In Vietnamese music and literature, the fates of the poor are often associated with "Lục Bình trôi", or “drifting Water Hyacinths” - rootless, disposable to society, here today, gone tomorrow.

In the classic folk song “Điệu Buồn Phương Nam (The Sad Song of the South),” the last two lines are as heart-wrenching as the weeping monochord instrument that accompanies its verse:

🎵“Come back to the South, ponder the river with sorrow,

Lament for the lives like drifting Water Hyacinths.”🎵

Along the muddy bank of the Đồng Nai river, nested under the shades of Royal Poinciana trees, sat a tiny shack where the most unrivaled steamed broken rice and egg loaves were sold.

With walls and roof weaved from dried coconut leaves, the shack and its kind owner were as humbled as the origin of the broken rice itself, now a delicacy of cuisine, once eaten only by poor farmers after the good rice were sold. Nobody knew her name. We just called her “the broken rice lady by the river bank.” But I guarantee you, if she were given the opportunity, she would have put Gordon Ramsey himself to shame.

As students, we spent most of our allowances here after school, savoring fragrant broken rice and fluffy egg loaves as the evening sun cast its shadow on Water Hyacinths drifting alongside paper origami boats, carrying childhood dreams written on their ink-soaked bodies.

In 2011, on my visit back to Vietnam, I learned that like the vagrant fate of Water Hyacinths, the poor shack and its owner were uprooted in the name of commerce development.

And as I stood on the paved cement sidewalk along of the Đồng Nai river, now a booming business district full of tourists, I found myself watching the forsaken Water Hyacinths silently drifting by the shadow of the evening sun, as I sang under my breath with choked back tears:

🎵“Come back to the South, ponder the river with sorrow,

Lament for the lives like drifting Water Hyacinths.”🎵

And this time I finally understood the meaning of the words.