I love the way the river is woven into everyday life in Can Tho. It also has some of the greenest landscapes. The people in...
Sung Hamlet or Sung Village - one of the most famous destinations in Da Bac - possesses the rustic and pristine beauty of the natural landscape, along with many intact customs and traditions of the Dao Tien people such as brocade weaving. It is also the reason that this place is visited by many tourists.
For the Dao Tien women of the Sung hamlet, Cao Son commune (Da Bac), in addition to the farm work, they are also very good at embroidering patterns and motifs on fabric to make costumes. Initially, the women of Sung Hamlet wove brocade just for self-sufficiency and sewed and embroidered clothes for daily wear.
Lately, when community tourism in Sung Hamlet developed, traditional brocade weaving became a cultural feature of the Dao Tien people here.
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The Indigo Dyeing Profession
To complete a costume, Dao Tien women have to go through many elaborate steps, sometimes taking up to a month. In their free time, they often dye indigo, draw with beeswax, embroider, and sew clothes for family members.
The fabric is dyed with indigo. This job is quite complicated with many stages. First, indigo trees are grown on the fields and harvested in the 5th, 6th, and 7th months of the lunar calendar. People then cut the indigo plant and soak it in water, remove the residue, and continue to add lime to dissolve it.
Through the sedimentation process, the indigo essence will be obtained. When used, they will take filtered ash water and mix it with indigo essence to get indigo water to dye the fabric. The fabric is soaked in indigo water for about 20 minutes, then taken out, squeezed, and dried in the sun. This step is repeated many times until the desired color is obtained, which usually takes 20 - 30 days to achieve a beautiful colored fabric.
The Beeswax Painting - What Makes The Difference
The unique feature of the Dao Tien costumes is the decorative patterns on the fabric printed with beeswax, which are incredibly sophisticated. Usually, the beeswax printing process must take place before the indigo dyeing process. To get good beeswax, people often use beeswax from wild bees and giant honey bees.
In the summer and fall, people go to the forest to collect beeswax and heat it to filter the wax. When drawing, beeswax is put into a small bowl or plate placed on a charcoal stove. When printing, the Dao Tien people use a printing tool (a thinly sharpened bamboo bent into a small frame, small round bamboo tubes), dip it in the beeswax and print the patterns on fabric. Dao Tien Beeswax Painting requires professional-level skillfulness to each stroke so that the printed lines are even and beautiful without being bent or skewed.
Embroidery Tradition In Sung Village
According to ancient customs, before marriage, Dao Tien girls must know how to embroider and sew their wedding dresses. From a very young age, the children are given traditional costumes and when they reach 10, their mothers and grandmothers teach them how to embroider. To this day, Sung Hamlet still maintains that tradition and girls up to the age of 10 have begun to know how to execute their traditional work properly. After being completely dyed and embroidered, the fabric can be used to make costumes, interior decorations, lovely bags, etc.
In addition to making traditional costumes or scarves like before, Dao Tien women in Sung Hamlet have learned and created new products such as fashion bags, iPad cases, laptop cases, cosmetic wallets, scarves, headbands, floor mats, pillowcases, tablecloths, etc. These handcrafted products still preserve the unique features coming from handmade production techniques and brocade characteristics, from materials available from nature, and from decorative motifs that are imbued with the cultural story of the Dao Tien people.
Currently, Sung Hamlet has become one of the most attractive community tourism villages for tourists along with Da Bia Village. The embroidery and brocade painting profession of the Dao Tien people here is not simply to make costumes and products to serve daily needs, but also to make souvenir products. In particular, visitors can directly participate in the stages of indigo dyeing, beeswax painting, embroidery,... and bring them back as souvenirs. Thereby, it not only creates more income for local people but also contributes to preserving and introducing the unique culture of the Dao Tien ethnic group.
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