The end

Although handicraft and small industry lines have developed and provided a good income, all the peasant families in the (Tuong Giang) commune still receive contractual arable land and do farm work. Like in almost all the communes of the Red River Delta, the people here still consider agriculture the base of stability, and arable land a precious asset and the solid mainstay against the volatility of market concerning both the inputs and outputs of non-agricultural lines.

All the household heads interviewed agreed that: Once you live in the countryside, you must be engaged more or less in cultivation. Our forefathers said “Agriculture is the base”. Currently, textile and construction jobs are bringing in an income 2 or 3 times higher, or even more still than farm work. But if farmers give up agricultural work, and later on when non-agricultural lines cannot develop, how can they earn their living?

Rural Development in Vietnam, National Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities and University of British Colombia, Canada.

Rice field, Ninh Bình province

So this is the last post to the blog from Hanoi as we are leaving on the 1 May to go back to UK with a 2 week holiday on the way, so arriving back in England on the 17th. I will post any developments regarding the exhibition in 2009 on my website www.tessabunney.co.uk

With special thanks to my guides Phuong and Vuong and also to Hanoi International Kindergarten for looking after Noah fantastically while I’ve been travelling out to the villages around Hanoi during the week whilst working on this project. And of course to all the villagers for welcoming us into their homes and for sharing their space for a while.

Silkworms

I visited Chí Đông hamlet during my first week back in Vietnam and since then, during the winter, the silk worm industry has been dormant. Due to the cold weather the season is a month late in starting up again but is now reaching the end of its first cycle.

There’s a saying in Vietnam that goes something like “when you raise pigs, you can lay down for eating, but when you raise silkworms you must stand up when eating.”

It seems that silk worms are tricky creatures to raise, everything is dependent on the weather and during the first phase of their cycle they need to be fed fresh mulberry leaves six times per day – even during the night and will die if they eat leaves that are at all wet.

Picking mulberry leaves, Chí Đông

Drying mulberry leaves at home, Chí Đông

Sorting out silkworms ready for the next stage, Chí Đông

The worms keep eating, getting bigger and eventually stop eating. They can then get ready for the next stage by emptying their stomachs and are placed on racks to facilitate this. They then begin to produce silk, making the cocoon which can take around two days.

For the villagers in Chí Đông this is then the end of the process, the cocoons are then collected by another village who then produce the silk thread.

One of the things I love about Vietnam is that everything is used, the old mulberry sticks are collected and used for firewood and the worms, known as, Nhậng are eaten in stir fries!

Later in the week, I then visited Từ Đài in Hà Nam province where the cocoons from Chí Đông are processed for export to Thailand or China or passed on to a nearby village for weaving into cloth. Like the weaving of the fabric processing of the cocoons has been done by machine for the past ten years located in small family run ‘factories’, based in the courtyards of their homes.

An couple in their eighties make the bamboo baskets used for storing the cocoons

Construction

Every direction in which you leave Hanoi is one big construction site – urbanisation is in full swing with new road bridges, widening of highways, building of luxury apartments, factories, shopping centres. It’s a whole another project in itself.

Highway No 1, Bắc Giang province

Recently visited an exhibition at the Ethnographic Museum in Hanoi put together by the villagers of Lai Xa, Ha Tay province, 15km from Hanoi. Since 2001, 60 out of 94 hectares of the village’s rice fields have been converted into land for housing, industrial zones and the no. 32 highway construction.

Here are some of the comments from the exhibition:

“The village is being urbanised, half of the rice field area is used for other purposes. The villagers are compensated. They are unemployed and illiterate. What will they do?”

Mr Luong Cong Hoa, aged 29.

“In the past, my parents made three-wing kites for our soldiers as examples for practicing shooting at airplanes. Now, not many people can make paper kites and they mainly buy plastic kites from China. Also, young people like playing computer games.

Mr Dinh Tien Ngoc, aged 46.

“The compensation they were given for their land is the first time many families in the village have received such a large amount of money. How will they use the money now and in the future? Should they build houses? Should they buy motorbikes? Will they buy household facilities? Or should they save the money for their children’s study?”

The art of blogging

Have just by chance come across Bert Teunissen’s blog diaries made whilst working on his Domestic Landscape series (see blogroll). Fascinating, particularly to me to understand how another photographer approaches photographing people’s homes and thought that maybe I should mention this too.

Firstly, I’ve been lucky enough to find the perfect Vietnamese companions who also love to visit villages and see how things are made. My main translator Phuong also works as a tour guide visiting tourist ghettos day in, day out which I think she enjoys but still its a welcome break to see something different.

Getting to the villages themselves can be a bit of an adventure with no detailed maps or roadsigns to help us. Unless we’ve been there already it can mean relying on directions from local people who often aren’t sure themselves. Many villages aren’t accessible by car especially down the side alleys, so once we are there we ditch the car and walk through the villages talking to people we meet along the way.

In some ways I think its been quite easy for me to do this project in Vietnam, I suppose partly because of the weather peoples doors and sometimes whole walls are open and you can see inside just by walking past and the Vietnamese culture is such that people just walk in and visit each other any time they like. If the doors are closed they are either not at home or sleeping and don’t want to be disturbed or its cold! The only thing that puts us off is if there is a big dog! Sometimes though, villages are a little complex, lots of alleys and shortcuts through courtyards to other houses and we’ve been helped a lot by local people – everyone knows what everyone else is doing and can tell us the way. What’s more difficult is finding houses that are a little bit special and which have the particular mix of home and work which I am looking for in putting together this series.

I’ve lost track a bit now of what is exchanged in terms of information – Phuong knows all the answers from me now that people ask – where am I from, how old am I and how many children do I have? Anyway, whatever she tells them it works – sometimes some of the younger women are a little shy but no-one minds me photographing their homes and the further we are from Hanoi the friendlier and more helpful people are, there is definitely a change in atmosphere from the city. Sometimes I feel though that Phuong is doing the most difficult part of my job and I don’t take it for granted. I had another guide for a couple of days and he was really unhappy about going into villagers houses and asking and accused me of wanting to do something that I didn’t do at home in UK – plainly not true of course! So I think it takes a special kind of person, someone who genuinely enjoys talking to people and is interested in rural life.

Bert Teunissen writes: “And sometimes you just know that there are interesting places that you want to see, but you don’t want to knock on the door. You’re afraid it will be a great place to photograph but they won’t let you in.”

I know that feeling too well… I have a whole list in my mind of people I would like to photograph (in the UK) but have been too scared to ask because then the opportunity would be gone for the future if they say no. I think I find it different working overseas because I feel like this IS the opportunity and if I don’t take it now then the opportunity would be gone, because I wouldn’t be able to go back. That’s not to say that there’s not another list in my mind of pictures that got away because I didn’t ask for one reason or another!

Bert’s way to get around it “is to ask around and see if you can find someone who knows the person living in the place in question. You try to get an introduction from this intermediary.”

One might be tempted to think that this 83 year old lady was making fishing baskets alone on the doorstep of her house in Thất Viên hamlet.

Well, she was until we turned up followed rapidly by half the village. In the end she had to ask them to move because she couldn’t see what she was doing! Thất Viên was one of the many villages I have visited who have never had foreign visitors.

The next fortnight

Due to nursery holidays and a 6 day trip to Yúnnán province in Southern China I won’t be posting anything new onto the blog for a couple of weeks or so.

Very much looking forward to seeing and travelling amongst mountains again after spending so long in flat landscape of the Red River Delta!

The last fortnight

Slipped over a few provincial borders this last couple of weeks.

Hoạch Trạch, the bamboo comb making village in Hải Dương province makes the sort of combs people used to clean their hair with before shampoo was widely available or used.

The combs are primarily made only by old people now as a bit of extra money as they are sold for only 1,000 VND (3p) and half of that is the cost of materials. Understandably, the young people in the village aren’t interested in such low paid work. However, it is detailed work involving seven separate stages and the old people take great care in making them.

I know that I didn’t need to photograph any more baskets but I couldn’t resist the temptation to go to Ninh Bình province, about 3 hours from Hanoi to see the baskets being made from seagrass. Part of it is the fascination with the different materials and techniques employed in different locations. And what can I say about the curtain wafting in the breeze – I just love it!

Unlike the brick kilns I visited before, the tile kilns in Cống Rông, a roof tile making village, are individually owned by separate families and located next to their house. Each family undertakes all the processes themselves, from preparing clay, making the tiles, firing and loading and unloading the kilns. The village is located on a main road and the tiles are then stacked up outside the house so passers by know where to come to buy them – no marketing required!

Back to coppercasting and baskets

On Wednesday, the family we visited last week in Lộng Thượng, the copper casting village, phoned to say they were casting that day and invited us along.

The oven, which is in the yard outside their house is fueled by coal. The top layer is used to dry out the clay moulds before casting while the really hot bit down below has the copper melting in a pot. Every tiny piece of scrap copper is recycled plus new blocks are added. A roving team of local men come round to help pour the copper into the clay moulds. When cool enough the children help knock off the clay, in the countryside they only go to school in the morning or the afternoon so have plenty of time to help their families with the business, I guess partly in training for the future.

This week, I also went back to the basket making village and returned to visit Dinh Văn Tiến. I could tell when I first saw the baskets she was making they were of higher detail and quality than some of the other families we had visited – not that it earns her more money. On an average day she can make a single basket, which is used for covering food, including preparing the bamboo.

Tiến starts work at 6 am and finishes at 10 pm and if she works these hours everyday for a month she can earn around £18. She’s been doing this for 40 years. I just can’t imagine sitting in your home for 40 years making the same basket every day.

The baskets in Tăng Tiến commune are made by weaving bamboo into a flat piece; the final shape is then made by pushing the woven bamboo square over a ‘mould’ and putting a circle also made of bamboo around it to keep the shape. The extra bits are then trimmed off and the circle is then sewn into place.