My Hmong Batik teacher Ly at ETHOS
My Red Dao embroidery teacher May Lai
My journey continues so fast, I already left Sapa in North Vietnam, so I will write on my experiences there.
I did make a instagrampost on the 8th IASSRT Symposium, Textiles Trails: Legacies of the Silk Roads in Southeast Asia & 9th ASEAN Traditional Textile Symposium. There will be full length papers published about the talks, mine included, so will update on that when it is ready.
After Luang Prabang, it is very interesting and confronting to visit another place that will be (and is) changed by mass tourism & climate change. As in Luang Prabang, with Sapa it is the question what will be first.
For both the trains together with social media have been putting these places on the map as a must visit paradise. While the train to Sapa is a slow one, the little city is basically only hotels. It looks a bit like a ski resort with the mountains surrounding it.
This place has been a get-away for over a century. During the French colonial times it was used as a health resort for their soldiers. Read more here ‘The history of Sapa’ . The first hotel opened in 1909. So like many of the processes and events happing in our world, the seeds were all planted in colonial times.*
View from the bus on the way to Sa Pa City
View nearby ETHOS
Sapa broke my heart to be honest and my body wasn’t feeling good either. A combinations of many things, starting with how the craftswomen are treated here. I was very lucky I was tipped to check out ETHOS for my program here. Among the many many many tours, trekking & workshops offered in Sapa, they are the ones that truly work with and for the communities.
On my first day, on Thursday 14 November, arriving by night train early in the morning, I tried to figure out how this town worked. It is filled with hotels, which are all called guesthouse, but are just basic hotels, and many restaurants. I visit the Sapa Museum in the center, which has downstairs a large store and upstairs exhibition. It is informative, but you don’t really get an idea about the actual history of this place.
On the steps toward the museum are women in traditional wear selling products; bags, wallets and other small items decorated in their patterns. Trying the find a pharmacy to buy tape for my ankle, I got helped by two of these street sellers. Yes pushy, but since I was still trying to figure out if these sellers were the actual makers or not, I went along with it.
One who had her arm locked in mine explained she was a guide, weaver, gave batik lessons and more. I was like sure, sure, but she pulled out her smartphone to proof it. Right there on her instagram it was, all the things she told me.
So how come if she has all these skills, speaks English very well, she is pushing souvenirs on the street? Bought the tape and headed to the two women ready for me to buy. Paid too much for a hairband, but didn’t really mind, one side is embroidery, one side with (handstamped) batik. “It took me a long time to make”, and honestly I believed her. Ask if I could have a selfie with her, meet Thao, one of the sellers with many other skills in Sapa.
Meet Thao
Briefing at ETHOS by Hoa for the people trekking that day & me
Next morning my day started with a briefing at ETHOS by Hoa, one of the founders.
What she shared helped connecting so many dots.
She explained about the sellers, and how to town excludes these communities from actually working within the tourist industry. Most places and tours are run by outsiders. The sellers re-use their own clothing to make souvenirs. They make new clothing yearly and simple cut the old ones up. The items are hours & hours of handwork, from the thread to the final product.
But the town wants to get rid of them, putting signs not to buy from them, even making plans to forbid it. It creates such an imbalance. The reason why tourists came to Sapa are these communities, their beautiful surroundings, way of life and beautiful crafts. But there is no actual space for them within the greed of consumption.
“We travel but we don’t have to be ignorant” Hoa said to us. “What is happening has a massive impact on local people.”
Apart from the injustice within the tourist industry there also the dark reality of human trafficking. Girls are being sold, a cruel reality of poverty. Similar explanations I heard in Laos. With project and education, organizations like ETHOS work on protecting girls and by actually offering an alternative income with tourism & selling handmade products it can prevent girls from having the same future.
Choosing how you travel, how you holiday matters! Think before you go, educate yourself and spend your money wisely! It is not difficult. Just go beyond the “what to do | what to see”-lists. You can spend your money only once, make sure it actually goes to the communities you visit & benefits the regions you explore.
Ly showing me how hemp is turned into thread
Melting the wax, beewax & indigo
After the insightful briefing, I went upstairs for my batik lesson. My teacher for the day was Ly, a 24 year old Hmong woman who has been making batik from the age of 9. Making hemp thread, weaving and embroidery she learned even younger. She started guiding tourists at the age of 15 and worked for ETHOS 8 years now.
She is married and has two daughters. As you could imagine I felt very far removed from her reality, but I was happy to learn from this skilled maker.
The tool for drawing the wax is a little bit different from the one I tried in Luang Prabang in Laos, but works the same.
The wax is melted in a small pot on coals that are in a big pot on top of sand. The wax is a mixture of beewax and wax mixed with Indigo, which I believe is the wax that is re-used after boiling it out from the cloth.
Ly first showed me the process of getting threads from hemp. It is impressive how many skills these makers have. All steps, from growing the plants to eventually weaving the cloth to dyeing, decorating & making it into clothing. Months of work, and something less and less people do fully. Either finished cloths are bought from other communities, or replaced by cheaper imitations. The batik making is the least being practiced. Machine printed from abroad or stamped by other communities replace the handdrawn ones in their traditional wear. If batik is being made, it is mostly to sell. The long length cloth that use to be put in the circle skirts are now used to basically make table cloths.
Marking the design onto the hemp
I draw my batik, but I lacked patience according to Ly. Something that was said again when I tried embroidery. It is not so much my patient, more a nice way of saying I am not doing it good. But instate of saying when you are doing it right or wrong, you just get told you were more patient at the end.
The motifs were much smaller than what I tried in Luang Prabang and I had a hard time keeping my wax hot enough to draw a line and thick enough so it will later still be visible.
Making some lines thicker
I made again what I thought were pumpkin seeds in Laos, but are here mountains. A border of pumpkin seeds in Sapa are what I learn as cucumber seeds.
In the center I put in the small squares ferns, elephant feed and big chicken eyes. Ly thought my spirals were really good, so at least something got better after trying 3 times!
Cloths dyed with Indigo
Cloths dyes with Indigo hanging to dry
On Saturday I was suppose to go trekking. The main attraction if you google Sapa it seems like. Although I would not consider myself a trekker, it seemed like the only way of hanging out with makers. I found out later this was not really the case.
My guide May Lai and embroidery teacher met me at my hotel from where we took a taxi a little outside of “Sapa city”. From there we basically walked up. It was steep and very hot, and I had a hard time. I wasn’t feeling that great already for some days. All the traveling and especially flying messes with my health.
On the way up we came across dark black dyes long pieces of cloth hanging to dry. Since it is the dry season, finally, everyone is dyeing their textiles for their new outfits.
I was pretty excited, but started to feel worse and worse. On a very dusty bit of the walk up, I got sick. Within no-time May Lai called Hoa and within half hour I was picked up by the whole ETHOS family.
I fel embarrassed and weak, but mostly sad missing out.
My guide & embroidery teacher May Lai
Luckily with some rest and plenty of water, I felt much better. In the evening I got an message that if I felt up for it, I could still go for the Red Dao embroidery workshop. Only a little walk was needed.
On my very short hike I noticed that the only other walkers were two tourists and a guide returning from their stay in the village. Everyone else came by on motorbikes.
So to my surprise & delight, a taxi was waiting for me on Sunday morning. After a drive of about 45 minutes, through pretty bad & steep roads I must say, but amazing views, I saw May Lai. “You are brave for welcoming me again” I said to her. She laughed and said “I hope you feel better”. We walked to her house, her daughter run ahead of us, came down again and up. Reaching May Lai mother’s house, a woman outside yelled something, May Lai translated: “My mother says you look stronger today”. All I was wondering, did she see me yesterday? And at the same time feeling indeed stronger.
May Lai daughter practicing some stitches with us
May Lai home is looking over rice fields, a big school and mountains in the distance. What a view, from her porch/workshops space. Waterbuffelo’s were eating the left over rice, bigs were grunting happily in the plants around the house.
With no time to waste, we started with the embroidery, or well May Lai did.
Where the Hmong use Indigo dyed hemp, batik and embroidery, the Red Dao or Yao use cotton that is dyed with Indigo and a root to get it black and embroidery to decorate it. The red in their name comes from the red headscarf the women wear.
The embroidery of the Dao is tiny and the patterns are closely related to village life. The cloth worn at the back of their outfit, wrapped over pants, represents a rice field, usually the center pattern represent family and between the rice flowers, babies are added.
May Lai own work
May Lai let me choose a piece of textile. She asked do you want big or small, I only realize now, she meant the way it was woven. So I picked one that was closely woven although not so fine as the cloth they work on themselves.
“Let’s make the bird, that looks fun.”
May Lai instructions went as follows: “Three down, two up, one down, no one down, two up, too flat, you make too flat, more up”. I had the first half hour no idea what she was saying to me, since I don’t speak embroidery. I thought she must think I am such an idiot. Finally I understood it was the thread count, working from the back, so the image on the good side is nice and even. Getting one thread kept being a bit impossible, but we got there in the end. In 2,5 hours we got a bird that was basically made 2 times by me and 3 times by May Lai. I felt all kinds of ways, but I also thought, just be a good student.
May Lai started cooking and told me to relax. Enjoying the view, I soon was called inside. A lovely meal with my new favorite dish, tofu in tomato sauce.
After lunch, I checked her items for sell. All kinds of small things, like bags for waterbottles, but also the complete outfits. Tried several jackets and went for a (male) one with little bells on the front border, embroidery around the sleeves and an embroidered patch on the back. May Lai said her mother made it. Looking forward wearing it.
All her items are made from old cloths. A full outfit takes about 2 years to make and is worn about 5 years. Every part of it is being reused pretty cleverly in items to sell. She explained they learned themselves to make. In the past the clothing would be sold, but now they make it specifically in things tourists might buy.
After the break, May Lai asked me if I wanted to make a baby. On a, this time more, big woven cloth, we started again. But this time, the three down, one up, three down, made sense. Still my needle was never where it needed to be, but we could laugh a little more.
I asked how her other guests normally did. Turns out nobody gets far. Two figured on a day is the average, which May Lai finds amusing. She showed the piece she was working on for several months. Working in bright yellow, green, orange together with black and blue, her stitches are super tiny and precise. She told me her mother would say the same: “two down, one up, five down” when she started learning and she totally didn’t understand it.
Her mother joined us at the porch to make a breaded thread, also used in their clothing. One of the kids had to tention the threads by putting a chopstick with the threads on it in the loops of his pants.
May Lai made for me a little tree and showed me one more decoration border. Somehow I manage to do it by myself!
On Monday I headed to ETHOS to pick up my batik and gather my thoughts before traveling back to Hanoi. The batik was dyed with Indigo several times and wax was boiled out. The lines didn’t come out clear, which I think fitting for this part of my journey.
The experience in Sapa was a lot and my romantic idea of connecting with new makers seemed not really realized. It was an introduction to this area. The guides are really welcoming you in their life & world. It might not be personal, but it is real enough. We are just tourists passing through. It reminded me of my first journey to Batik on Java. And how now I have this amazing Batik family there. Who knows how it will grow in this part of the world.
*want to know more on why the world is in the shape it is, I can highly recommend reading ‘The Nutmeg curse’ by Amitabh Ghosh
