Qualla: Ngang Pass https://qualla.com/ngang-pass en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:39:18 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/w/7/5/w/ngang-pass-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Ngang Pass https://qualla.com/ngang-pass Ngang Pass: Introduction https://qualla.com/ngang-pass/ Photo credit Linhcandng (thảo luận), CC BY-SA 3.0. Bước tới đèo Ngang, bóng xế tà — "Coming up to Ngang Pass, the light already slanting." It is the first line of an eight-line regulated verse in Nôm script, written by a woman literature knows almost entirely by her husband's job title: Bà Huyện Thanh Quan, the wife of the district magistrate of Thanh Quan. Her name was Nguyễn Thị Hinh, she lived from 1805 to 1848, and she crossed this pass on her way south to Phú Xuân to take up a post at the imperial court. She arrived in the late afternoon, looked at the view, and wrote eight lines that end with her turning away from it entirely. The road she climbed is still up there. Almost nobody drives it, because the traffic now goes underneath.

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Image: Linhcandng (thảo luận) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/7/5/w/ngang-pass-wp/w75w-ngang-pass-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ngang Pass: The Narrowest Place https://qualla.com/ngang-pass/ Photo credit Linhcandng (thảo luận), CC BY-SA 3.0. Vietnam is at its thinnest here. The Hoành Sơn, a spur running east off the Annamite Range, comes all the way down to the sea, pinching the coastal plain to nothing. The only easy way past is over a saddle roughly 250 metres above sea level, and that saddle is the Ngang Pass — đè...

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Image: Linhcandng (thảo luận) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/7/5/w/ngang-pass-wp/w75w-ngang-pass-the-narrowest-place.mp3 0:06 2 full Ngang Pass: The Gate at the Top https://qualla.com/ngang-pass/ Photo credit Linhcandng (thảo luận), CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1833 — the fourteenth year of his reign — the emperor Minh Mạng had a masonry gateway built across the summit: Hoành Sơn Quan, the Transverse Mountain Gate. Its purpose was administrative more than defensive. The Nguyễn court wanted a record of who was moving between its provi...

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Image: Linhcandng (thảo luận) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/7/5/w/ngang-pass-wp/w75w-ngang-pass-the-gate-at-the-top.mp3 0:06 3 full Ngang Pass: Grass and Stone, Leaves and Flowers https://qualla.com/ngang-pass/ Photo credit Linhcandng (thảo luận), CC BY-SA 3.0. The poem is a thất ngôn bát cú, the strict Tang-derived form Vietnamese scholars reserved for serious feeling. Bà Huyện Thanh Quan gives the pass one line of landscape — grass and trees jostling the rocks, leaves jostling the flowers — then two lines of human scale: a few woodcut...

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Image: Linhcandng (thảo luận) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/7/5/w/ngang-pass-wp/w75w-ngang-pass-grass-and-stone-leaves-and-flowers.mp3 0:06 4 full Ngang Pass: Nobody Has to Climb It Now https://qualla.com/ngang-pass/ Photo credit Linhcandng (thảo luận), CC BY-SA 3.0. For most of its working life the pass was a serious obstacle: steep, tightly wound, and hard on brakes and nerves in the wet. Construction of a road tunnel beneath it began in 2004, and the climb became optional. Route 1 traffic — the container trucks, the sleeper buses, the moto...

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Image: Linhcandng (thảo luận) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/7/5/w/ngang-pass-wp/w75w-ngang-pass-nobody-has-to-climb-it-now.mp3 0:06 5 full