by Jim Goodman
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| Hmông women in Vĩnh Yên |
We were headed for nw Hà
Giang, a province famous for its rugged mountain scenery and preponderance of
ethnic minorities. We didn’t have
time for the more scenic parts of Hà Giang north of the capital city, so on the
advice of friends in Hanoi familiar with the border areas, we opted for Xín
Mân, in the northwest corner, assured that if we timed our arrival for a
Saturday night, we could enjoy the weekly market the following day, a scene dominated
by colorful minorities.
Xín Mân was to be the last
stop before crossing into Yunnan, China on a journey that began in Hồ
Chí Minh City and had included stops in the Central Highlands, Hội
An and Huế. We’d had fairly good weather so far, but
that ceased in heavily overcast Hanoi.
Then the day we were to take the night train to Lào Cai the city
experienced its heaviest rainfall in many years. Hoàn Kiếm Lake overflowed into the city
streets, most of which were impassable by dark as we left for the train
station. After many detours, we
had to walk the last few blocks in a downpour with water up to our knees. Fortunately the train was delayed. As it turned out, it was the last to
depart before they had to close the train service for two days.
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| Giáy woman, Vĩnh Yên |
It wasn’t raining when we
arrived in Lào Cai the next morning, but the driver we had arranged to meet us
informed us that the short route to Xín Mân via Bắc Hà was blocked by
landslides. We would have to take
a long detour, first south, then up through western Hả Giang to
reach Xín Mân. It would probably
take all day. Since we didn’t have
another choice, off we went.
The drive south along the
eastern side of the Red River was not particularly interesting until we made a
turn to the northeast and came to Vĩnh Yên, a village 20 km from the Lào Cai-Hà
Giang provincial border. It was
just another plains village of no particular attraction. But we happened to arrive on the day the
international aid organization Oxfam was delivering supplies to the local
people. So an unusually large
number of ethnic minorities were there to receive the handouts; Hmông, Nùng, Bố
Y and Giáy.
The Hmông belonged to the
Hmông Hoa (Flowery Hmông) sub-group, so named for the bright, colorful jackets
and skirts worn by the women. Hmông women cover practically the entire surface of
their long-sleeved, side-fastened jackets and bulky, calf-length pleated skirts
with thin bands of appliqué and panels of embroidery, with red the color most
employed. The outfit takes several
months to stitch together and women spend most of their free time working on
it.
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| Nùng women,VĨnhYên |
Younger women were bare-headed
or wore headscarves. Older ones
wore headscarves or broad, circular hats.
And all ages wore typical Hmông ornaments like silver neck rings and big
round earrings loaded with little pendants. The Hmông Hoa are the dominant Hmông sub-group in western Hà
Giang, eastern Lào Cai and northern Lai Châu provinces and we would meet them
again in Xín Mân.
In stark contrast to the
resplendent Hmông clothing, the outfits worn by Nùng women were almost
somber. They comprised a black
turban with one end falling to the shoulders, a long black coat and black
trousers. Besides a blue sash belt
and a couple of red tassels on the turban end, they display a heavy dose of
multiple colors on their embroidered and fringed shoulder bags.
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| colorful Nùng shoulder bag |
Like the Tày and the Thái
further west, the Nùng are part of the Tai-Kedai linguistic group. Like them, they are also wet-rice
cultivators living in the valleys.
They were the nearest residents to Vĩnh Yên and we passed several Nùng
villages in the area, with their sturdy, stilted wooden houses with tiled or
thatched roofs.
The Tai-Kedai group also
includes the Giáy and Bộ Y minorities, generally living on the lower slopes
of the hills. Giáy women wear
black or blue side-fastened, long-sleeved jackets over plain black trousers,
headscarves and little or no jewelry.
They trim the jacket with bands of contrasting colors around the cuffs,
the upper arms and lapel. Bố
Y women wore similar jackets but usually with the addition of a large black bib
in front that hung to the hips, the edges trimmed in blue and a few flowers
embroidered on the front. They
braided their hair, coiled it around the top of the head and wore a
silver-studded band beneath.
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| Giãy people receiving the Oxfam handouts |
The sign Oxfam put up at Vĩnh
Yên announced the event as flood and storm relief aid. The items distributed, however, seemed
out of synch with that theme. Each
recipient got a rubber-plastic basin, towels, soap, toothbrush and other
toiletries, as if Oxfam wanted these uncouth minorities to clean up, wash their
faces, brush their teeth and get civilized.
I don’t know if any of the
beneficiaries pondered the nature of the handouts. They were probably just happy to get anything useful for
free. They were certainly in a
good mood and quite friendly towards us.
Vĩnh Yên does not have a regular market day and is not near any tourist
trekking route. From the surprised,
delighted, inquisitive expressions on their faces, we had the feeling we were
the first foreigners they encountered in the flesh. They posed proudly and happily, as if being photographed was
a form of flattery—a mutually exciting encounter.
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| typical traditional house in western Hà Giang |
After an hour the activity
began to dissolve and we departed with a farewell wave from a group of Giáy
women and headed for Hà Giang.
After Việt Giang we turned north and drove along a high road
flanking the valleys, passing settlements of the Red Dao, another very
traditional minority group, virtually all of whom we saw dressed in traditional
clothing.
In the late afternoon it began
raining again. By the time we reached
Hoàng Su Phì it was already dark and we got stuck in the mud a few km west of
the town and had to get a passing truck to pull us loose. Another such patch of slippery mud
confronted us just short of Xín Mân.
Fortunately, this time the driver negotiated the vehicle successfully
through, thereby saving us from the 200.000 đồng fee (about ten dollars)
he said Xín Mân drivers charged to pull vehicles out of the muck.
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| Xín Mân market day in the rain |
We arrived in Xín Mân early
evening. The rain ceased for a
while, but resumed late at night and was forecasted to continue, at varying
levels of intensity, all day Sunday, Xín Mân’s market day. Landslides in the hills had also
blocked access to Xín Mân for many villages, so attendance would be reduced.
Xín Mân is a mountain town lying
along and above the Chảy River, surrounded by coruscating hills and backed
by two towering peaks. We had a
few breaks in the clouds Sunday that gave us an opportunity to appreciate the
setting. We could also see how
steep the hills were and how easily a landslide could temporarily shut a
village off from the outside world.
In this modest-sized town, Vietnamese run the commercial establishments
and dominate its population. Villages
in the vicinity are home to Hmông, Dao (pronounced Zao) and two small Tai-Kedai
minorities—La Chí and Bố Y, the former residing here a long time, the
latter, part of China’s Bouyei nationality, settling here in the mid-19th
century.
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| Bố Y woman, Xín Mân |
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| Hmông Hoa in Xín Mân |
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| mountain stream after a heavy rain |
The Dao villages must have
been the ones cut off by landslides, for no one from that community turned up
that day. The majority of the
folks who braved the slippery trails were Hmông Hoa, mostly dressed like we’d
seen in Vỉnh
Yên, with perhaps the addition of a long rectangular apron in front. But apparently a branch of this
sub-group also lives around here, for some of the Hmông women wore the same
style jackets and bulky pleated skirts, but with light blue the dominant color
rather than red, plus plain hoop earrings without the filigreed pendants.
Considering the continuous
rain, it was remarkable how crowded and active the market scene was. Some of the sellers huddled under roofs
or awnings of shops along the main street. Others set up small stalls with canvas coverings
overhead. Still others, especially
the Hmông, operated under umbrellas, wearing raincoats and laying out their
goods on the sidewalk, just a few cm above the street, which was flush with
running water. Buyers had to stand
in ankle-deep water to inspect the vegetables on offer. Next to them might be a Bố
Y or La Chí woman standing with one hand holding an umbrella and
the other hand a silver necklace.
Xín Mân is a popular stop for motorcycling
tourists, so the market crowd was used to the presence of foreigners. People were friendly and polite, but
without the looks of astonishment we witnessed in Vĩnh Yên. Ordinarily, travelers on market day
would spend time examining the products for sale, walking out to scenic viewpoints
or trying to strike up conversations with the locals. But with water running down the street, plastic coverings obscuring
the goods and clouds covering the hills most of the time, the first two options
were out. And the pattering of
heavy raindrops against rooftops, tent flaps and umbrellas made ordinary
conversation difficult, too.
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| La Chí and Hmông in Hoàng Su Phì |
Fearing worsening road conditions,
we left Xín Mân just before noon, when the market was at its most active. We headed back to Hoàng Su Phì, 30 km
away, this time in the daylight, with views of the muddy swollen streams that
tumbled down the hillsides and flooded the road. We got through them safely as well as the two problematic
spots of the night before, for they had mostly drained away. When we arrived in Hoàng Su Phì it was
the peak hours of its own market day.
Hoàng Su Phì is a little larger than Xín
Mân. As in the latter, Vietnamese
dominate the town’s population, while ethnic minorities reside in all the
nearby villages. The Hmông Hoa
were again the largest contingent. Besides hawking herbs and vegetables, they also ran stalls in
the only indoor venue, selling Hmông clothing components, jewelry and accessories
to other Hmông.
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| Hmông clothing market, Hoàng Su Phì |
Many more La Chí women turned up
here than in Xin Mân, crouched over their herbs and vegetables under the
awnings of shops. Many Dao women
were also wandering the streets, a branch of what Vietnamese identify as the
Black Dao. Their rather plain black clothing was very different from the almost
flamboyant, heavily embroidered apparel of the Red Dao we’d seen north of Việt
Quang.
They wore a loose,
side-fastened black jacket that hung to the hips, trimmed with a thin red band
along the lapel and sides, and black trousers. They tied their hair in a bun and covered the front part
with a black cap tied with a braid of light blue woolen thread. Despite their very dissimilar appearance,
the Black Dao speak the same dialect, follow the same religion, customs and
social organization and live in the same manner as the Red Dao or any other
branch of the Dao.
The same holds true for the Hmông
sub-groups, where the outfits worn by Black Hmông around Sapa contrast so
sharply with those of the Hmông Hoa in Lào Cai and Hà Giang. It’s easy to understand how customs and
traditions can remain intact after sub-groups split off and move elsewhere to
live. Living in the same
conditions in the new location, they follow the ways that have served them in
the past.
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| young Dao woman, Hoàng Su Phì |
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| older Dao woman, Hoàng Su Phì |
But what accounts for the
great diversity in apparel, not only within a single ethnic group, but also
within sub-groups? They live in
similar environments and yet the cut, shape, color and types of embellishment,
like embroidery, appliqué and ornaments, of their clothing components and
accessories can differ enormously, even when the sub-groups live next to each other. How did that come about?
So the mystery of ethnic fashion
remains unsolved. Perhaps nw Hà
Giang might be a good place to research this. There’s plenty of ethnic variety, warm and friendly people,
great mountain scenery and it would be an enjoyable type of research. It would be worth going there again. But next time I better do it in the dry
season.
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| Hmông girl, Xín Mân market |
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