very stubborn, captured by the guerrillas and dragged along the road, even though they were tied up, they still risked their lives to jump into the abyss, if they could escape, they would escape, if they could not, they would still do it. Their actions were full of animalistic nature: “… in a moment, his white belly was cut in half, two brutal hands reached into the pulsating abdominal cavity and took out two livers and gave them to the commander. The commander slowly took a sip of wine from a decanter, then bit, tore, chewed, and swallowed the liver, his mouth was smeared with blood, looking no different from the cavities of a woman after giving birth ” [25, p. 295]. The dark bandits, in a panic due to hunger and cold, were hunted down and hunted down, then assigned each monkey a Viet Minh name, set up a monkey court, executed the monkeys until they went crazy, then punished them by having their heads scooped out and eaten.

With profound understanding, artistic thinking and literary imagery, Doan Huu Nam has built a vivid historical reality, with high general meaning, making a strong impression on the difficult historical reality that took place in the life of ethnic minority communities in the highlands of our country.

In his novel, Doan Huu Nam also recreated the mountainous scene when the revolutionary government was still in its infancy, the cadres and people were carefree and eager but also immature, faced many difficulties and the reactionaries clearly understood this weakness, tried to sabotage, entice the people, and led the revolution from one passive step to another. The author also went deep into building quite successfully the image of cadres and soldiers who were devoted to the people and the revolution. That was the resilient, steadfast, courageous, and undaunted Chau Party Secretary Long, even when the revolution and the government fell into a passive situation and had to hide in the forest. In particular, the images of the revolutionary characters were quite realistic, full of everyday life, and were reflected in many ways from the perspective of personal life. Therefore, these characters were not dry and dogmatic, but lived the lives of ordinary, romantic, and enthusiastic people.

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