Home-stay with the Dao in Quản Bạ

                                                       by Jim Goodman

Núi Đôi--the breast-shaped hills of Quản Bạ 

       The northeastern province of Hà Giang is one of the most remote in Vietnam.  It’s also one of the poorest, consisting mostly of rocky mountains with stone-studded slopes, the kind of terrain that precludes agricultural development.  But it is becoming more attractive to travelers, for access is much easier nowadays.  Around the turn of the century it took two full days to drive the 313 km from Hanoi to the provincial capital Hà Giang City, and another full day to reach Đồng Văn in the far north.  Now it’s a smooth ride of six to seven hours.

       Hà Giang City, the provincial capital, is not particularly interesting.  Other than a small museum housing prehistoric artifacts and the clothing of the ethnic minorities, there is little to appreciate.  The city lies along the Lô River, but its banks are usually full of refuse.  But it does have an attractive setting among steep hills backed by high mountains, a foretaste of what’s to come further north.

typical Dao house in Nậm Đâm

       Leaving the city, the road north runs a while through pleasant valleys, passing stilted houses of the Tày minority, and then climbs into the hills.  About 40 km north of Hà Giang City it comes to the pass known as Heaven’s Gate.  From here is a splendid view of Quản Bạ town and its unique setting.  Just beyond the flat fields of the northern suburbs sit two hills beside each other, called the Twin Mountains (Núi Đôi), bereft of farms or trees, exactly the same size and shaped like a woman’s breasts.  Higher mountains lie in the distance beyond.

       According to a local legend, once upon a time a Hmông man playing his gourd-pipe lured a fairy from Heaven who heard his music and fell in love.  She stayed on Earth and bore him a child.   The Lord of Heaven found out and ordered her back.  So she left her breasts behind to nourish the child.

Dao male attire

Dao Aó Dài woman's outfit

       A medium-sized town with little traffic other than inter-city buses, Quản Bạ is becoming more geared up for tourism, with several hotels, trekking services and restaurants with Western food and English menus. Vietnamese dominate the urban population, while Hmông and Dao are the main ethnic minorities in the district.  Most hotels offer home-stay arrangements for travelers to stay in minority villages.

Dao women going home from the fields

       The nearest of these is the Dao village of Nậm Đâm, a few km north of Quàn Bạ, consisting of about fifty houses and 250 inhabitants, members of the Dao Aó Dài sub-group of the Làn Tẻn branch.  [In Vietnamese the letter ‘d’ is pronounced like a ‘z’ so it’s Zao Aó Zai.]  Some Dao are famous for the colorful embroidery with which the women embellish their jackets, trousers or both, like the Red Dao around Sapa, the Tá Pàn Dao in northern Hà Giang and the Sewing Dao of Lào Cai province.  The Dao Aó Dài dress in mainly plain black clothes, without any embroidery, like other Làn Tển sub-groups the Black Dao and Dao Tuyền.

       Men wear a front-fastened, long-sleeved, plain black jacket over black trousers.  The aó dài tunic worn by the women is also long-sleeved, but side-fastened, knee-length and split on each side from the waist down.  It resembles the aó dài worn by Vietnamese women, except it is shorter and has no upturned collar.  It’s not completely black, for a thin band of red trimming runs along the neck and lapel and thicker bands of red, blue or white wraparound the sleeve cuffs.  The women also wear a red cloth belt tied around the waist.

Dao woman with child

Nậm Đâm children

       The headscarf is more like a turban with a flap in the back.  The front features bands of spangled white and red across the brow and the top is usually white.  The long flap that hangs halfway down the back is black underneath and bright red on the outside. Young girls and children dispense with the headgear, but otherwise dress the same.  Silver neck rings, often more than one, and long silver chain necklaces are the most popular ornaments.

host couple with home-made herbal rice liquor

       Like other sub-groups of the Dao, the Dao Aó Dài in Quản Bạ have maintained their traditional culture and are very conservative.  Thus, the women prefer to wear their traditional garments and one of the attractions of a visit to Nậm Đâm is the exotic sight of ethnic clothing everywhere.  In addition, the houses are old-fashioned, two-story structure of wood and rammed earth, with thick thatched roofs.  Fields and gardens separate the houses and there is no real congested area in the entire village.  The only non-traditional buildings in Nậm Đâm are those constructed for the home-stay guests.

preparing dirt for house walls

       “Home-stay” is a bit of a misnomer.  Unlike trekking in the Himalayas in Nepal, or visiting hill tribe villages in northern Thailand (my own experience) visitors do not actually stay in anyone’s home, but in a separate building.  The individual rooms have a thick mattress on the floor, lots of pillows and blankets, an electrical outlet and no furniture.  Guests share a toilet and shower and a computer if they haven’t brought their own, and every such home-stay establishment, of which Nậm Đâm has five at the moment, has wi-fi connections.

       By staying overnight in villagers’ homes, whether a separate bedroom or s mattress on the dining room floor, travelers witnessed a great deal of domestic life.  They saw who goes to bed early or late, who wakes up first, what was the first task of the day, how the meals were prepared and so on—all insights into traditional culture.  By putting guests in a separate building, all that is lost. 

the 'rammed earth' method

       The simple breakfast consists of a choice between noodles or banana pancake—the backpacker favorite, with at most one family member joining the guests.  But for the mid-day and evening meals, the whole host family joins.  And of course, the greater the number of guests, the greater number of dishes, both of meat and vegetables.  Rounds of herbal rice liquor, a local specialty, punctuate the repast and the Dao women will drink as much as the men.  But they don’t get drunk, for the Dao only consume alcohol at meal times and not afterwards.

      While the home-stay experience does not allow for the observation of the intimacy of family life, for anyone interested in the ethnic life style, it’s still preferable to lodging in a city hotel.  “Home-stay” may be just a rural guesthouse, but travelers wake up in an authentic village environment with plenty of opportunity to observe the people’s outdoor work.  This depends on the season, naturally, for farming is every Nậm ̣Đâm family’s occupation. 

Dao domestic altar

Dao girl excavating dirt for house walls

       I was there in winter, when the fields lay fallow.  Women went to gather herbs and edible plants growing wild or harvested something raised in their gardens.  Winter is also house construction time.  The Dao first layout the foundation and then place two long parallel boards on the lines where they want to erect the walls.  Women dig up dirt from a pit created nearby, break up the large clods of earth, load the dirt into a basket and carry it to the house site.  Then they empty the basket of dirt into the trough between the parallel boards.  A man with a big wooden hammer pounds the dirt to make it compact. 

young Dao man learning to write Chinese characters

       Then men raise the boards to make a new trough to receive another load of dirt and slowly but surely the walls rise, by what is known as the ‘rammed-earth’ method. The two-story building, when finished, will include wooden corner posts and window frames and a roof of thick thatch.

       Nậm Đâm is an officially recognized ‘culture village’ and has its own modest museum.  Tools, implements and machines used in agricultural work comprise the bulk of the exhibits, as well as a palm fiber rain cape.  But a typical home altar is also on display, for it’s an essential ingredient of every Dao household.  Dao religion is basically animist with a heavy Taoist overlay.  Shamans are still an active tradition and the people take their religious ceremonies very seriously.  
       Shamans undergo successive initiations to become qualified to conduct a range of rituals for different events.  These include rites of passage like births, becoming an adult, marriage and funerals, others’ initiations, expelling bad luck, honoring ancestors, calling back the wandering souls blamed for unexplained illnesses and so forth.  They wear special coats and hats and for major rituals they may decorate the venue with paintings of Taoist deities.  They often accompany the rites with the deployment of power sticks, fortune-telling dice or musical instruments such as gongs, cymbals and drums.

shaman manuscript pages

       They also read aloud from ancient Taoist manuscripts, written in Chinese characters, which around Nậm Đâm could be up to five centuries old.  They contain narratives of myths or complex prayer formulas and tradition requires a chicken sacrifice and a ritual before they can even be taken out for use.  Most pages are just text, but some contain colored illustrations of life in the afterworld, its pleasures and its punishments.  
       Other than the New Year rites, ceremonies conducted by shamans are semi-public, in that they take place in a private house or yard, but anyone, including passing travelers, is welcome to observe and even join the feast afterwards.  That certainly enhances any visitor’s experience, but even without such a lucky coincidence, a stroll around the village, or out to another one a few km away, is quite pleasant.  The people are friendly and hospitable, used to foreigners without being overwhelmed by great numbers of them and the landscape offers views of other valleys and of black limestone boulders jutting up from the ground, sometimes in arresting shapes.

Hmông in Quản Bạ on market day

       Sunday is market day in Quản Bạ, which draws many of Nậm Đâm’s residents to town, mostly women.  They may add a little jewelry for the occasion, or a colorful scarf, but otherwise dress the same as any other day.  Dao Aó Dài from other villages in the vicinity also turn up in Quản Bạ in Sunday, as do a few Tày, lots of Hmông and local Quản Bạ Vietnamese.    

       Dao Aó Dài women dress more or less the same, with little variation in the outfits.  Hmông women around Quản Bạ, in contrast, do not have a uniform style.  They may wear some of the traditional clothing components, like long slit tunics, pleated, over-the-knee skirts and a long, thin apron in front, but very different from one individual to the next.

pigs for sale in Quản Bạ

Hmông girls examining a necklace

       The regular daily covered market is in the southwest quarter of the town.  On Sunday stalls and stands, or just goods laid out on a cloth, go up on all the lanes branching off from the covered market, as well as the main street in front of it.  Vietnamese run the shops and most of the stalls in the covered market, but Hmông and Dao-run stalls occupy side streets and the areas outside the covered market.  Some hawk vegetables or herbs, others textiles or jewelry.

       At the north end of the market an empty field is the venue for the livestock market, mostly buffaloes.  On the market side of it smaller animals are on sale.  The pigs wear a muzzle of split bamboo and are tied to bamboo poles to make for easy vertical transport on the buyer’s back.  The fowl vendors provide a cage for those purchasing chickens and ducks.  Dog vendors are also there, the dogs tied to leashes for customers to walk them home, whether purchased as pets or as food.

Hmông woman selling vegetables

Dao Aó Dài women in Quản Bạ

       Sugar cane is a popular item and customers often break off a small piece to gnaw on while touring the market.  The liveliest stalls are those selling jewelry, crowded with girls holding up and examining necklaces, bangles and neck rings, fantasizing what they would like look wearing the ornaments.  The older Hmông and Dao women tend to congregate around the textile and thread stalls, buying cloth to make their own clothing.

       Several noodle stands open for the day, so lunch is possible in the market area.  But shortly after noon the crowd begins thinning.  Some look for last-minute bargain finds, youths may arrange for a date with someone they met today, and villagers running stalls gather up the unsold merchandise and prepare to take it home.  Unless it’s a particularly busy time in the agricultural cycle, they’ll be back next Sunday.

Dao women at a silver jewelry stall

                                                                            * * *               

Delta Tours Vietnam can make arrangements to visit Quản Bạ and other destinations in Hà Giang province.  See https://www.deltatoursvietnam.com/other-tour-options  

       

Hanoi’s Shrinking Waters

                                    by Jim Goodman

Hoàn Kiếm Lake 

       What distinguishes Hanoi from other cities in the region is the large amount of water within its urban boundaries.  Every visitor knows picturesque Hoàn Kiếm Lake in the center of the old city, and probably the much bigger West Lake, and its subsidiary Trúc Bạch.  But the city has many more lakes, plus innumerable scattered ponds.  Altogether, Hanoi has more water than any city east of Venice.

        It used to have much more.  West Lake began as a lagoon of the Red River until the early Lý Dynasty, when a landfill separated it.  Hoàn Kiếm Lake was connected to the Red River until the beginning of the 19^th century.  Hồ Bẩy Mẫu sprawled all the way to the southern wall of the Lý Citadel.  Other lakes, long since vanished, occupied most of what are now the city suburbs.  Many ponds lay within the old town environs until the French began filling them in. 

the Red River at Hanoi

       In prehistoric times the site of Hanoi was a lagoon within a gulf that lay at the confluence of the Red and Đuống Rivers.  Over countless eons the gulf receded, disappearing under the layers of silt deposited by the two rivers.  The lagoon turned into a swamp with channels, lakes and densely forested islands.  The first pioneers arrived during the Bronze Age, settling on the islands and along the banks of the Tô Lịch and Nhuệ Rivers, which are now in the western part of metropolitan Hanoi, grew rice, vegetables and fruits on small plots and supplemented this with hunting and fishing.

houseboats on the Red River near Long Biên Bridge

       Nobody knows the original village name, though in later centuries it became identified as Long Đỗ--“dragon’s navel.”  Near the Tô Lịch River stood a small hillock, which the villagers believed was linked to the center of the earth by a long hole within the hillock.  The village continued to grow during the Chinese occupation, and when the Tang Dynasty came to power the Chinese shifted their administrative center from east of the Red River to Long Đỗ, which was becoming a more concentrated population and commercial center in the Delta.  In 621 they constructed a small citadel, of 1600 meters length, beside the Tô Lịch.

West Lake, formerly Foggy Lake, in its usual weather conditions

       Chinese rule was never very secure, subjected to periodic local revolts and clashes with their rival Nanzhao, a kingdom in what is today Yunnan.  In the late 9^th century the Chinese enlarged their citadel, renamed it Đai La and built a protective dike along the Red River.  But the Tang Dynasty fell in the early 10^th century and in 938 Ngô Quyền captured Đai La, expelled the Chinese and re-established Vietnam’s independence. 

       Ngô Quyền made Cổ Loa, the last capital of Vietnam before the Chinese conquest, the capital of his new state Đại Cồ Viêt.  Đai La’s citadel fell into ruins, and some of the population moved to Cổ Loa, but many residents remained.  The town was still inhabited when King Lý Thái Tô journeyed from Hoa Lư, the country’s capital since 968, to visit the site in 1010 and decided to transfer the capital.  According to legends, the king witnessed a dragon rising over the ruined citadel upon his arrival and so named the city Thăng Long—Rising Dragon.

preserved Hoàn Kiếm Lake turtle

       The new citadel, like Đai La, lay just south of West Lake, with the Tô Lịch River serving as its northern moat.  Another large and long lake lay just west of the citadel.  The royal family, retainers, guards and high nobles all lived within its walls, while the commoners, mostly craftsmen and traders who served the palace, lived between the eastern wall and the Red River--the nucleus of what would later be the Old Town.  Stilted houses were still the norm and every house likely had a boat.  And some folks probably lived along the rivers in floating houses, a feature that has persisted down to the present on the western side of the Red River.

earliest map of Hanoi

       Lý Thái Tô’s successors created West Lake with a landfill to cut it off from the Red River.  Until 1547 it was called Hồ Dâm Dàm—Foggy Lake—after its usual misty weather conditions.  Royalty rode pleasure boats on the lake and the earliest recorded water-puppet performance took place on the southern shore in the 11^th century.  They also established the Temple of Literature on an island near the citadel in Hồ Bẩy Mẫu, extended the dikes and built canals.  

       Because most nobles lived on estates far from the city, Thăng Long did not become very large during the Lý Dynasty, nor in the Trần Dynasty that followed.   Mongol invaders destroyed it three times in the 13^th century and Chăm armies sacked it thrice in the 14^th century.  Ming Dynasty Chinese occupied it 1408-28.  Only after their expulsion, and the foundation of the Lê Dynasty, did the city, now called Đông Kinh—the Eastern Capital—finally develop. 

Bẩy Mẫu Lake today

       The Lê Court demanded officials live in the city.  They mostly resided near the citadel, but the old town grew with guilds set up to service the palace and its government personnel.  Many ponds still existed in the old town, the Tô Lịch River, wider and deeper than the scraggly creek that’s left of it today, was a prime transport artery from the city to the countryside and the body of water beside the old quarter, still connected to the Red River, changed its name from Lục Thuỷ--Green Lake—to Hồ Hoàn Kiếm—Lake of the Restored Sword, after a legend about the dynasty’s founder Lê Lợi.

Đông Kinh (Hanoi) riverfront, 1679

       A nobleman from Thanh Hoá province, he is supposed to have visited the lake when contemplating launching a rebellion against the predatory Chinese occupiers.  Casting his net for fish, he instead caught a magic sword and used it during the insurrection.  When he finally expelled the Chinese in 1428 he took a boat out onto the lake and a huge turtle, for which the lake had long been famous, emerged from the water and took the sword from his hand.  Mission accomplished, the sword had to be returned.

Hanoi in the late Lê Dynasty

       A specimen of one of these turtles, over a meter long, has been preserved at the temple on Ngọc Sơn Island at the top end of the lake.  For centuries Hanoi residents kept their eyes open for a glimpse of one of these turtles whenever they walked along the lake. Their sight of it would be brief, as the turtle sucked up some air and plunged back beneath the surface.  Never a favorable environment for them after it was blocked from the river, the last turtle died just two years ago.  But before that, at the lakeside opening ceremony for Hanoi’s millennium celebrations in October 2010, the Hoàn Kiếm turtle popped his head above the water in full view of thousands.

Trấn Quốc Pagoda

       In the early 16^th century, after a succession of four weak, incompetent, teenaged Lê emperors, Mạc Đăng Dung seized the throne and founded a new dynasty.  Some of the Lê family escaped to Thanh Hoá and, backed by the powerful Trịnh and Nguyễn families, eventually waged a long war against the Mạc and in 1592 captured Đông Kinh and restored the Lê Dynasty.  However, the victors had a falling out and another civil war resulted, this time pitting partisans of the Trịnh and Nguyển against each other.  The Nguyển wound up with autonomy over the south, while the Trịnh ruled the north.  The Lê emperor was just a figurehead for both sides.

Trúc Bạch Lake

      The warfare, sporadic anyway, did not affect Đông Kinh.  The old town continued to get more congested, while migrants filled in parts of the big lakes and made farms and villages on the outskirts of the city.  The long lake just west of the citadel was filled in and organized into an area known as the Thirteen Farms.  Immigrants from the countryside filled in parts of Bẩy Mẫu Lake, separating it from the Kim Ngưu River.

       Within the city itself, the Lê emperor and his entourage stayed inside a smaller, rebuilt citadel.  The Trịnh Lords set up their palaces near Hoàn Kiếm Lake, including one on Ngọc Sơn Island.  From here they would observe naval maneuvers on the lake, the boats sailing in from the Red River.  In the 18^th century the palace was replaced first by a Buddhist pagoda, then temples to the god of war Quan Công and the spirits of literature and the soil.  In the early Nguyễn Dynasty a temple to Trần Hưng Đạo, hero of the Mongol Wars, also went up on the island. 

fishing at Bẩy Mẫu Lake

       At West Lake, in 1600 one of the city’s most venerable temples, Chùa Khai Quốc—Establishing the Nation Pagoda—was removed to an island in the southwest part of the lake. Originally built along the Red River in the 6^th century, soil erosion threatened its stability.  In its new location it was renamed Chùa Trấn Quốc—Defending the Nation Pagoda.  In 1619 local residents built a causeway alongside it, which gave it easier access and also created Truc Bạch Lake beside it, which was used to breed fish.

       In the late 18^th century, the city experienced another round of turmoil with the collapse of the Trịnh Lords regime, a brief occupation by the Chinese, the Tây Sơn Revolt and the capture of the city by Nguyễn Ánh in 1802.  Founding a new dynasty, he moved the national capital to Huế and ordered the old citadel demolished, a new one made and landfills to separate the Red River from Hoàn Kiếm, now truly a lake.

June flowers on the lake

Thê Húc Bridge

       More changes in the city’s water ratio ensued in the next few decades.  By the time Emperor Minh Mạng changed the city’s name to Hanoi in 1831, the big lakes that had sprawled over the southern and western parts of the area were much reduced.  Bẩy Mẫu split twice, with reclaimed land now separating it from its western half, creating Hồ Giảng Võ, and a road running directly south bisecting the eastern part. And the Temple of Literature was no longer on an island, though a small lake survived just across the street from the compound, where scholars still went for quiet study.

Tháp Rùa--the Turtle Tower

       More drastic changes occurred as soon as the French took over.  They began filling in the ponds in and around the old town and the lower part of the Tô Lịch where it ran into the Red River.  No ponds exist in the old town today, but the memory of them is still sharp.  The street Cấu Gỗ (wooden bridge) got its name from the bridge that crossed the stream coming from Hồ Thái Cực (Lake of Abundant Fish) next to it to Hoàn Kiếm Lake.  The next street up, Gia Ngu, means ‘fish market’ in literary Sino-Vietnamese.  The streets branching off Hạng Bông--Hàng Mành and Hàng Hòm--run slightly downhill, because there used to be a pond at the end.

Hanoi,1924

       Before this development, in 1886 a Vietnamese mandarin working for the French persuaded authorities to allow him to build a tower on an islet in the middle of Hoàn Kiếm Lake, where the turtles used to bask in the sun and lay their eggs.  Called Tháp Rùa (Turtle Tower), it honors the magic turtle that seized Lê Lợi’s sword.  The mandarin who built it intended to lay the remains of his father there, but local people objected and removed the body. 

       The tower remained, though, and in later years the French added a statue on top similar to the Statue of Liberty in New York.  The Vietnamese official the Japanese installed during their occupation removed the statue in 1945.  Ever since, the tower has become the best-known monument in Hanoi.

B-52 wreckage in a Ba Đình  pond

       When the French finally departed from Hanoi in 1954 the city core was rather densely populated, but vast areas of farms and pastures still surrounded the settled area.  This situation continued until the late 1980s, when the new renovation policy (đôi mới) inaugurated rapid development of the city.  The rural belt around Hanoi quickly filled in with roads and buildings and in a few years a quarter of the city’s water area disappeared.  West Lake lost twenty percent of its water before the government stepped in to halt further encroachment.  Other lakes in the city, like Giảng Võ and Bẩy Mẫu also shrank considerably, while a quarter of the lakes existing a decade earlier completely disappeared. 

Triiều Khúc Pagoda and its pond

       The smaller ponds largely survived because they were often part of temple compounds.  One pond in Ba Đình district became a monument to the America War because it contains the wreckage of a B-52 bomber.  Currently, it seems likely that the size of the remaining lakes and ponds will remain constant.  After all, they do add to the city’s beauty, for the buildings around them that reflect in the water and the careful, harmonious layout of the ponds.  Like the beautiful, mid-19^th century red wooden bridge to Ngọc Sơn Island, called Cấu Thê Húc (Morning Sunlight Bridge), they represent a prominent cultural characteristic and artistic achievement of Old Hanoi—the aesthetic marriage of architecture and water.

summer flowers at Hoàn Kiếm Lake

                                                                              * * *    

Hanoi and its lakes are part of Delta Tours Vietnam’s cultural-historical journey through Vietnam.  See the schedule at https://deltatoursvietnam.com