Curiosity drove me downstairs into the downpour. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the municipal workers — clad in orange-and-green uniforms, their clothes soaked — gathering around a crane. Their attention was focused upward. Following their gaze, I looked up, and froze.
I woke up to chaos: voices overlapping with the grinding hum of machinery, sharp snapping sounds reverberating through the old apartment complex. It was a discordant symphony, building up to a vague sense of foreboding as I rolled out of bed. That morning, they were cutting down a tree.
A bàng tree, to be precise, a towering, ancient giant that reached nearly as high as the fifth floor. Its lush canopy spreading wide like an emerald umbrella. Years after years, its branches had provided shade to nearby weathered old buildings and the lives within them.
For the longest while, this bàng tree was a mystery to me. In a city commodified to the bone, it had held its ground, roots burrowing deep into this soil, long before the land became what it is today. Outside of parks, trees of this age and size were becoming a rarity, slowly squeezed out by relentless urban expansion.
If trees had human lifespans, this would be an elder — a patriarch. Its thick, tangled roots had long since cracked the pavement, curling around the forgotten brick walls of abandoned structures nearby. Those roots were feeding a gnarled trunk so massive it would take two adults to encircle it. Rising defiantly toward the sky, the tree stood there for decades, maybe longer, watching as its surroundings transformed — from swampy canal-side marshlands to a bustling resettlement zone.
Throughout its long life, I only shared a fleeting chapter of just over a year. The tree was the first “neighbor” I noticed when I moved into my loft. Facing west, my apartment should have been stifling at midday, but the bàng tree softened the sun’s harsh glare into dapples. Even in the height of summer, its branches cast gentle shadows that filtered through my window. Over time, the tree became a subtle yet remarkable part of my life.
It marked the seasons in its quiet way. I used to hear the whisper of its leaves swaying in the breeze, the rhythmic thud of its fruit hitting the tin roof during sudden downpours. Birds sang from its branches, their melodies as bright and clear as the sky on sunny days. And every so often, a squirrel would dart across my balcony, clutching a crumb of bread, before vanishing into the cover of leaves, startled by my intrusion. In those moments, the city’s hard edges seemed to soften, reminding me that this place still held traces of life, not just blocks of concrete divided into lots.
Perhaps that’s why it hurt so deeply to watch it surrender, piece by piece, to the saw’s relentless teeth. Its trunk trembled under the skilled hands of the workers, who dismantled it with practiced efficiency.
I've seen this before, of course. On my commute, I often passed by crews trimming trees along the roadsides — some so aggressively pruned they were left almost bare. “They’ll grow back,” I would force some optimism, trying to ease the anxiety of seeing limp branches severed and leaves strewn across the pavement. For months afterward, the sluggish process of regeneration would unfold, so painstakingly slow it was nearly imperceptible to the human eye, leaving one to wonder if the tree was truly still alive or had died young. And then, with a relieved breath, the tiniest sprout would emerge — proof that life, albeit fragile, was persistent.
But my bàng tree would not be granted that chance. Its time came to an end. Piece by piece, they dismantled it with each sweeping cut of the saw, their labor heavy and deliberate, like prying apart hundred-kilogram Lego blocks fused tightly together. Most of it was hauled away on a municipal garbage truck, leaving behind only a bare stump. The rings etched into its exposed wood spoke of years nourished by a world now unrecognizable, years that bore witness to the shifting tides of a nation and generations coming and going.
Change is inevitable, I reminded myself, though some transformations feel particularly unforgiving.
Yann Martel once wrote, “I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye.”
The loss of the bàng tree was unsurprising, part of a larger pattern in which not just bàng, but tamarinds, dipterocarps, and monkey-pods had fallen throughout the city. Some succumbed to storms, their roots unearthed to reveal stunted, mutilated roots unable to withstand nature’s fury. Others were felled pre-emptively, in case their towering forms might one day pose a threat to public safety or an obstacle to new developments.
These trees vanish in two ways: sometimes with uproar, when a community rallies to defend their right to stand. Other times, they disappear quietly, sentenced without much deliberation, that they pose a hidden danger, that they occupy valuable public space better suited for a railway, a building, or some other higher purpose.
“Do you know if they cut it down because of the rain?” I idly asked our neighborhood leader and parking attendant whenever I looked at the unfamiliar empty space in front of my place. It wasn’t until a month later, when I saw the pile of bricks and concrete waiting to be used in the vacant lot next door, that I reluctantly made my peace with the tree’s fate. Cutting it down was deemed necessary. But even so, I couldn’t help mourning — not just the tree, but the realization that my beloved hometown has become so hostile that it can no longer tolerate both people and trees — even if it was a tree that was dearly loved by humans (and squirrels).
And so, if parting is a constant of life, let this be my tribute to the venerable bàng tree and to all the elder trees on Tôn Đức Thắng, Nguyễn Huệ, Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm streets — so that their departure from this city does not fade away unnoticed. May what remains of them return to the earth, to a purer, kinder place, where every being, no matter how fleeting its existence, is granted the dignity of completing its radiant, finite journey the way nature intends.
