by Jim Goodman
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| Hmông women tending a stall in the Sín Chéng market |
At the turn of this century,
when foreigners sought to explore the mountain scenery and ethnic variety of
northern Vietnam, they went to Sapa.
With a full view of Phansipan, at 3143 meters Vietnam’s highest
mountain, lots of Hmông and Dao minorities in town, especially Saturday market
day, Sapa had already been popular since it was opened to tourists in the late
80s. They could take treks around
the area and stay in minority villages or climb up to the peak of
Phansipan.
About the only excursion out
of the district visitors might take was a trip to Bắc Hà, about
100 km away on the other side of the Red River, for the Sunday market. They arrived in late morning, when the
town was full of Flowery Hmông, who dressed very differently from the Black
Hmông around Sapa, and left mid-afternoon when the market action was
receding. Hardly anyone stayed the
night there, or visited during the week.
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| hill scenery near Lùng Phìn |
As the years
rolled on Sapa became very congested with tourists, foreign and domestic, who
became subject to increasing commercial pressure from minority women and girls
selling handicrafts. Travelers
then began paying more attention to Bắc Hà. The town lay in a broad valley surrounded by hills, a
picturesque setting even if not as dramatic as Sapa’s. In 2006 the renovated colonial era
palace re-opened
and so the town now had an historical attraction. Instead of a quick Sunday afternoon visit, people now stayed
a night or two.
In recent years, though, for
the Sunday market day, often more foreigners are present than local
people. And a portion of the local
Hmông have become like the minority merchants on the streets of Sapa, constantly
importuning foreigners to buy something from them. Bắc Hà’s hotels are full on weekends and home-stay options
have cropped up all over the suburbs.
During the week the town is much quieter, yet that is a more interesting
time to visit, for towns across the district have their own market days, where
foreign visitors are too few to notice and no one pesters them to buy anything.
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| Hmông child in Sín Chéng |
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| Hmông girl's ornamented turban |
With this in mind, my friend
and I planned on exploring the district during the week and departing Sunday
morning. Arriving on a Tuesday
evening, we rented motorbikes and set out early next morning for Sín Chéng’s
market day, in the northwest part of Bắc Hà district. The road ran north about 30 km to Simacai through lovely
hills with terraced slopes and scattered villages. From here we turned southwest, passing views of yet more
terraced hills with even higher mountains as a backdrop.
A small, narrow town, Sín
Chéng lies on a high ridge. For
this Wednesday market stalls filled the lanes around its central
intersection. Just down the slope
below them were the noodle shops and covered market lanes, mostly selling Hmông
clothing. In the field beside them
was the livestock market.
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| Thu Lao woman in Sín Chéng |
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| Tày women in Bản Liền |
About 90% of the people in Sín
Chéng that day were Hmông, almost all women and all dressed in Hmông
style. This could vary,
though. Some wore the long bulky
traditional Flowery Hmông skirt that was once the norm throughout the
district. On top they wore
side-fastened jackets with thick bands of appliqué around the cuffs, sleeves
and neckline. Most women, of all
ages, wore factory-produced skirts, knee-length, pleated and printed with
innumerable kinds of patterns, some copying Hmông designs, some not.
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| Bàn Liền market day |
The contemporary Flowery Hmông
female outfit is not so uniform-like as before. With the traditional look, the jacket’s background color
would vary, but the bands of appliqué were always in the same places and in the
same style, while the long and heavy skirt was covered with wide horizontal
bands of appliqué with similar motifs.
Nowadays no two skirts are
alike, just shaped the same and the jacket variety is enormous, especially
among the young women. They also
go in more for sparkling decorations on the clothes and turbans, like filigreed
silver, pendants, rings and discs.
It all looks very modern, but is still Hmông style. No other minority women would dress
like that.
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| waterfall near Tà Cù Tỳ |
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| sign of a ritual location |
Besides the Hmông, those in
the Sín Chéng market included some Giấy and Thu Lao women, Vietnamese and six
other foreigners, who like us were pretty much ignored. The Giấy wore ordinary, side-fastened
jackets in pastel colors, over plain black trousers. The Thu Lao, a branch of the Tày, wore a collarless,
long-sleeved jacket over an ankle-length skirt, all black except for colored
bands around the sleeve cuffs.
They also wore a tall black turban with a small white tab protruding
over the right eyebrow.
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| Black Dao ritual dance performers |
The market began closing down
around one p.m., so after lunch we headed back going south through western Bấc
Hà district. The hills were never
too steep for our motorbikes, the scenery excellent, accented by a small
waterfall along the way. We
re-entered Bắc Hà town via the large Hmông village of Bản Phố above it. The road down to town was lined with
cherry trees in full blossom, with occasional fields of plum trees, also
flowering, to the sides. This was
our longest ride of the week, but quite satisfactory.
Market day Thursday was at Bản
Liền, a Tày village to the east, less than an hour’s ride through similar
attractive scenery. Tày hamlets
start appearing after about halfway, characterized by stilted houses with
thatched or tiled roofs standing right among the terraces. Bản Liền’s market day is a very
localized one that starts early.
Other than a handful of Hmông, everyone there was Tày, except us, plus a
Frenchman and his Vietnamese guide.
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| writhing on the floor for the final dance |
Tày women wore knee-length,
side-fastened black coats over black trousers. The only color embellishment was a bright sash belt and a
little trimming on the lapel, cuffs or hems. They carried brightly embroidered shoulder bags, though,
often featuring a triple fan motif.
The one baby we saw, carried by a Tày man, wore an embroidered cap with
coins along the brim. The market
began shutting down around 10:30, a time for four Tày men to call me over to
drink rice liquor with them. I
acquiesced and downed one shot with each of them, explained that was enough
because I had to drive, and they didn’t persist, thanked me, shook my hand and
wished me well.
Our next
destination was Tả Củ Tỷ, a Dao village (pronounced Zao) 30 km north. The
road passed by more Tày hamlets and stilted houses. Then, a few km before Tả Củ Tỷ, the road dipped a little and
passed by a waterfall. Different
from the long thin cataracts of the one we saw the day before, this one was
shorter, swerved around a boulder in its path and plunged into the pool beside
the road. Tả Củ Tỷ was just around
the bend and up the slope, the houses sitting on the ground and not stilted.
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| Dao shaman with scriptures and drum |
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| young Dao women, Tà Cù Tỳ |
Tả Củ Tỷ’s residents are from
the Black Dao sub-group, so named for the dominant color of their
clothing. Both men and women wear
plain black, side-fastened, long-sleeved jackets over black trousers. Women might add a thin band of blue or
red on the jacket lapel, side hems and cuffs and white bands around the
headscarf. Men don a wide black
turban.
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| mountain view in northern Bắc hà district |
In the yard of one of the
first houses we passed stood a pair of crossed poles with streamers hanging
down from various points. This was
a sign of some sort of ritual going on inside. Those standing outside at once waved to us to stop and come
inside. The event was the second
day of the three-day initiation rite for a young man into full adulthood. And by a wonderful coincidence, we were
just in time for the start of the ritual dances. The host asked us each to contribute 20,000 đồng (about $1) to a tray full of money,
presumably for expenses and the food afterwards.
The room was decorated with
flags, banners, paintings and paper cutout streamers, while several men made up
the troupe. Four of them wore long
red robes and two of this group had pictures of Taoist deities affixed to their
turbans. The others wore a mixture
of Dao and modern clothes. Beside
them sat the shaman, reading from a scriptural book and beating a drum.
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| traditional Hmông style in Cán Cấu |
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| modern Hmông fashions in the Cán Cấu market |
The dances were slow in the
beginning, mainly walking in a circle or standing and gesticulating. Then the tempo increased and included hopping
and knee bending. For the finale,
several of the men rolled wildly on the floor. The show lasted about an hour, followed by a big feast and
lots of rice liquor. Before we left,
our hosts invited us to return in the morning for the final rituals, though no
one could tell us what time.
We arrived at 8:00 next
morning, but the main ritual, whatever it was, had finished. All that remained was a shaman inside
the door, reciting prayers while seated beside a round bamboo table full of
ritual paraphernalia. Everywhere
else inside people were loading dishes onto long tables for the big feast and
we were naturally invited to partake.
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| Flowery Hmông in the Cán Cấu market |
The repast was even more
sumptuous than the one the day before, comprising several different
preparations of pork and chicken, some vegetables, soup and lots of rice liquor. Men and women ate at the same tables
and the women, young and old, also indulged in the liquor. Only after our leisurely meal did we
learn Friday was Tả Củ Tỷ’s market day.
But we were too late already.
Like at Bản Liền, it finished early. After a ride to a few scenic spots on the way west to Lùng
Phìn, we turned south, took a longer pause among the cherry blossoms above Bấc
Hà, and returned to our hotel.
Our Saturday program was to
head north to market day in Cán Cấu.
Since this town is on the way to Simacai, we rode across the same
scenery as the other days. So we
decide to take the turnoff above Lùng Phìn to Cán Cấu Lake. The road was cut into a very steep
ridge for about five km to where we could view the lake below, small and
placid, backed by high wooded mountains.
We didn’t feel like hiking
down to the shoreline and then back up again, especially since the morning fog
hadn’t lifted completely. But as
we drove past the viewpoint the road suddenly began descending along a
serpentine route to the valley far below.
After that the road turned east towards Cán Cấu, following a
stream. It was certainly a
beautiful back way in to the town, but too strenuous to return the same way so
we resolved to go back to Bắc Hà via the main road we were familiar with.
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| trying on a new Hmông outfit |
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| little Hmông girl at Cán Cấu |
Cán Cấu lies further along
this stream, a little bigger town than those we’d stopped in so far. The market area lay beyond the town,
with parking areas in front, behind and on one side. The area was bigger than Sín Chéng’s market and, like the latter,
had a livestock market, all buffaloes in this case, on the slope behind the
covered stalls.
The biggest difference between
Cán Cấu and the other places we’d visited was the presence of foreigners. The parking lot at the far end held
several minibuses for foreigners who’d come from Sapa or Lào Cai on their way
to Bắc Hà, where they would spend the night and observe the Sunday morning market
scene. Cán Cấu was supposed to be
their preview and in general the groups only stayed for about an hour.
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| winter cherry blossoms on the road above Bấc Hà |
Actually, it more resembled Bắc
Hà’s market back in 2000. The
tourists did not interact with the Hmông, nor penetrate very far into the
market grounds. The Hmông were
polite and friendly to those who did engage with them or buy something. But except for a handful of Bắc Hà
Hmông, who came with bags of trinkets and followed the groups around, the local
Hmông ignored the foreigners.
Stalls along the road offered
vegetables, spices, herbs, bamboo items and other necessities. Hmông people comprised the sellers and
the buyers. All the women dressed
Hmông style, like at Sín Chéng, where a few wore the traditional bulky long skirt,
while most favored the factory-made pleated and printed skirts. Young women and children donned bright
and flashy outfits accented by lots of silver jewelry and even the smallest
wore silver ornaments and fancy headgear.
The many rows of stalls selling modern Hmông clothing were the busiest
of the day.
Cán Cấu’s market wound down
mid-afternoon, long after the last tourist buses had departed. With so much color and beauty
constantly passing before our eyes, we stayed late to enjoy it all longer. On our ride back to Bắc Hà, the late
afternoon sun bathed the hills with a golden hue and illuminated for us once
more the plum and cherry blossoms on the way. It was a fitting conclusion to four days of fun and
fascination.
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| Dao feast after the rituals atTảCủ Tỷ |
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Delta Tours Vietnam offers excursions to mountain destinations like Bắc Hà, See https://www.deltatoursvietnam.com/other-tour-options
