Crossing the Climate Boundary: from Huế to Đà Nãng

                                    by Jim Goodman

looking north from the Hải Vân Pass

       South of Nghệ An Province, the land of Vietnam narrows to a thin coastal plain with mountains rising immediately to the west.  A little north of Đà Nẵng the Bạch Mã Range of these mountains swerves across the valley to the sea, ending in a shoreline hill.  On top of this hill is the Hải Vân Pass and until recently all north-south traffic, on foot or in vehicles, had to pass this way, so from posts on the pass all approaches were easily visible in advance.  Governments in the past, from ancient times down to the 20^th century, established fortresses here.

An Cư Lagoon

        Besides physically separating the country’s north and south, the intersection of the Bạch Mã Range with the East Sea also affects Vietnam’s climate.  The range blocks the cold winds and rainclouds coming down from the north.  Even in typhoon season the storms pummel the provinces north of the pass—Thừa Thiên Hué to Hà Tĩnh—more than Đà Nẵng or Quảng Nam.  Leaving Huế on a cloudy, misty day, after crossing the pass it may be only partly cloudy in Đà Nẵng, with plenty of sunshine in between.  

       In ancient times the Hải Vân Pass was also a political and cultural boundary between the Vietnamese in the north and the Chăm to the south.  Even while the north was under Chinese administration the two sides battled for control of the area north of the pass.  After Vietnam won back its independence in 938 the struggle continued.  By the end of the 15^th century the Vietnamese had vanquished the nearest Chăm kingdoms and extended its borders to just north of Nha Tang.

fishing huts and nets on the An Cư Lagoon

       Vietnamese immigration south of the Hài Vân Pass, however, did not begin in earnest until the 16^th century, when a protracted civil war ravaged so much of the Red River Delta that in many places life was no longer tenable.  With Vietnamese settled on both sides, the pass lost its symbolic and military significance until the colonial period.  The French built a railway line that skirted around the base of the hill and a road that ran over it.  Once the Vietnamese insurrection began, the French installed lookout posts and machine gun nests on the pass.  These were later used again during the American War, though they failed to stop the North Vietnamese Army from swarming over Hài Vân in the spring offensive in 1975 that would soon capture Saigon and conclude the war.

boats on the beach at Lăng Cô

       Years later, when tourists began traveling around Vietnam, the Hải Vân Pass was on the route between the popular destinations of Huế and Đà Nẵng.  From Huế the road ran southeast across the plain and then alongside the large Cầu Hai Lagoon on its left, with the Bạch Mã Mountain Range suddenly rising on its right.  A portion of this area, 22.000 hectares of evergreen rain forest, has been reserved as a national park.  Over 1150 species of plants have been discovered so far, 330 of birds and over 90 different mammals, including a few previously unknown species discovered in the 1990s.

bringing in a boat at Lăng Cô

       After passing Cầu Hai Lagoon, the road ascends slightly over low hills and then runs back down to the plain to the picturesque An Cư Lagoon on the western side of the road opposite seaside Lăng Cô village.  The mountains rise steeply on the other side and the railway line runs along the base of these mountains, on the opposite side of the lagoon from the road.  As this was roughly halfway between Huế and Hội An, tour buses always make a half-hour stop here for refreshments or a simple meal, which allows for a quick look at the lagoon scenery.

eyes on the prow of a Lăng Cô boat

       On my first journey on this route in the winter of 2005, after the Lăng Cô stopover, the bus climbed up the hill over the pass and immediately descended towards Đà Nẵng without even a momentary pause for passengers to take in the view.  Several months later, making the trip again and noticing at the Lăng Cô stop nearly all the travelers had cameras, I decided to enlist the support of some of them when we started climbing the hill to join me in demanding the bus make a ten-minute stop at Hải Vân Pass.  But my plan was foiled when we didn’t go up over the pass after all, but instead through a new tunnel at the base of the hill that had just opened since my last trip.

       The only way for me to get another, and more leisurely, look at the pass was to return to Lăng Cô and hire a motorbike.  The village certainly looked inviting, so it would be a pleasant excursion anyway.  Weather spoiled my first attempt, though, for low, dark clouds hung over the area, obscuring the pass and most of the mountains behind the lagoon.  It was a day to remind me of the meaning of Hải Vân—Sea of Clouds.  But it didn’t rain, giving me the opportunity to explore Lăng Cô on foot.

Lăng Cô village and beach

       The village lies on a long finger of land next to An Cư Lagoon, with sandy beaches just on the other side of the road.  The most densely settled part is at the south end, where the lagoon enters the sea.  The beach resorts and other hotels and restaurants are further up.  The ocean water is relatively clean, the waves usually moderate and, closer to the main village residential area, the beach is lined with small fishing boats.  Like other boats in Central Vietnam, the prows feature a pair of painted eyes.

lagoon waters as they enter the sea

       Few people stayed in the beach resorts, a couple of which included tennis courts and a swimming pool, not even when I returned a few months later and enjoyed excellent weather.  Perhaps it’s because people from Đà Nẵng, the nearest potential visitors, have plenty of beaches around their own city.  And while Lăng Cô restaurants do offer tasty fresh seafood dishes, that’s true in Đà Nẵng and all along the entire coast of Vietnam.

       The lagoon makes Lăng Cô a different kind of beach resort.  Only a short walk from the main road, the near shoreline has a paved road running beside it, while the railway line on the other side runs right along the base of the mountains’ steep cliffs.  The water is shallow, not more than waist-deep far out from the shoreline.  Small pirogues and basket boats, when not out on the lagoon, sit parked next to the land.  Stilted fishing huts stand out in the water not far from the shore, as well as some large fishing nets attached to poles and hanging just above the water surface. 

catching oysters in An Cư Lagoon

       Besides the lagoon and the Hải Vân Pass, the other attraction in the vicinity is Elephant Spring, in the lap of the Bạch Mã Mountains about ten km north of Lăng Cô and three km off the highway to the west.  A hot spring next to what used to be a thick forest, by the time I visited it, and that was over a decade ago, it was a failed and abandoned resort.  A disused, dilapidated guesthouse, its cottages in serious need of roof repair, stood on a clearing near the spring.  Boulders that roughly resembled elephants had been painted to accentuate those features.  Statues of deer and tiger peeped through the bushes around the spring, as well as one of, oddly enough, a giraffe.

the abandoned park at Elephant Spring

       As for the pass, sunny skies prevailed throughout my second stay in Lăng Cô and I could hire a motorbike to make the excursion.  The pass is not very high up, less than 500 meters above the sea, and the road winds along the slope facing the sea.  No roadside trees block the good views of Lăng Cô and its beaches to the north and the coastline south towards Đà Nẵng.  About halfway up, a waterfall spills through a forested slope and when its creek comes near the road, it flows over a stretch of wide, smooth, nearly flat boulders.

machine gun nest at Hải Vân Pass

       Besides the magnificent view, the Hải Vân Pass also features relics of its past military significance.  A couple of red brick watchtowers stand on the slope just above the road.  An empty machine gun nest sits on a spot overlooking the route up the hill from Lăng Cô.  A few concrete bunkers lie in the area, one of them converted to a small cave temple, with refreshments stands and souvenir stalls set up in front of the entrance.  

       After crossing the pass, it’s another 25 km or so to Đà Nẵng, Vietnam’s fourth largest city and the northern limit of the country’s tropical zone.  City suburbs begin along the shore of the Bay of Đà Nẳng, while the main port and commercial area lie further east and up to the coast.  On the eastern side of the bay the large hilly Sơn Trà Peninsula stretches out north of the business district.  Also called Monkey Mountain after the primates living there, it is mostly an off-limits military zone, but does provide a nice backdrop to views from beaches.

wartime watchtower at Hải Vân Pass

       Known as Tourane in the French colonial period, it rose in importance from the beginning of the 19^th century, replacing Hội An, where river silt had accumulated to the point commercial ships could no longer reach the port.  Đà Nẵng is now a thoroughly modern city, but a fairly relaxed one.  Traffic runs smoothly even in rush hour.  With no old town extant, the only buildings identified as tourist attractions are a couple of Buddhist temples, the French-built cathedral, a Cao Đài temple and the well-stocked, fascinating Chăm Museum.  For some travelers, this museum is the only reason to stop in Đà Nẵng, especially since it’s a short trip from Hội An.

       The city’s other main physical (and cultural) attraction is the group of five small hills, called Marble Mountains, just beyond its southern suburbs.  Non Nước, the village next to the largest hill, has long been a craft village specializing in marble sculptures.  Tour buses from Huế en route to Hội An often make a stop here, where teenaged girls immediately importune the passengers to purchase anything from a small carving that can be held in the hand to a heavy, life-sized statue of a lion or religious deity.  Marble deposits in the hills were played out long ago and now Non Nước imports its raw materials from Thanh Hoá.  The skill survives, though, and the business is still thriving.

boats in Đà Nẵng

       Each of the hills is named after one of the five essential elements.  The largest, nearest the beach, Water Mountain ̣(Thủy Sơn), contains several cave shrines that have drawn religious pilgrims since the time of the Chăm kingdoms.  Originally Hindu, the shrines now honor the Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian deities popular with the Vietnamese, who added statues of gods and guardians, built temples and erected pagodas on the hill.

       Guides are available to the sights, but visitors can simply follow the pathways that wind around and up the hill to the temples, pavilions and pagodas and branch off into the caves.  One leads to a complex of several caverns, connected by two tunnels, with old Chăm stone carvings and more recently installed concrete Buddhas.  The most interesting is Huyên Không Cave, with a very high interior and a small opening to the sky at the top.  When the sun is overhead a shaft of light pours through this hole and strikes one of the altars.  During the American War the cave was a Viet Cong field hospital and the base of a Women’s Artillery Division famous for shooting down nineteen American warplanes. 

Huyên Không Cave

Buddha statue on Water Mountain

       The seacoast next to the Marble Mountains is lined with beaches, but around Non Nước and for several km towards Hội An walls belonging to a succession of resort hotels block public access.  The beaches closer to Hội An, a more popular tourist destination than Đà Nẵng, are usually quite congested.  But Đà Nẵng residents and visitors have a few prime beach alternatives right next to the city. 

one of the Marble Mountains near Đà Nẵng

       A long beach runs along the shore of the Bay of Đả Nẵng, frequented by suburbanites in the late afternoon.  On the eastern shore of the East Sea (a.k.a. South China Sea) the beaches offer a more scenic view of Monkey Mountain, but the waters are only calm enough for swimming in the summer months and a bit rough other times.   From mid-September through December, however, they are quite suitable for surfing.

       The northern beach just below the peninsula is called Mỹ Khê, while further down it is known as China Beach.  American Marines landed here in March 1965 in the first major commitment of U. S. troops to South Vietnam.  China Beach later became a popular R&R spot for U. S. soldiers, flown in by helicopter.  Nowadays, over five decades since the war’s end, with comfortable hotels and fine restaurants, for both Đà Nẵng residents and passing travelers, China Beach is once again serving its former purpose--rest and recreation.

China Beach and Monkey Mountain, Đà Nẵng

                                                                                * * *    

Delta Tours Vietnam’s cultural-historical journey through the country passes over this route. See http://www.deltatoursvietnam.com

Some Surviving, Some Thriving--Craft Villages in Vietnam

                                                                     by Jim Goodman

       

carving wooden panels in Xuyên Thái

       From the time the Vietnamese first cleared lands to make farms in the Red River Delta, the basic aim of any village was agricultural self-sufficiency.  Along with animal husbandry and trapping and fishing in one of the ubiquitous streams and ponds, such a lifestyle provided everyone with enough food.   But after the Lý Dynasty moved its capital to what is now Hanoi in 1010, over the next few centuries some villages began supplementing their farming income, or even replacing it, by specializing in craft production.  Some produced select items for the royal Court and the temples, but many more of them supplied a whole range of products for domestic use everywhere.

       In some cases a particular villager went to China, learned a craft and returned to teach it to his fellow villagers.  Often this person has been deified as the village tutelary deity, or guardian spirit, with a festival staged in his honor every year.  But in many places no one knows how the craft originated, just that it began with an anonymous innovator, imitated by more and more of his neighbors until eventually the entire village became employed in it.

making furniture in Đồng Kỵ

       Over time some villages abandoned their craft specialties while others took up new ones.  The heartland of Vietnamese culture and history—the Red River Delta—is home to over 800 of these craft villages.  A quarter of them date their tradition back several hundred years.  Then in the Lê Dynasty, when Vietnamese began migrating southward, they took the craft village tradition with them.   Another 650 craft villages exist in the rest of the country.

       The concept of craft villages originated with the Lý Court’s requirements for building and furnishing its palaces, shrines and royal compound.  Certain villages produced the building components, furnishings, bedding, clothing and ornaments, etc., and were exempt from ordinary taxes.  Specialized villages also produced the state’s arms and the paper for its official documents.

       Inevitably, the craft village idea spread beyond those that had made some arrangement with the Court.  For items of bronze and wood, silk and ceramics, there were other customers besides the Royal Court.  Temples and village communal houses needed bells, candlesticks, sculptures, incense burners, carved altars and furniture.  Eventually these villages found customers among the wealthy upper class, especially for furniture, silk or something to embellish the family shrine.

building a boat in Kim Bồng

       This still holds true today, as increasing prosperity has enabled many Vietnamese to improve their material life by indulging in things like elegant furniture.  Craft villages devoted to wood products, from statues to carved cabinets with lavish mother-of-pearl inlaid decorations, are flourishing   The streets of the ancient village of Đồng Kỵ in Bắc Ninh province are lined with sawmills and furniture workshops, supplying the steady demands of households throughout metropolitan Hanoi.  Kim Bồng, in Quảng Nam, whose ancestors built and furnished the elegant homes that make Hội An a tourist attraction and who furnished the palaces of the Nguyễn Citadel in Huế, is still an active woodcrafts producer both for the region and an international market.  The village has also expanded its work to household implements, sculptures and building boats.

young lacquer worker in Xuyên Thái

       The religious revival of recent decades has boosted the business of craft villages catering to temples.  Sơn Đồng village, in Hoài Đức district, west of Hanoi, has for centuries been the major supplier of wooden statues, ceremonial weapons and the sedan chairs and palanquins used in processions.  Đoi Tam, near Phủ Lý south of Hanoi, makes drums for temples all over Vietnam.  Xuyên Thái, in Thương Tín district south of Hanoi, specializes in altars, decorative panels and other furnishings.  All the items are meticulously lacquered, the original specialty of the village and even today it still gets orders to do the lacquered coating for products made by other villages.

       Xuyên Thái artisans apply at least ten coats of lacquer to protect the wood and give it a deep glossy sheen.  They also add gold or silver leaf to highlights of low-relief sculptures, Chinese characters on plaques and signboards, the heads and hands of large statues and even the entire surface of smaller ones.  The production of this gold and silver foil, however, was the work of another craft village, Kiêu Kỵ, across the river from Hanoi, which has been doing it since the Lý Dynasty.  The technique hasn’t changed.  The women prepare small black squares of rough paper or cellophane, then insert thin square wafers of gold, somewhat smaller, in between the black squares.  A man in the adjacent workshop slowly, methodically pounds these out until the ultra-thin gold wafer has been flattened to the same size as the black squares, about 3 cm per side.

preparing gold foil in Kiêy Kỵ

       The expense of gold or silver embellishments on furnishings restricts its customer base to basically temples and communal houses undergoing renovation. The average Vietnamese household will likely eschew such embellishments.  But mother-of-pearl inlay, made from the iridescent insides of mussel shells, is quite affordable.  It’s almost always part of wooden furnishings, as well as tea sets, jewelry boxes, vases, musical instruments and even chopsticks.  Designs range from flowers and vines at the corners of cabinets to large vignettes of rural life splashed across doors and bed panels.  Furniture-making villages know this craft, but the village with the most venerable reputation, dating to the 11^th century in the Lý Dynasty, is Chuông Ngô in Chuyên Mỹ district west of Hanoi.  It’s not an easy craft, as it involves sitting bent over for long hours while polishing the shells and then carefully laying the pieces into the desired design.  

bronze worker in Hanoi

      Temples also required the work of stone carvers and masons.  They produced the gates, the guardian lions and other animal sculptures, the wells, the statues and the carved pedestals the pillars stood upon.  Ninh Vân village in Ninh Bình province still specializes in stone products, though more secular-oriented nowadays.  Ninh Vân masons built the famous Phát Diêm Cathedral complex in Kim Sơn village, in southeast Ninh Bình.

       Marble ware is the specialty at Non Nước, just south of Đà Nẵng.  The village lies at the base of one of the Five Marble Mountains, the original source of its raw material though nowadays Non Nước imports its marble.  The skills are still intact, though, and the village produces a huge variety of statues of all kinds and themes for the international market.  Further south, Hội An, a preserved old town that had its heyday in the 16^th—18^th centuries, seems to have partially adopted the role of a craft village.  Catering to the unceasing flow of tourists, a significant number of local residents started getting into the clothing business, mainly ready-to-wear garments, often of inexpensive silk.  The town and its approaching streets are full of these clothing shops.

marble work in Non Nước

       After its demise as a port, though, Hội An did develop a local craft—silk lanterns.  Several resident families still practice this trade in old town shop houses in full view of passers-by.  A good portion of Hội An houses feature mounted or suspended lanterns.  They are distributed throughout the region.  And in recent years the local government has publicized this aspect of Hội An culture by requiring that on the 14^th night of every lunar month, the night before full moon, only lanterns may be used to illuminate old town streets and building interiors.  Visitors and residents also float little lamps in the river. 

       Originally the silk for Hội An’s lanterns came from Thi Lai village, up the Thu Bồn River in Duy Xuyên district.  The village has been working in a partnership with Đông Yên village since the establishment of the craft by immigrant weavers from the North in the 15^th century.  Đông Yên raises the silkworms and produces the cocoons.  Thi Lai does the spinning and weaving.

making lanterns in Hội An

Hội An silk lanterns

       Silk has a much longer history in the North.  According to legend, a Hùng princess introduced the whole complex process—mulberry tree cultivation, care of the worms, extraction of thread and weaving of cloth—to a Red River Delta village 3000 years ago.  From there it spread and several villages adopted the trade.  The most famous is Vạn Phúc, near Hà Đông, just southwest of Hanoi.  The wife of a Tang Dynasty official set up the village here because of its lovely riverside setting.

       It's still an active production center, supplying shops in Hanoi and throughout the North.  You can hear the sound of looms as you walk down any of its lanes.  Hanoi residents like to come to Vạn Phúc to shop if they want something special, rather than check the shops in the city.  The prices will be lower, the atmosphere pleasant and the selections greater.  As silk is still the preferred material for special clothing among Vietnamese, Vạn Phúc’s future as a viable craft village looks pretty secure.

transporting craft products in the countryside 

       So does that of Chuông, south of Hanoi, which makes the conical cap that is the favorite headgear of rural Vietnamese, a preference not likely to change for some time. Villages specializing in a particular food item, like the green sticky rice (cốm) of Vọng, or supplying flowers, fresh or embroidered, are likely to retain their customer bases.  The fate of other craft villages is less certain.  Even those relatively successful now, like those producing furniture, are facing a raw material shortage.  The wood now comes from Laos, rather than Vietnam.  For some Vietnamese wooden furniture has become too expensive and so villages that specialize in bamboo and rattan work, making furniture, strong baskets and cases, household implements and so on, have attracted more interest and customers, reviving their trades.

Bát Tràng ceramics village

       Industrialization also threatens the future of some craft villages.  Plastic sieves, for example, are easier to produce, and cheaper to buy, than sieves made from split bamboo.  Another problem might be simply a change in taste.  People might prefer plastic sieves because they come in several colors and are easier to clean.   Or take the case of the sleeping mats, of sedge, jute or rush plant, that every traditional household had.  Nga Sơn in Thanh Hóa and Cẩm Nê near Đà Nẵng have been famous for their sedge mats, thick and soft, cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  Kim Sơn in Ninh Bình produces mats from the rush plant peculiar to the area.  If future generations decide to sleep on raised beds, they won’t need these mats and these villages may have to revert to farming.

18th c. Bát Tràng vase, Hanoi History Museum

       That probably won’t happen to the most famous craft village in the country—Bát Tràng, the ceramics village on the east bank of the Red River, 15 km downstream from Hanoi.  It lies in an area rich in deposits of high quality clay, kaolin and natural oxides.  In the past boats took the village products—bricks, tiles, earthenware and glazed ceramics—up to the capital for local consumption and to Phố Hiến for export.  Its artisans achieved a high standard many centuries ago, mastering the application of different colored glazes and developing a new technique of crackled glaze.   Bát Tràng skills peaked in the 18^th century and exquisite ceramics found their way to ports all over East Asia and eventually to museums in the region and in Europe.

       Virtually every family in Bát Tràng is involved in the ceramics business and practically all the houses have at least one kiln.  Products of all kinds, shapes and sizes stand outside many homes.  Tourists can pass by an active workshop on any lane they wander down and later marvel at the incredible variety of items on display at the central market.  They can learn how to make small pieces themselves.  And their purchases and a major factor in Bát Tràng’s continuing success.

Bát Tràng workshop

       Elsewhere in the Delta production in ceramics villages, like Hương Canh and Phú Lãng, north of Hanoi, has declined.  The number of families employed in the trade has dropped from all of then to just several in each.  They make household pottery for the most part, which suffers from competition with more durable modern alternatives.  Thanh Hà, however, a Lê Dynasty ceramics village near Hội An, has, like Bát Tràng, benefitted by marketing new products to the tourist crowds. 

       Thus, many craft villages have survived because of their success in attracting non-Vietnamese customers.  But domestic demand for everything, including traditional craft products, has also increased thanks to ever-increasing incomes among the population.  Workers in these crafts are earning enough to keep them from looking for a different line of work. The innate conservatism of crafts workers is also a factor.  So long as what they already know garners a sufficient return they prefer to remain in that line and train their children to keep it up.  That attitude, combined with the importance of craft village production to the economy, as well as the beauty of the craft items themselves, augurs a good future for this Vietnamese tradition.

Thanh Hà's children learn basic pottery skills at an early age.

                                                                                * * *
                     Craft villages are on the itinerary of my cultural/historical tour of Vietnam.  
                                        See the website http://deltatoursvietnam.com