We recently sold one of our XL (64 x 96 inches) Hmong History Storycloths to the Queensland Art Gallery for $1400 and after they received the storycloth we received the following email below. Receiving emails like this make it all worthwhile for Bai and I. You can see similar storycloths we still have available here. The photo you see above is a storycloth almost exactly like the one we sold which includes Wat Tham Krabok in the lower left-hand corner, the informal refugee camp in Thailand that closed in 2004, but not before over 14,000 Hmong were given refugee status and came to the US.
Dear Peter and Bai: I am writing to thank you for your assistance with securing the wonderful Hmong History storycloth for our contemporary textile collection here at the Queensland Art Gallery. I have been impressed with your passion for Laos textiles and the high level of professional service you provide to your online customers. Laos Essential Artistry provides important opportunities for Laos textile artists to market their works to international collectors, museums and galleries via an easy to navigate website. Your obvious commitment to the artists ensures that all works are well documented with an established provenance essential to institutional collections. I have appreciated you prompt attention to all of my enquiries and willingness to undertake additional research where required. Thank you again.
When we were in Laos in January we discovered a pb book authored and illustrated by a Japanese man about the entire process of how a traditional Hmong skirt is made. Every handmade Hmong skirt is a true work of art, like the one featured in our photo above. The process to make a Hmong skirt in long and complex and one that traditionally many Hmong girls and women would master, for wearing their own handmade skirt was a demonstration of their skill and expertise in the art of paj ntaub. Many people don't know that the skirts are traditionally made from hemp and the process of creating weavable fabric from Hemp fibers is a difficult and time-consuming one.
So what we did was create an album of photos from each page of the pb book on our Facebook page. Unfortunately the book is not for sale and was only made for distribution to schools and libraries in Laos. We were told that the man who wrote the book spent a year in the Hmong village you see on one of the pages. That's dedication and is indicative of how much the Japanese strongly support Lao textile traditions.
The fabric on these traditional skirts is now being bought up by traders and made into fashionable purses and bags seen for sale in places like the evening market in Luang Prabang. A photo of one of the pages showing children wearing and enjoying the skirts is below.
Almost all Hmong storycloths are sold with a backing and a border sewn on which of course makes them ready to display. But with the backing removed one can then look at the back (hidden) side of the storycloth and clearly see how these storycloths take a tremendous amount of work and artistry to embroider. Any storycloth you see and like for sale, whether it is here at Laos Essential Artistry or elsewhere is a bargain if you take into consideration the number of hours that it took for an anonymous Hmong woman artist to embroider that particular storycloth. With the two photos above you can see the same cloth from the front and the back and we hope you marvel, like we do, at the amazing talent of the Hmong women artists.
When we were in Laos we bought a limited number of Hmong storycloths in the popular large (32 x 46 inches) size in both vertical and horizontal formats. Several of the designs feature motifs we haven't seen before, such as Hmong planting rice in rice paddies, whereas traditionally the Hmong have lived in the mountains and have planted their rice on mountain sides. Many of the Hmong have been relocated to lower elevations where they have easier and better access to schools and markets and another advantage is have flat land where they can cultivate rice paddies. The link to our New Hmong Storycloth section is here
We recently sold several of our large Hmong storycloths to a customer several weeks ago and he wrote back, "Hi, Peter. The Hmong story cloths arrived today and they are nothing
short of exquisite. The images are delightful and impeccably rendered.
Thanks so much for making them available and for the great service."
Thank you George and we're glad you like the storycloths!
This video was taken ten years ago when I spent Christmas in this remote Hmong village, visiting a former student's grandmother and uncles. I've uploaded some of the video to our YouTube channel and it's always fun to see what comments people might make about different videos. The latest comment about this video was written in Hmong and stated, "kwv tij hmoob cas nej yuav txiv hlub ua luaj li os...hmoob lub neej uas txom 2 nyem...ib txwm."
Translated into English it says "Hmong Brothers, you guys are very sad/adorable. The Hmong lives are very tragic/ heartwarming... always."
It takes a lot of work to edit videos and upload video to YouTube and write a description that helps viewers understand more about the context of that particular video. But it's part of our mission and passion to help people understand Laos from multiple perspectives. And most of the time videos get viewed and no comments are give, but when we receive a thoughtful response like this it makes it all worth it. It's only through a "conversation" that we all gain a greater understanding of the world around us.
This comment in Hmong is really quite profound because it begs the question of how do the Hmong fortunate enough to have immigrated to other countries and living in better circumstances, think about their Hmong "brothers and sisters" still living their traditional lives in Laos? I don't think they get thought about a lot and I think that they are a diminishing reservoir of traditional Hmong culture and somehow the Hmong who are living in the fast lane of the 21st century in that US and other countries could/should be more appreciative and supportive of these Hmong, who for various reasons are still living their lives as Lao Soung, the Lao of the mountain tops. For better or worse...
In the Hmong storycloths we sell at our Yahoo store here, you can see so marvelously embroidered the kinds of traditional activities that make up the lives of the Hmong still living in these remote villages. We wrote a blog describing all the activities shown in one storycloth here.
This will be amazing if it really happens, and according to the Sacramento Bee Vang Pao announced at a rally in Fresno that he wants to return to Laos and is "aiming for reconciliation." If this happens, it's great news for Laos and great news for the Hmong here in the states. There are so many misconceptions about Laos floating around because of residual anger towards Laos from a war (a Secret War) that ended over thirty years ago. Vietnam has moved on and the Hmong need to move on. Many have, but Vang Pao being the defacto leader of the Hmong has held back, and it would be monumental if he were to return. And of course, it's not all on Vang Pao's back, the Lao government needs to embrace this opportunity for reconciliation and it could be a win-win situation all the way around. Our fingers are crossed here at Laos Essential Artistry...
We hope our name, Laos Essential Artistry doesn't imply that our only focus is on woven Lao textiles, though they are our what we specialize in. But we also are interested in all things Laos, and our Hmong storycloths are one thing people constantly are asking about. Hmong storycloths are a beautiful and artistic representation of Hmong traditions and the singing poetry of these three young girls represents a dying tradition. We have had over 45,000 people view this one video and reading their comments is extremely interesting and have given us some powerful insights into what the Hmong here in America value. You can read all the comments if you want by visiting our YouTube channel, or we've included a few of our favorites here.
• "woowowowow.. man.. these girls are so talented.. I might have my phD
in physics but I can never sing like that...I wished they can get a
formal education."
• "I was very surprised seeing those beautiful kids. I was born in VietNam
and was a part of the majority there. I used to think about Hmong
people in a completely different way, well, until now. This makes me
understand how ignorant we are when we're not exposed to other
cultures."
• "Kheej kawg li lawm nawb! Tus siab tias nyob deb heev txhawb tsis tau
kom mus tau zoo tshaj no ntxiv. It's amazing how far Hmong has changed,
though I am proud of those who still keeps our culture strong."
We recently sold the above storycloth and the person who bought it
asked if we could describe what was being depicted in the storycloth so
we decided to define areas and activities within the cloth we thought
needed explanation, numbered them and below we provide an explanation of
what's happening within each numbered area. Of course we encourage you to check out the variety of Hmong storycloths we carry on our Yahoo store site.
Area 1:Here a
Hmong woman is picking corn against a backdrop of mountains. Corn is an
important crop for the Hmong, and in fact for all Lao, and they use corn both
for eating (always steamed) and after grinding to feed their pigs (see Area 10).
The backdrop of the mountains is important because when the Hmong migrated
south from China beginning in the 1700’s they settled in the mountains and have
been classified by the Lao government as Lao Soung, the Lao of the mountaintops
(along with the Mien and several other ethnic groups).
Area 2:Collecting
wood. Here a Hmong man is collecting wood, though often it is children and
especially teenage girls who are given the responsibility to go out and collect
wood. Sometimes it means collecting dead wood on the ground, while often it
means chopping down small trees or splitting small logs. Wood is collected
during the dry season, from about January through early May, or whenever the
rainy season begins. Even where there is electricity, almost all cooking is
done over wood fires (food tastes better that’s cooked over wood fires they
say).
Areas 3, 5, 16:For the Hmong their mountain rice fields and gardens are often one to
three hours journey by foot and so they spend a lot of time on trails and will
carry back harvested vegetables, rice panicles, etc. in bamboo packs on their
backs and sometimes on horses. In area 5 the Hmong are obviously traveling to
their gardens and mountain rice fields and in Area 3 and Area 16 they are coming
back to their villages with their baskets/packs full.
Area 4:Planting rice. The Hmong and most rural Lao living in mountainous areas
(80% of Laos is mountainous) plant rice similarly to what one sees on this
story cloth. Traditionally the men will have a pole where they poke holes into
the ground and the women will drop in a handful of seeds. Sometimes there will
be a large group like this, sometimes just a couple by themselves. On some of
our storycloths you can see the fallen trees they’ve cut down and after burning
the cleared land (cut and burn/swidden agriculture) the bigger trees and stumps
are just left in place and planted around.
Area 6:I don’t
think the Lao or Hmong could live without hot peppers. Most rural Hmong and Lao
rarely eat meat and hot pepper provides a spiciness to otherwise “bland” rice
when it is made into some kind of jeaow (a mortared mixture of hot pepper and
salt at its simplest and then often with added ingredients like cilantro, fish
sauce, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc ). Hot peppers are grown in these remote
gardens and if they plant enough of them then they might be able to sell the
extra for a little extra cash. There are lots of different hot pepper varieties
grown in Laos, but most are similar to what we know in the states as the Thai
hot pepper.
Area 7: Chicken or Pigeon House. Chickens are raised most
often for use in ceremonies and as a source of meat to be offered to special
guests. And occasionally they're butchered for an average family meal. The
Hmong also like to raise pigeons, but I'm less sure about how they're used. My
wife says we’ve eaten pigeon meat in her village (she’s Lao).
Area 8:Raised wooden
storage unit to keep rice or corn dry and safe. Sometimes the legs are made
from cluster bomb canisters in regions where the bombing was heavy during the
Secret War.
Area 9:Hmong
houses are built on the ground with dirt flooring. Mien houses are similar,
unlike Lao and Lao Theung houses which are built on posts, with enough space
underneath the houses for women to weave, or to keep their animals at night.
Area 10:Here a
Hmong man and woman are grinding corn on a grindstone to make a gruel they can
feed the pigs or they will use it to cook for a meal. Most Hmong villages will
have at least one grind stone like this and I’ve also seen them grinding soy
beans and have some great photos taken in a remote Hmong village in Luang
Prabang Province I’ll post on our blog sometime.
Area 11 and Area 14 are connected: In Area 14they are using a rice pounder to
separate the rice hulls from the grains of rice. The woman in this storycloth
keeps turning over all the rice until all the hulls are separated. They then
take the rice and rice hulls that are now mixed together and the woman in Area
11 is sifting the rice so that the hulls fall on the ground and then the rice
is left in the tray. They also are able to make the broken rice grains gather
toward the front of the tray where they are removed to a bowl and later fed to the
chickens as the boy is doing next to the woman.
Area 12: Feeding pigs: Here the Hmong woman is probably
pouring the mixture they’ve cooked with the tubers they’ve grown in their
gardens and dug out of the ground when they’re up to 18 inches long and three
or four inches wide, plus they will add rice hulls. Most Hmong and Lao families
have pigs which they will use for sacrificing for ceremonies and parties and to
sell when they need money.
Area 13:Here the Hmong woman has dug up tubers
that she is cutting up to be put in a pot where they’ll cook the tubers in the
afternoon over a fire and then when it cools they’ll add rice hulls and feed to
the pigs.
Area 15:Pineapples:Pineapples are
raised best in mountainous areas of Laos, and although they can be picked anytime,
the main harvest season begins in the rainy season around June. Pineapples
grown in Southeast Asia are incredibly delicious and sweet, with none of the
sourness Americans are used to with pineapples shipped by air from Hawaii.
Area 17:Mother
taking care of child in field dwelling. Because rice farms and gardens are
often far away from villages the Hmong will build small structures that provide
shade and where they can rest and eat while taking a break from the demanding
work out in the field. Often time older siblings will take care of any babies,
but perhaps here they’re out weeding, or helping plant or harvest the rice…
Area 18:Here a
man and woman are hoeing weeds in a mountain rice farm and/or garden. Once the
rainy season begins the weeds grow as fast as the rice plants and the Hmong
have to be vigilant in keeping the weeds at bay so the rice can grow tall. A
mountain rice field will be weeded usually two times during the growing cycle,
sometimes three times.
Area 19:Feeding
horses. Horses don’t seem to be as common as they used to, when roads were
non-existent or mud tracks at best and the easiest way to transport goods was
by horseback.Here the horses are
being fed stems from rice that has already been harvested or some kind of grass.
Area 20:Here a
man and woman are in their garden picking long green beans that you can see
that are grown next to a pole where they can twine around the pole as they grow
just like our green bean plants do here in the states. The Hmong and Lao like
to pound them in a mortar with fish sauce, hot peppers, garlic, and lime juice
and then a variety of other ingredients can be added depending on the season,
availability and taste preferences, like small tomatoes or carrots. And if they
let the beans stay on the plant they’ll turn yellow and then they will take the
seeds and steam them (like rice is steamed) and eat them. They are considered
very delicious, sort of like eating peanuts.
Area 21:In
area 21 the rice is being harvested with a sickle (everything is done by hand)
and then is laid out in small groups in the field to dry. After a few days the
rice is then thrashed in a wide variety of ways, sometimes the panicles are hit
against board set up in the rice field where the grains come off the panicles and
gather in a pile on the ground (probably some kind of burlap-type fabric they
make by weaving bamboo strips together is laid down first). The rice grains are
then put in a basket and when there is a moderate breeze the men will climb a
ladder and pour out the rice and the empty hulls will float away and the solid
grains of rice encased in the hull will fall straight to the ground. These are
then gathered to be hulled as seen in Area 14 using the rice pounder.
Area 22:In this
area the woman is picking eggplant. There are many kinds of eggplants that are
grown in Laos. They have purple and green eggplants, some long and narrow like
cucumbers and some that look like our traditional eggplants as seen in this storycloth.
Actually most eggplants grown in Laos are the size of small and medium-sized
tomatoes. They can be eaten raw or cooked. They are really good when they are
made into a jaeow as explained in Area 6 with hot peppers.
Area 23:Cooking over a fire. For the Hmong and most Lao, cooking is always done
over a wood fire. Sometimes they’ll use charcoal that’s made by villagers, and
if they had electricity and the money to buy a small stove, they could cook on
a stove, but most Hmong and Lao will tell you that food tastes very different
when cooked on a stove and they prefer food cooked on a fire.
Area 24:Here
they are picking corn and cucumbers. In Laos this is what they call the “farm
cucumber.” It’s grown and picked when it’s big and people like this one because
it has a lot of flesh and the skin is not too thick. They love to eat it raw
and like to dip the slices in salt and it’s also used in the kind of salad
where the ingredients are mortared similar to the papaya salad once can get
easily in Thai restaurants.
Area 26:Here
the man is cutting a bunch of bananas. The bananas are grown in people’s
gardens and one tree will yield one bunch of bananas and then you cut it down
and many small banana trees will sprout from the base of the big banana tree.
The Hmong and Lao prize the banana tree just not for it’s fruit, but the leaves
are highly valued for cooking and wrapping food and using in ceremonies.
Area 27:Here
the woman is stacking the harvested rice panicles in a rounded pile to dry
before the next process of threshing the rice as seen in Area 21.
If anyone has anything to add please leave a comment. We're always ready to learn more!
These handmade appliquéd cloths are only made by these Hmong women in remote Muang Sing in northeastern Laos. Wish we sold more so we could order more to help out these incredibly creative Hmong ladies. Muang Sing is so far off the beaten path followed by "regular" tourists that the textiles handmade by these Hmong women along with the cotton textiles handwoven the Tai Dam women from Muang Sing remain hidden treasures yet to be discovered. That's why we created Laos Essential Artistry, so everyone can see and hopefully purchase some of these beautiful textiles that would otherwise remain "hidden" away in Muang Sing. And you can't go wrong at $25 each. Check them out at our Yahoo store.
The soundtrack for the video is audio extracted from a video we took of three young Hmong girls singing Kwv Txiahj in their remote Hmong village in Xieng Khuang, Laos. We posted this video on YouTube and have received hundreds of comments, mostly from American Hmong women so impressed with the singing ability of these young girls. Kwx Txhiaj is difficult to sing and uses words and tones not easily understood by American Hmong who have been separated so long from traditional cultural practices as still practiced in Laos.
When I saw these four young girls as we walked through a Hmong village north of Sam Neua I knew there was something special here. I started taking photos and surprisingly they didn't run away or cover their eyes, but looked right at me and actually came together for this informal portrait.
Like the photo of the young woman washing her hair, my wife's sister's boyfriend also created a series of three painting with these four young girls as the main subject. Below is a photo of the first one in the series.
I was blown away when we walked through this Hmong village in Xieng Khuang about four years ago and came across this mother and daughter washing clothes. I don't think I've ever seen a younger girl washing clothes, and with such determination and commitment to the task at hand! The reality is that this really is not that unusual and that because 70-80% of Lao (including ALL ethnic groups) families are living at a subsistence level, children begin working and helping out at a very young age. Growing, finding and eating just enough food to get by is the main task at hand. Hopefully in the next month or so I'm going to post an interview we did of the three young girls singing kwv txhiaj and they talk about only eating meat a couple of times a month.
In December 2006 we set up a special two-week tour for Elli on the textile traditions of northern Laos. Elli wanted to do research in Laos on “Thai-Lao Textiles: Shamanic and Buddhist syncretism” so we set up an itinerary that was designed to facilitate her research needs. We started off in Vientiane where we visited some of the main textile galleries such as Taykeo’s, Phaeng Mai and Carol Cassidy’s. Elli’s main source of information though was a Tai Daeng (Red Tai) expert, Tong, where Elli was able to bring photos of textiles she bought and ask questions about the motifs used in the textiles. On our third day we were invited to a Tai Daeng funeral and there are a couple photos in the gallery taken at the funeral.
We then flew up to Luang Prabang where we had scheduled a full-day workshop with Jo and Veo, co-owners of Ockpoptok, textile gallery and weaving center. Ockpoptok, means East meets west in Lao language and Ockpoptok will be exhibiting at the Santa Fe International Folk Festival this July along with Taykeo who has exhibited there for the two previous years. Ockpoptok has two galleries in the downtown area of Luang Prabang, and then have a weaving center a little south of town. We went to the weaving center for the workshop and it is in a beautiful location right on the edge of the Mekong River. The focus on the workshop was primarily on motifs used in weaving, plus they talked about the use of natural dyes and explained the steps used in the weaving process. There is a photo of Elli with Veo and Jo, and another shot of some of the natural dye materials they had on display.
We also spent a lot of time at the gallery owned by Veo’s mother in a small village north of Luang Prabang. She has a large gallery of contemporary textiles woven by weavers in her gallery, and then she has a shop of antique textiles that Elli was most interested in.
There is a world of difference between professors and K-12 teachers in their ability to seriously research a topic. I was impressed with Elli on the entire tour with her research focus. She was always thinking, analyzing, asking questions and writing voluminous notes. Plus, she was extremely organized. I’ve never seen the same curiosity with K-12 educators. It’s hard for most people to escape beyond the typical tourist mentality where the primary focus is on relaxation and enjoyment. I’m more like Elli, though I don’t have that academic intensity.
We did take time to have a little fun and took a slow boat up to the Pak Ou Caves. People have been climbing into the Pak Ou caves, high above the Mekong some 25km from Luang Prabang, for maybe a couple of thousand years. They were used for the worship of the river spirit until Buddhism spread into Laos along the southern route from India. And gradually, over the 60 decades, more than 4,000 Buddha images – mostly the standing Buddha of the Luang Prabang style – have been placed in them. There are two caves in a striking limestone cliff where the Nam Ou river meets the Mekong. The lower and smaller, called Tham Ting, is open to the light some 50ft above the river; but the higher cave, Tham Phum, is deep and impenetrably black without a torch. Most people get to the Pak Ou caves by river from Luang Prabang and make an easy landing at a little jetty under Tham Ting.
We didn’t leave until late afternoon and caught a beautiful sunset on the way back and thankfully I took probably fifty plus photos and I got one great shot with the glint of the setting sun on a distant boat. December is a great time to travel to Laos since it is the dry season and it rarely rains, but there can be cold spells and we were there when temperatures were only in the fifties and I remember how cold I was in the boat that day, but the sunset made it all worthwhile.
We then flew back to Vientiane, spent the night, and the next morning flew to Sam Neua. I love flying in the rickety 17-seat Y2’s as the two back seats have big windows with little to obstruct the views. There are a few aerial shots I took of the mountainous terrain and some remote villages only accessible by trails in the gallery. When I see these villages I keep thinking what it must be like for the inhabitants, what is the school like, do they have a teacher and do any of the children ever make it to high school and transition to living in a bigger city like Luang Prabang or Vientiane?
When we arrived in Sam Neua I was a little scared because I had made arrangements with Sousath Petrasy, owner of the Maly Hotel in Phonsavan to drive/guide us while we were in Huaphan Province, and he wasn’t waiting in the “lobby” of the airport. But, when I walked outside I saw a Landcruiser where he was resting, listening to a CD.
I’m a little confused with the priorities of Lao tourism. There have been several articles in the Vientiane Times lately about establishing Vieng Xai, 45 minutes from Sam Neua, a major tourist destination since it was where the Pathet Lao leaders lived in caves during the Secret War. But, they recently cut all the flights now to Sam Neua so how are people going to visit Vieng Xai??? They’ll have to fly to Phonsavan and then rent a vehicle/driver to drive (all day) to Sam Neua and then will have to do the same going back. Most people won’t make the effort and I don’t blame them.
I like Sam Neua, you rarely seen tourists there, even when there are flights from Vientiane, and the textiles are gorgeous. With Elli, we were going to two towns I’ve never visited before, Sam Tai and Muang Vaen. The road to Sam Tai is paved most of the way, so even in the rainy season, if the rains are moderate, one should be able to drive to Sam Tai, about a six hour journey. It’s beautiful, rugged terrain, and the road snakes along side the Sam River a lot of the way. Sam Tai is considered the heart and soul of the textile tradition in Laos, but it’s not a place most tourists visit and the few guest houses are very simple. After we arrived, the word got out that Elli was interested in looking at textiles and soon a number of women appeared with bags of textiles they had woven. I have some photos of when we were gathered in a large room of the guest house and all these women had laid out their textiles for Elli to check out.
There are also some photos of Earl and Bai making papaya salad at one of the small restaurants where we chose to eat dinner. I need to come up with a better name of though for these restaurants/food stalls. In small towns like Sam Tai, their menu is very basic, usually they’ll serve noodle soup, maybe fried rice and whatever wild game and/or fish someone has sold them. Earl is a gourmet cook at home, and was interested in learning more about Lao food so here Bai showed Earl how to make papaya salad and by looking at the photos in the gallery you can see they had a good time.
Another interesting thing about Sam Tai was that although it was only about 150 km south of Sam Neua, it was much, much warmer. In Sam Neua I was wearing long underwear under my jeans, but here I was back to wearing shorts.
The next morning we explored the old part of Sam Tai and were invited in to a ceremony being performed in a house to bring good luck to the family who had recently experience some misfortune. There are some photos in the gallery of the shaman performing the ceremony in the house.
When we were driving back to Sam Neua we stopped in a small village to get some 150, a Red Bull type drink, for Sousath, who was getting very tired while driving. In this village we saw a woman sitting in front of a charcoal fire roasting something. On closer examination it was a rat, and she had a basket of rats she had already toasted. I saw a great photo opportunity here and asked Earl if he would like to be immortalized in a photo toasting a rat. Being a easy-going soul, he agreed and there are a couple of photos of Earl toast a rat over the fire, and the first one shows the woman holding a crossbow her husband used to kill the rats. In Laos, almost anything, anything, will be eaten, and a well-toasted rat is considered a tasty treat. At the same home was a string of bats waiting to be bought, the key ingredient in “Laotian Bat Soup.”
After driving back to Sam Neua, the next morning we drove to Muang Vaen. We were interested in going here because it was highlighted in Patricia Cheesman’s book,” Lao-Tai textiles: The Textiles of Xam Nuea and Muang Phuan.” She had some beautiful photos of textiles woven in this village, plus Tong, our Tai Daeng expert in Vientiane, recommended that we go here.
We had to head down the road we would be driving to Sam Neua the next day and then headed south on a dirt road. We stopped in a small village along the way and met a monk in a small wat on a hill overlooking the village. There are a number of photos I took of the wat and of the friendly monk.
Muang Vaen is a very picturesque village, and they had a rounded roof style I have never seen before. And many of the houses had a pair of carved wooded nagas at their roof peak as protective spirits.
It was interesting to see that many of the women were weaving these pastel-colored textiles that I had seen in the Morning Market in Vientiane. I wondered where they had come from, and now I knew. From my perspective these textiles are more for decorative purposes and have a thicker weave, that I call “tapestry style.” They’re pretty, and we all thought they had better quality textiles here, than in Sam Tai.
The Lao Woman’s Union leader in this village invited us to lunch and then similar to Sam Tai, a group of women came to lay out their textiles for Elli to look at and hopefully for all of us to buy. What was a little strange here was that we had spent most of our kip in Sam Tai and when we tried to use American money, which is readily accepted in most of Laos, they were extremely reluctant to accept dollars though they could readily exchange the dollars for kip in Sam Neua, just about a two hour drive one way.
There are a number of shots taken in this village and a few of Earl who had a great time playing frisbee with the kids. We left in the late afternoon and drove back to Sam Neua and then the next morning we drove all the way to Phonsavan where we stayed at Sousath’s Maly Hotel. The next morning we went to the Plain of Jars and then drove all the way to back to Vientiane. I had never been on the stretch of road between Phonsavan and Phu Khun, where the road from Phonsavan intersects the main road between Luang Prabang and Vientiane.
What I haven’t mentioned is that wherever we were driving on these rural roads, we often drove through Hmong villages, and since Hmong New Year is celebrated during the month of December in many of the villages there were groups of Hmong girls dressed up and often lined up in rows tossing the ball with boys or other girls. This is a traditional social ceremony where teens from different villages, and different clans, get to meet each other and while tossing the ball, engage in small talk that might lead to their eventually getting married. In the past, they were so busy working on the farms and after the harvesting of rice in November, December finally provided some free time where they could travel to another village There aren’t any malls to hang out in Laos…
When we stopped in Phu Khun there were a lot of Hmong women/girls dressed in traditional clothes and men in suits, and it was plain to see there were a lot of Hmong that had come to Laos from the United States. I have a group of photos in the gallery I had taken in different villages, including Phu Khun. The ones of the young girls are my favorites.
I want to emphasize that all these photos were taken on this trip in December 2006. I’ve also included some nature shots of trees, an interesting still life of branches, some lilies, colorful umbrellas (evening market in Luang Prabang), and a series on beautifully carved, painted doors and windows from wats in Luang Prabang. Enjoy!
The Spirit of Entrepreneurship and the Dynamic Women of Muang Sing
I’ve never really told the story of the women of Muang Sing. But before I do, let me provide a little background about Muang Sing and how I came to meet these women. Muang Sing is a small town in the northwest of Laos, about ten miles from the Chinese border. Back in the late 90’s it was a key stop on backpackers’ maps, primarily because opium and marijuana were easy to get since Muang Sing is in that zone called the Golden Triangle, “one of Asia's two main illicit opium-producing areas.” (from Wikipedia entry). Back then, and even now many people refer to Muang Sing as being a kind of frontier town. Thankfully, the Lao government has cracked down on opium growing and all guest houses had/have flyers stating if anyone was/is caught buying or using drugs they would/will be arrested. And for a falang (foreigner) the cost of getting out of jail would not be cheap. I’ve heard it’s cost certain free-spirit backpacker types thousands of dollars to get their passports back after being caught with and/or using drugs.
I visited Muang Sing for the first time in December 1999 because I heard that there were several Mien villages that were easy to get to, and we had Mien students at the school where I taught and I was interested in learning more about their culture. When I flew into Luang Namtha in the late afternoon Laos was experiencing a cold spell and it was forecasted to get into the mid-thirties that night and all I had was a long sleeved cotton shirt! I was still somewhat ignorant about Laos and thought it was warm year-round and was traveling light. That night I slept in an old Russian hotel that was dank and barren and the only redeeming feature was the room had two single beds and I was able to take off the thin blanket on one of the beds, wrap myself in both blankets and went to bed at 7:00 p.m. and then proceeded to spend the coldest, loneliest night of my life. And the next morning I had to take a “Song Taeow,” an open-air truck/taxi for two hours to Muang Sing. And I thought I had been cold the night before! But I had the good luck of sharing the song taeow with some older Japanese ladies who lent me a coat and woolen hat. It was still cold, but we all huddled together and the two hours went by fairly fast.
After being dropped off at the “bus stop” in Muang Sing, I shopped at the local market for a cap to wear. I have a great shot in the photo gallery of an Akah woman and her daughter at the market and I think the daughter shows how cold it was. I then located the Muang Sing Guest House that had been recommended to me. I have a photo of the guest house in the photo gallery that goes with this blog. There is also a photo taken of me after arrival with the woman who owns the guest house. You can see my long sleeve cotton shirt and the cap I bought at the market by the bus stop. The guest house is simple, but has been improved greatly over the years, though I would recommend it regardless because this woman is so friendly and I have always felt at home there. The rooms then cost about $3 a night, with shared squat toilets and shared bathing facilities that consisted of a small cement tank of water used for bathing. Though there was no piped hot water, the woman and her relatives who helped her run the guest house, kept large thermoses of hot water ready and so the idea was that you would take a couple of thermoses with you (she would demonstrate how it was done!) into the bathing room and then add the hot water to the plastic bucket of cold water and pour that over you. The last time I visited Muang Sing, she had been working hard to improve the guest house and each room now has it’s own small bathroom with western toilet. I sort of regret the modernization because I like people to experience the Lao reality of using a squat toilet, though a majority of Lao people probably don’t even have access to a squat toilet…
That first day I was there it was still quite cold, but luckily I met up with a guide who invited me to his uncle’s wedding and the ample lao lao (lao whiskey) warmed me up so the cold night was more bearable (see photo gallery).
Tai Dam (Black Tai) women: If you stayed in Muang Sing, especially around 1999 – 2002, and walked the short main street, or ate at one of the open air eateries, there would be a good chance a group of Tai Dam women would come up to you and try to get you to buy one of their hand-woven cotton scarves. I have photos in the gallery that show a tourist surrounded by the Tai Dam women trying to sell their scarves. What happens is that if you look at one, then the other women bring out their scarves and give them to you too, so soon your layered with scarves and have no idea of which scarf belongs to whom and it can easily get overwhelming. The Tai Dam women, although they may seem a little pushy, do it with a spirit of fun, and once you understand their situation, you realize why they have to be a little aggressive in their “marketing.” The tourist authorities have tried to force them to only sell their scarves at some crude tables along the road, but I think they’re rightly too impatient to wait for the occasional tourist to come by and would rather pursue customers on their own.
And here’s a story about these women that’s hard to believe and one that had made me “famous” to all the Tai Dam in Muang Sing. On my second visit to Muang Sing I was sitting at an outside table at a restaurant across from the Muang Sing Guest House when some of the women came by to sell their scarves. I moved to a couple of benches and proceeded to look at some of the scarves and of course it became sort of chaotic with all these women and children gathered round me, throwing their scarves at me and I bought quite a few. It was dusk when finally I cried out that I needed a break to drink a Beer Lao and retired to inside the restaurant where they couldn’t follow me. It was about twenty minutes later when I went to pay for the beer that I discovered my wallet was missing, with over $700 in American money. I immediately started thinking back to when I was paying for the scarves. I was paying with Lao kip from a pocket in my jacket and couldn’t really remember if I had taken out my wallet. I went out back to where they had all crowded around me and there was no sign of the wallet. And then, although it was getting dark I went to took for the group of women. I found four of them still cruising the main street and tried to tell them in my very limited Lao and sign language that my wallet was missing. They understood and showed me their shoulder bags with the scarves and with no wallet inside. If I had been really rationale I would have given up because who in their right mind would give me the wallet back and it could be anywhere. But, I was driven to try to find it and they told me a small group of the women had already headed back to their village about a half an hour walk from where we were. I said I wanted to go back to their village and they said ok and so we began walking. By then it was dark and the rough dirt road made walking difficult, though there was a half moon that added some illumination. Along the way I kept thinking this was like mission impossible, but was cheered in a strange way with the chatter of the friendly women and wondering what they were saying. When we arrived at the village, a crowd gathered around us and they told everyone that my wallet was missing and I was thinking, even if someone had it, why would they give it up. It’s hard to convey my emotions. I was upset that I had lost my wallet, but I wasn’t angry towards the women. I had really enjoyed my interactions with them when I was in Muang Sing and had been thinking about ordering a large quantity of the naturally-dyed scarves, one of the reasons I had so much money with me.
After about ten minutes with everyone animatedly talking one of the women came up to me and handed me my wallet!!! With all the money still there!! They told me the woman’s daughter had picked up the wallet not really knowing whose it was and the mother didn’t even know she had the wallet. I was blown away, it worked! I gave her $40 to share with whoever deserved it, thanked them all and walked back to town by myself. I can still vividly remember the sparkling of all those stars in the night sky and thinking this was magic. Pure Lao magic.
Later, in talking to the women in later visits to Muang Sing, they told me a different story. They said the the woman, not the daughter had picked up the wallet and knew there was money in it and planned to keep it. But when the other women brought me into the village so everyone knew that my wallet had been taken, the woman felt obligated to give it back because if she kept it, and spent the money, everyone would know and she and the village would “lose face.”
The Lao concept of face, or more specifically "losing face" and "saving face" is a primary motivator of their behavior. I would guess that it is the primary motivating force behind the way they act. As Westerners we can compare face to the word honor. The Lao concept of face is similar to honor... and yet there is so much more to it. If a Lao "loses face" it means that he or she has suffered some loss of honor... some embarrassment. To the Lao this can be absolutely devastating depending on the manner in which it was dealt by another or experienced as a result of his/her own actions prior. In Lao society there is this emphasis on maintaining the facade of perfection. This facade of perfection means that as a person, as an individual you do nothing to disturb that facade. It is unspoken, but everyone knows. You don't disturb the facade of perfection. You don't break the facade or people lose face. You don't criticize others. You don't yell or lose your temper.
It was the concept of face allowed me to get my wallet back…
The next day I visited the home of one young Tai Dam woman who impressed me with the quality of her scarves and who I thought was a good weaver and contracted with her and her sister to make several hundred of the naturally dyed scarves. And over the next couple of years I also had her weave a series of larger, more brightly red/purple scarves in a style used by shamans. I love these scarves, especially the naturally dyed scarves. They remind me of all the colors in a pastel sunset and although I haven’t sold any of these scarves, they’re waiting for the time my wife and I open a textile gallery, featuring Lao textiles. These Tai Dam textiles are more simplistic than Tai Daeng (Red Tai) style textiles, but they’re also a lot cheaper, and just as beautiful in their own right.
The Mien women of Muang Sing
I wrote on an earlier website about the Mien in Muang Sing that one of the reasons I first visited Muang Sing was because I met a woman named Fahm Choy at a Cultural Show in Vientiane. She was with a group of other Mien woman selling handicrafts that were made through a cooperative (Mien Women’s Association) located in their village of Pou Don Than, located just miles outside Muang Sing and within a couple of miles of the Chinese border. Now, in 2007 as I write this blog entry, and think back to when I first met Fahm Choy, it was the only time in the six years I’ve visited Laos that there was an exhibition of Mien embroidery in Vientiane. To this date, there are no galleries that feature Mien embroidery, besides a few that sell antique textiles and have a few of the heavily embroidered pants that the women make for themselves. And who knows if they are antiques are not.
I had Mien students when I taught in Oroville, California and became close to a couple of families and was always impressed with their embroidery which is much different than that of the Hmong. The Mien and Hmong are both classified as Lao Soung (Lao of the mountain tops) by the Lao, but really their cultures are quite different and the Hmong outnumber the Mien probably about 7 to 1.
When I attended the handicraft exhibit in the fall of 1999 and met Fahm Choy for the first time, I remember her giving me her business card which I still have. And on the card it had the letters ZOA. After doing a little research I found that ZOA was a Christian organization for humanitarian assistance. As taken from their website it states they have “over 30 years experience in relief, rehabilitation and reintegration. Founded in 1973 in the Netherlands. In the beginning ZOA worked in countries in South East Asia. That’s where the name ZOA is derived from. ZOA is the abbreviation in Dutch for Zuid (South) Oost (East) Azie (Asia), the part of the world where ZOA started her work in the seventies. In the past decades however ZOA has expanded her work to other parts of the world, like Africa. In the meantime the name ZOA has become a 'brand', rather than that the abbrevation fits the mission of the organisation. The addition –Refugee Care indicates the primary target group: (former) refugees and IDPs.”
I went to their small office/home and talked to the director and he told me about what they were doing up in Muang Sing. They had different projects going, and one of them was to help the Mien women in the villages of Pou Don Than start a cooperative to market and sell their crafts. By 1999 they were at the tail end of their funding and the hope was, like with all NGO projects, that they become self sustaining when NGO funding dries up. But in my experience from seeing different projects and talking to a wide variety of people in Laos, when the funding dries up, so often does the project. It’s hard to bridge the gap from dependency to independency.
I think ZOA meant well and I think they bought most of the Mien crafts and took them back to the Netherlands to sell there. But, to think that the women could gain some kind of financial independence from a little cooperative out in the “boondocks,” was not realistic.
Not just for the Mien, but for the Tai Dam and Hmong, who all mostly relocated to Muang Sing, Muang Sing seemed like a town, where some tourists did come, and so maybe they could make a living selling their crafts. But the problem is two-fold. First, the number of tourists is relatively small because it’s not easy to get to, and second, a majority of the tourists who do come, are backpacker types who are traveling light and are not serious buyers of crafts.
I think when I first visited in 1999 there was still a strong sense of excitement about the possibilities in Muang Sing for all the ethnic groups and it was only through ZOA funding that Fahm Choy could come down to Vientiane to demonstrate Mien embroidery at the handicraft faire. From what I know, they’re the only ethnic group in Muang Sing that had NGO support in marketing their crafts.
ZOA lucked out with discovering Fahm Choy, because she is unbelievably dynamic and a natural leader. Unlike the Hmong and Tai Dam women in Muang Sing, who as a group impressed me with their “get up and go,” Fahm Choy is the only Mien woman that I saw who really tried to find a way to sell their crafts to tourists.
Unlike the Hmong and Tai Dam women, the Mien don’t try to sell their crafts in the town of Muang Sing, but wait for tourists to visit their village. At first, back in the late 1990’s, this was a reasonable strategy because many people came to stay at the Adima Guest House on the outskirts of the Mien villages. But, unfortunately, the guest house became run down and most of the guests were there for illegal purposes…
Over a period of three years we ordered a number of items, various wallets, purses, bags and banners and were always impressed with the quality of the embroidery. I also know that some Japanese placed orders through her and they were always working of items to be shipped to relatives in the United States for sale. But by the last time I visited Muang Sing in 2005, the cooperative store was basically empty and Fahm Choy told us that most of the women had given up embroidering for the cooperative.
Fahm Choy has really tried, and I wish our gallery was open so we could more actively market the Mien crafts that we purchased from her. But, with her entrepreneurial spirit I have a feeling she will continue to search for a niche, and I’m looking forward to our next visit in December 2007 to find out how she and the other Mien women are doing.
The Hmong Women of Muang Sing,
I first met the Hmong women when I was walking through downtown Muang Sing and saw that close to where the Tai Dam women had some tables set up to display their scarves, the Hmong women had a small display area for their embroidery. But what I saw was completely different from what the Hmong had created anywhere else in Laos. In Luang Prabang, in the Hmong and evening markets, the Hmong women sell a lot of embroidery and one of their designs is a very simple outline of a person, that could be male or female. They put usually put these designs on pillow cases, but they incorporate the design into other crafts too. The design in its simplest form is traditional and used to ward off evil spirits.
But, what I saw here in Muang Sing was incredibly creative. They had taken this figure design and elaborated on it in creating these fairly elaborate appliquéd mandalas. Not only were there these people figures connected in a circle, but they incorporated other traditional Hmong motifs. I was blown away and bought all they had and asked if I could visit their village the next day, and they agreed saying they had some more of these cloths in their homes. That night I got to thinking that I would like them to make some more similar cloths for me, and there was one cloth I really liked and thought if they could reproduce it using different colors than I could easily sell them in the gallery my wife and I will eventually open.
We went out there the next day, and met with the woman who seemed most like the leader of their informal group. Unlike the Mien, they didn’t have an NGO helping them market their crafts and they are on their own. I explained, with the help of my Lao friend, what I had in mind, and they agreed and I paid half of the total up front, so they could buy supplies. I told them I would be back in about six months.
Well, just as with the Tai Dam, when I came back to Muang Sing to pick up my order I was filled with excitement and a little trepidation. Our dealings were somewhat informal, although we did write a very simple contract we each had copies of . They had never done something like this before, so it was a new experience for us all. When we went out to the Hmong village to pick up our order, we were invited into the lead woman’s house and then she brought out the big sack of all the cloths and began pulling them out. Immediately I could see that they didn’t copy the same design like I told them, but each one was uniquely different. My first inclination was to be a little upset, but when I started really looking at each cloth, I was glad that there were a variety of designs, because they were beautiful. And then when talking with the woman she told us what she had done was to distribute the work, so each woman had a number of cloths to make. And although she may have told them that I wanted them to be all the same, I think the women wanted to express their creativity and create something totally unique from each other. I think that’s what happened initially when the “lead woman” made the first cloth several years ago and sold it to a tourist, the other women saw that and decided that design might be something tourists would readily buy and so they “copied” it.
On my next several visits to Muang Sing they continued to create these beautiful appliquéd cloths, which I call Spirit People Mandalas, and when one of my group of educators visited their village they created a beautiful outdoor display of everything they had to sell and everyone bought something special.
But, two years later when I visited they really didn’t have much to sell and had “regressed” to selling more simple cloths like I’ve seen in Luang Prabang.
Conclusion: It’s been over two years since I’ve visited Muang Sing, and am hoping that will go back up there when my wife and I return in December. I greatly admire the women of Muang Sing, but the anticipated tourist boom has pretty much been a bust and I think their initial excitement of being close to a market where they could sell their crafts has not significantly diminished. All three ethnic groups are not producing the same quality of crafts that I saw between 2000 – 2003. And even with the help of ZOA, the Mien women haven’t been able to find a sustaining market.
The reality is that Muang Sing is too far off the beaten mainstream tourist path. And it’s the mainstream tourists that have the money to buy crafts and desire to bring them home. Right now, as I write this in April 2007, Lao Air flights from Vientiane to Luang Namtha have been suspended as they work on improving the airport. When they begin flying again in 2008, maybe that might make a little difference, but Muang Sing is another two hours away and the accommodations are much simpler than most mainstream tourists are used to. And there’s no incentive to really improve the guest houses if the tourists don’t come. And as I wrote at the beginning of this blog, the owner of the Muang Sing Guest House has invested a fair amount of money improving her guest house and if there were more tourists she would develop her own eco guest house out by the Mien villages (about four miles from town) and close to the run-down Adima Guest House. She’s asked if I wanted to help her invest in a guest house, and although I admire her deeply, I could see that the tourist market was not sufficient to warrant any investment on my part. I would love to partner with her in some way and hope that with the opening of our future textile gallery that I can once again more actively support and market the beautiful crafts of the Tai Dam, Mien and Hmong women in Muang Sing.
How did I get interested in Laos? I first learned about Laos while trying to learn about the Hmong and Mien cultures of my students when I was teaching in the Thermalito School District in Oroville, CA beginning in 1992. One of the driving forces for wanting to learn about their cultures was that I felt very frustrated when I had parent-teacher conferences and I had to have one of our bilingual aides translate for the Hmong and Mien parents attending conferences. There seemed to be something lost in the translation and I felt I wasn’t connecting with them like I wanted to. Another important factor was that I had begun to spend some time with one of the Hmong families of a second grade student I had in 1992, Mai Moua Thao, and I was fascinated with the stories her parents told about their life in Laos. Eventually this led to my enrolling in the Southeast Asia Summer Studies Institute at the University of Oregon in the summer of 1998 where I studied Hmong full-time for nine weeks! Even then, Laos was on the periphery of the center of my attention. But before I left for SEASSI I attended a presentation from a retired professor who led tours to this distant and mysterious land. After SEASSI, though I hadn’t learned Hmong like I thought I might, I finally realized that to really understand Hmong and Mien cultures, I needed to learn more about their homeland, Laos, and signed up for a three-week tour in November 1998.
Laos captured my heart, soul and imagination. When I tried to explain to family and friends how it felt when I was in Laos, I told them it was like having all the pores in my body wide open and I felt this incredible high the entire three weeks. It was like I was in a super-sensitive state and thankfully my photography was the perfect way to capture what I see and felt. But then again it all could have been the result of eating Lao food with hot peppers! Spicy is an understatement in Laos. And if you’ve been to Laos and wandered through markets or where people are eating, you’ll hear this constant hissing sound, which comes from everyone inhaling through pursed lips to cool their tongues after eating something that was really spicy/hot.
But I digress. In coming to Laos another one of my goals was to try to locate the village of Ban Phu Leuy which is the Hmong village where the grandmother of Mai Moua lived. Mai Moua’s mother, Mai Vang, hadn’t seen her mother in fifteen years and was concerned about her since she was over seventy years old. All Mai Moua’s family could tell me was the village was somewhere in Luang Prabang Province. On the tour I really didn’t have time to locate the village and when I went to Laos again in the summer, I had more time to spend in Luang Prabang and ask about where the village might be. I finally found someone who thought they knew where it was, but said it was almost impossible to get up to the village during the rainy season.
Although I didn’t know the saying then, the Lao like to say step by step, and so it was going to be in trying to get to Ban Phu Leuy. But after getting back from my summer visit, I talked with a friend of mine, Tim McClure, the Deputy Superintendent at the Butte County Office of Education and he was able to find some funding to help support my going to back to Laos in November (1999) to create a virtual tour of Laos for students in Butte County schools. With this funding I was able to help fund one of the Hmong aides at my school to travel with me to interpret as needed.
This time we were able to find a vehicle and secure the services of a Lao official who we were told must travel with us to this remote Hmong village. To find this official we had to travel to a Lue village on the Nam Ou river which we had to cross in a small boat. This official was holding an open-air meeting with the village to discuss whether they would be willing to move the village to another spot on the other side of the river which the main road ran along. The village had been there over a hundred years and it was very picturesque and where their homes were established. But, during the rainy season when the river was raging, they were cut off from the main road and students couldn’t get to the high school. The government, although not forcing the village, was encouraging them to move to the other side of the road and then they wouldn’t be cut off during the rainy season.
We waited for about half an hour and then the official joined us to travel up to Ban Phu Leuy. We had to backtrack towards Luang Prabang about fifteen minutes and then took a gravel road to the left. The road was quite good for about a half an hour and then for the last two hours the road became narrow and rutted, was quite steep at points and had to traverse several stream beds. Luckily since it was the dry season the streams were fairly low and with some rearranging of rocks in the stream bed we were able to cross fairly easily. And since we left at 10:00 in the morning, we arrived in the village of Ban Huey Ot around 12:30. Since the official with us had traveled to these villages many times everyone knew him and he knew how we had to get to Ban Phu Leuy, which meant hiking up a trail for about an hour. The trail cut through scrub for the first part since this land had previously been slashed and burned. After trees are cut and then burned, the resulting ash helps fertilize the land and for about three to four years the land will be productive, but then needs to lay fallow for about ten years. We were hiking through land that had probably laid fallow for a good six years and the brush and small trees hid the fact the land had been previously used for farming. But when you fly over land where swidden agriculture is being practiced it’s easy to see the various stages of fallow land.
After cresting a hill we came down to a stream and could hear the sounds of roosters and village life. It was then a short hike up the other side when we came to the first house. This was a pretty exciting time for me because I really didn’t know if Mai’s grandma was alive and any other relatives we might meet. It ended up that Mai’s grandma was living with her oldest son whose house was perched on the hillside to the right of us. Mai’s grandma was home and with a couple of younger men. Since I was traveling with my Hmong friend/aide from school, he was able to explain who I was and Mai’s grandma came up to me and put her hands on my face while saying that to have me there was just the same as if her daughter and grandchildren were there. I think they must have written to her eldest son that I was hoping to try to come to their village and so it wasn’t a complete shock, but when she said that it sent shivers down my back.
We were invited into the house, squeezing by 50 kilo bags of rice stacked at least five feet high. It was a traditional Hmong home with beaten dirt floor and a cook fire in the middle. As we came in the house altar was on the wall opposite the door and to the left was a wooden platform piled high with all sorts of stuff that Mai’s grandma eventually began clearing because that’s where she wanted me to sleep. To the right were the closed off sleeping quarters. If you browse through the photos in the gallery different shots will give you different perspectives of what the inside of the house was like. When we arrived the word had been sent to Mai’s uncles who were working in their mountain farms that I had arrived and they showed up about an hour after I arrived.
They then caught a chicken which they boiled, along with some mustard greens, pounded some Thai chilis with some salt and that was our meal. Most rural Lao, including the Hmong, don’t usually have meat with their meals. And if they do, it’s small fish they’ve caught in streams or rice paddies, frogs, or small wild game. Chickens, pigs and cows are usually reserved for ceremonies/weddings/funerals where they may be “sacrificed” and then eaten.
That first day we could not spend the night, even though Mai’s grandma had cleaned and swept off the wooden platform (check out the photo in the blog). I had brought money from Mai’s mother and father to give to her uncles and grandma and now that I knew where the village was I could make plans to come again on my next visit.
My next visit was about a year later, Christmas 2000, and a majority of the photos in the gallery were taken during this visit when I spent two nights at Ban Phu Leuy. This time I came with a Lue friend who used to live at the same Lue village where we went to meet the official who accompanied us to Ban Phu Leuy the first time. His name is Kham Fan and I met him when we was working as a hotel clerk at the Phousi Hotel when the tour group I was with stayed there the first time I came to Laos in 1998. Kham Fan speaks good English, is very friendly and he made it clear he liked to guide on the side and so when I moved to Laos in October 2000 I made arrangements with him to go with me to Ban Phu Leuy and we got the same truck/taxi driver to drive us up.
By going in December we knew that since Hmong New Year is celebrated at different times by different villages during December there was a good chance that we would be going during their New Year’s celebration. And as it turned out, as we hiked up the trail on Christmas Eve, both Ban Heuy Ot, where we parked the car, and Ban Phu Leuy were just beginning their celebrations. Perfect timing!
When we arrived in the village they were expecting us because I had gone to the Hmong radio station in Vientiane and paid them to announce the day that we would be coming up to Ban Phu Leuy. Most people, even in remote villages like Ban Phu Leuy without electricity listen to portable radios to the Hmong radio broadcast and that way Mai’s uncles could stay home, rather than go to work at their mountain farms, which can be a one to two hour walk.
To arrange transportation and some kind of guide service isn’t easy, but I’m glad that I took the time, because as it turned out, within two years, Mai’s grandma and two uncles died…
I’ve created two photo galleries about Ban Phu Leuy since I selected 162 photos and iWeb will only allow a maximum of 99 photos in one gallery so there are 81 photos in each gallery.
In the first gallery the first ten photos show the drive up to Ban Phu Leuy ending in our arrival in Ban Heuy Ot where we had to park the truck/taxi. During the dry season this road is passable, if not a little rough. But let me tell you, we tried to go up this road in July 2002 when it was raining and we couldn’t even go half way before having to turn back. The next group of photos shows our hiking up the train and arriving at Mai’s grandma’s house. Following are arrival are shots taken in the house including when everyone gathered round to watch the video, on my video camera, that Mai’s family had shot at their home in Oroville. This was the first time that they had seen most of Mai’s children, as they all, except Mai, had been born in Ban Vanai in Thailand or in the US. There is then a short sequence of Mai’s grandma going down to the creek to get water. I can remember how we were sitting inside, when I saw Mai’s grandma go over to get the basket and water jugs and Kham Fan, friend and interpreter who accompanied me, asked what she was going to do, and when he told me I immediately got up and said we needed to document her going to get water. There was so much I wanted to photograph, but their “protocol” was that since I was an honored guest, I should go from house to house in the village for special meals. I appreciated that, but after an hour or two sitting on a six-inch high stool in smoky interiors, I was desperate to wander about and document the life in this very traditional village. This was one opportunity I wasn’t going to pass up!
She went with one of her good friends, there were other ladies Mai’s grandma’s age that were best friends and on the way back up the trail with loaded jugs, you can see the other lady talking with Mai’s grandma in the video I took. She is talking very loudly because Mai’s grandma is very hard of hearing and her sight was not that good either. But from that video you can see she was still very independent and in good spirits.
After the groups shots of Mai’s grandma and friends there are shots of the village ending with a shot of Mai’s youngest uncle’s house and then his family portrait. It was clear that his older brother, where Mai’s grandma lived, had much more stature and importance in the village and that his life was more difficult. It was hard when I learned of Mai’s grandma’s death and then the death of her oldest son, but it was almost too much to heard that this uncle died too, all in a span of about two years.
Following her uncle’s family portrait is a sequence taken of the taking down and cleaning of the family altar. This was done by Mai’s uncle’s oldest son and his wife and is something that is done during every New Year’s celebration. And then, I can’t even remember which house this happened in, it the traditional pounding of steamed sticky rice that is made into pancakes, cooked over a fire and then eaten with some kind of sweetener, like honey or sugar cane syrup. I saw this done in Oroville, very much the same way by Mai’s relatives and also in Luang Prabang.
After these shots are the beginning of a sequence for the preparation of the tree ceremony. As I’m writing this blog, there’s a lot that I forget that Mai’s mom and dad told me about the meaning of this ceremony and all that is going on, and hopefully in a month or so I’ll update this portion of the blog to give a more complete description of everything that is going on. In the beginning Mai’s uncle and other young men and boys are making a rope that people will walk under and rings out of thatch that people will carry as they circle around the tree. There are then shots of people gathering round the tree, which is a young papaya tree that was cut with the lower branches stripped. From what I know this is the time for people to walk around in one direction shedding everything bad from the past year, then reversing the direction and welcoming in the new year. And the whole time, an elder, in this case Mai’s uncle, waves a rooster overhead and chants a blessing for everyone. After the ceremony the rooster is sacrificed and his blood scattered at the base of the tree.
I really, really wanted to photograph the whole ceremony from the “outside” but they made it clear they wanted me to join in with everyone in walking around the tree and so the shots in this album are reflect an inside perspective.
And the first gallery finishes with shots of Mai’s uncle performing a ceremony for their house. He was requested to visit many houses where he brought his gong and you can hear it in the first video clip that was taken in the early morning when I videoed the children playing on the other side of the village. And the last photo is of a mother dressing her daughter for New Years.
The second gallery begins with shots taken during the day when there was some ball tossing (pob pov) and boys playing katow, a kind of volleyball game played with the feet and head. You don’t see any teens tossing ball and I would guess that they have left the village to visit bigger villages celebrating New Years where the pool of eligible male and females is larger. Tossing ball has evolved as a way for Hmong teens to socialize and find a mate since during the rest of the year they are too busy to take the time to find a boyfriend/girlfriend who they might want to marry. Plus, if they’re coming from a small village then any eligible mates may be of the same clan and it’s taboo to marry anyone from the same clan. But the young girls love to toss ball with friends and you’ll often see adults watching close by.
Then there is a portrait of a family, with a shot of the mother and daughters and a shot of the father and sons, and another one of three sisters.
Following is a series of a shaman in the village. They are all taken at the altar in his house where he’s performing a ceremony and you can see his assistant in a couple of the shots. The last photo is taken when the shaman is performing a ceremony for a mother and her young son. I have a video clip of that ceremony on the Video Insights page.
After the shaman series is one of an altar outside a house and I wish I could explain the altar’s significance. Anyone help me?
There’s then a series of boys playing tooloo. As is written in Hmong Folk Life by Joe Bee Xiong & Paw Moua, “The tujlub (pronounced "tooloo") is a wooden spinning top that is usually played by Hmong boys and men. It was popular in the villages of Laos and the sport has been continued in the United States. Tujlub was played all year around in Laos, but during the Hmong New Year tujlub competitions were always a part of the celebration. In the United States, tujlub is not played as often, but the game is slowly gaining popularity. Now that the tops are manufactured commercially, tujlub are easier to find. Also, there has also been a revived interest in the game by Hmong boys and teenagers. New teams are always forming, often through church or neighborhood groups. The teams get together to practice and play each other. If a team feels ready, it may compete in one of the more serious tujlub competitions often found in large cities. At the 2000 Fourth of July sports tournament in St Paul, Minnesota, there were sixteen teams from all over the United States who tried their hand at winning the $600 first place prize. Traditional tujlub were carved from a very hard wood called Plooj Hlis (pronounced blong hlee) or Ntoo Kub Twm (pronounced dong ku tu). The best wood to use was Ntoo Kub Twm because it was the hardest of all the woods in Laos. Ntoo Kub Twm can be translated to mean Buffalo Horn Tree. It was as strong as a buffalo horn and would not split. However, it was difficult to obtain in Laos because it could only be found up in the mountains. Here in the United States, new nylon tops are popular. They come in different weights and sizes and are almost indestructible. They will not split like some of the hand carved wooden tooloo. The art of spinning the Hmong top is as follows: There is a cotton string wrapped around the top of the tujlub. The string is tied to a long, thin, stick two to three feet in length. The tujlub is powered by jerking the stick in one direction and hurling the top in the opposite direction. As the string unwinds, it sends the tujlub spinning. Once you have mastered spinning the tujlub, you may want to play a game. There is no universal set of rules. Each village in Laos had their own rules. This is sometimes a problem at the competitions here in the U.S. All visiting teams must play by the rules of the home team. Of course, this puts the home teams at an advantage. The rules of the game can be rather involved, but here are a few basic rules. l. Any number of people can play tujlub. For safety reasons, all players stand behind a starting line. Flying tops can be dangerous! 2. Let's say there are four players, two on each team. To decide who goes first, one player from each team spins his or her tujlub. The team whose player's top spins the longest goes first. Let's call that team Team Turtle. We'll call the other team Team Crocodile. 3. All the players on Team Crocodile set their tops spinning about 10 feet in front of the starting line. For safety reasons, they should stand behind the starting line when they throw their tujlub. 4. All the players on Team Turtle throw their tujlub and try to hit Team Crocodile's already spinning tops. Once a top is hit, the player whose top spins the longest is the winner. If any of Team Turtle's tujlub don't hit an opponent's top, that player is out. If any of Team Turtle's tops fall first, that player is out until the next round. 5. Keep playing until everyone on Team Turtle is out, then change positions. For a more competitive game, points can be awarded. Or to make the game more challenging, the players can throw their tops further from the starting line.”
Boys and young men will play this game anytime during the dry season, but especially during the New Year celebration. And it’s even become one of the contested games at the Lao National Games.
Back to the photo gallery. After the tooloo shots are shots of children I took while I stayed at Ban Phu Leuy. My favorite is of the four girls huddled together. Their eyes I think are mesmerizing.
Being a teacher I had to see their school and a small group of students took me to the school perched on a small hill towards the top of the village. It’s about as small of a school as I’ve ever seen and I can imagine by looking at the roof that when it’s raining, forget it. Education in a small village like this is minimal, to say the least and a remote school like Ban Phu Leuy is lucky if they even have a high school graduate teaching school. But many of the Hmong students are tenacious and work out ways to escape the village to go to larger schools closer to Luang Prabang. One such student, Thongby, who’s right hand was blown off by a bombie when he was a young boy, has now ended up in Vientiane and has been studying English thanks to the financial support of my friend, Jim Harris. Since he lost his hand, his parents knew he wouldn’t be any good with farming and so focused on helping him do the best he could at school and figured out a way for him to attend a boarding school close to Luang Prabang when he was of high school age.
In the photos in the gallery I like the one of the students standing on the bench, and by the way, the older, taller boy on the right arranged them by height from smallest to tallest!
The school and student photos are followed by two photos of the naibon (village leader) and then a series taken when they had a special meal and bacci ceremony in honor of my arrival in the village. The Hmong, like the Lao, believe in lost or wandering souls, though the Lao believe each person has 32 souls and the Hmong believe there are either 3 or 5. As is written in the Field Guide to Hmong Culture produced by the Madison Children’s Museum,
“The spirit is often referred to as the soul, and, while it is usual in the West to believe that each of us has one soul, the Hmong believe that each of us has either three or five souls (according to different opinions). Some Hmong believe that one soul occupies the head area, one the region of the torso, and one the leg area. Other Hmong believe that a person has five souls; each of them named after an object in nature: reindeer, running bull, chicken, growing bamboo, and shadow.
In any case, according to Hmong tradition these souls, acting in harmony, produce a happy, healthy life. However, when even one of these souls begins to exhibit a lack of harmony with the others, trouble follows and life may become unpleasant and unhappy. Indeed, illness may be the result, and even, in extreme cases, death. Thus, we can see that the harmony of a Hmong’s souls is very important, and when this harmony is lost it must be restored quickly.
In fact, the Hmong believe that one or more souls may sometimes not only fall out of harmony with the others, it may even decide to leave the body altogether and go elsewhere. This “soul loss,” or poob plig, as it is called in the Hmong language, is a serious situation and requires measures to call the straying soul back. These measures are collectively known as “soul calling,” or hu plig. The missing soul may have wandered away to someplace nearby, or it may have wandered far – even to the spirit world, a place similar to our world, but inhabited by spirits and other disembodied beings. In such a case, calling back the soul may be a problem.
This soul calling, although it sounds very difficult, is, in fact, a fairly common ceremony with which all Hmong become familiar at an early age. Although required when an individual falls ill, soul calling may also be performed to prevent illness and promote good health; a soul calling is performed three after the birth of every new Hmong baby. In addition, at the time of the Hmong New Year celebration, a soul calling ceremony is performed for the entire family. A soul calling ceremony will be held for a newlywed couple on the third day after their union, and may even be performed for a family member who is about to undertake a long journey or who has just arrived home from such a journey. When a Hmong is ill, however, or has fallen, or merely become frightened, a soul calling ceremony is most often performed. For that matter, in any instance in which it is felt the individual may have lost one or more of his souls (sometimes even without knowing it!) a soul calling ceremony will be performed. This ceremony may be performed by any individual who is not shy and knows the method; however, it is usually performed by an elderly person, by a Hmong shaman, or by another variety of medical professional or healer.”
After the bacci ceremony photos there is a series taken in the village of village life, from feeding pigs to grinding soy beans. I remember going into the house where the young women had just finished carrying the heavy bags of soy beans from a garden far away to keep in the bin inside this house. You can see the sweat on the back of the one woman’s blouse and when we asked them about what they thought of life in Ban Phu Leuy all three stated they much rather live closer to Luang Prabang and didn’t like the heavy work they had to do…
And then there is a group photo of myself with Mai’s grandma, uncles and all the other relatives, a photo I really treasure. And then my last portrait of Mai’s grandma followed by her grave. I guess she felt some pains in her stomach which quickly got worse over several days, and although they did take her to the village of Ban Phu Leuy, they didn’t take her to Luang Prabang and she died within a week of when she first felt ill. I think both her sons died under similar circumstances the following year, which was harder for me to understand since they were probably only in their forties. But, the average life span in Laos is only 55 years old, so Mai’s grandma beat the odds, while her uncles didn’t meet them…
The photos at the end of the gallery show when I hiked back to Ban Heuy Ot after spending three nights at Ban Phu Leuy. The naibon and security chief had attended the special dinner and bacci up at Ban Phu Leuy and although I remember them inviting Kham Fan and I to visit with them after we arrived in the village, after not bathing for three days and feeling grungy, I was looking forward to getting back to Luang Prabang. But as we came down the trail and turned on to the road that led into Ban Huey Ot I could hear a lot of people and as we rounded the bend, there were all these people dressed up in their New Years clothes and as we entered into the village Hmong girls came up to me and handed me bouquets of flowers. The first two photos in the sequence, aren’t really photos, but stills taken from video footage that Kham Fan took. We were quite surprised to be greeted so royally and if you look at the clips you will see that Kham Fan had to catch up to take the video and it’s a little hurky-jerky, but better than nothing. The security chief, not only of Ban Huey Ot, but for a total of six Hmong villages had a rare two-story house and the bacci ceremony and meal were served “upstairs.” One of the two girls serving the lao-lao (lao whiskey) was his daughter.
He really put a lot of effort into this and what he wanted from me was some kind of helping improving the education of children in this village. When I left I told him I would try to think of ways to help and two years later in the summer of 2002 when I was leading a tour to Laos, I had two Hmong University of Wisconsin students, who were sisters, and very much wanted to meet with him and I thought they might be able to help raise money in their Hmong community for this village. But although he was able to come down to Luang Prabang and meet with the girls, the big meeting that was planned in Ban Huey Ot didn’t happen because when we tried to drive up there, it was raining hard and the road was just too bad. And ever since I’ve never been back up to Ban Heuy Ot or Ban Phu Leuy.
In my first post I talk about Zoomify.com and the free software available to zoomify images. It works wonders for maps and I thought I would try it with some of my larger Hmong story cloths. Check out the three I zoomified below.
The next set of images are of Hmong storycloths I have purchased in Laos.
This first image is of a smaller Hmong History Storycloth that incorporates Wat Tham Krabok. I was extremely surprised to come across this cloth and would like to talk with the woman/women who designed/embroidered this cloth to find out what motivated them to change the basic design (taken from Dia's Storycloth).
This second image is a large 41 inches by 68 inches / 84 inches by 110 inches w/border storyclothwhich features the three different major ethnic groupings in Laos. The Lao Soung represented by the Hmong and Mien, Lao Theung and Lao Loum. There's so much going on in this cloth, so many traditional activities represented including all aspects of rice production, and the embroidery is exquisite. The zoomified image allows one to zoom in fairly close without a loss of quality. Laos Essentail Artistry has other similar cloths, in both horizontal and vertical formats for sale.
This third image is a large, 41 by 74 inches / 63 by 96 inches w/border, storycloth based on the Hmong history storycloth seen in the children's book, Dia's Storycloth, by Dia Cha. These storycloths aren't too common, though I've seen about six or seven, and all are variations the theme. I have three of the storycloths and have zoomified the one I like best. There's great discussion material here for students and teachers...
The Lao word in the center of the heart above translates literally as nam jhai, "water" "heart". An act of nam jhai, of water flowing from the heart, is an act of kindness, an opening of the heart. A quality highly respected by the Lao and Thai people.
