Bac Ha Market

Sunday in Bắc Hà is not like Sunday anywhere else. Mist still lies on the hillsides when people from the villages around begin walking down to the market.

They wear traditional dress. They carry baskets, lead their livestock, and bring bundles wrapped in embroidered cloth. The stream of people grows with every hour, and by about nine in the morning the Bắc Hà market has become a sea of color on the white plateau.

According to the Lào Cai Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Bắc Hà market is a meeting place for the people of many ethnic groups who live in the area. It is held every Sunday.

But people do not come to Bắc Hà only to buy goods. What matters more at the market is the atmosphere.

Inside, the market has several different sections. The farm produce section shows what this land gives. There are vegetables, shiitake and wood ear mushrooms, tam hoa plums, Shan tuyết tea, and other seasonal goods. These are typical goods, brought down by the people from their gardens and from the forest to trade. They are not city market goods. They are things picked and grown on this very ground.

The brocade and jewelry section is where the color is brightest. There is hand-embroidered cloth, silver bracelets, earrings and souvenirs, made and sold by the local people themselves. Most sellers made what they sell with their own hands, and they bring it down to the market once a week.

The livestock and poultry section is usually the most crowded and the loudest. Buffalo, cattle, horses, pigs and many kinds of poultry change hands here. It is not a scene staged for visitors. It is the real pulse of highland farming life. Voices calling to one another, the clatter of hooves and the sound of haggling rise from one whole corner of the market.

The food section deserves a closer look. The dish named most often at the Bắc Hà market is thắng cố. It is a traditional dish of the Hmong, tied to market days. It is a stew made from many parts of livestock, cooked in a huge pan, with a very distinctive flavor. The Bắc Hà market is also remembered for one giant pan of thắng cố that was once recorded as a Vietnam Guinness record.

Beyond thắng cố there is Bắc Hà phở. There is mèn mén, a highland corn dish, and bánh đúc ngô, another dish made from corn. There is also Bản Phố corn liquor, a specialty of the area, distilled from corn grown in hillside fields and well known across the Northwest. The smell of corn liquor drifts through the market, mixed with the smoke of thắng cố. People who have been to Bắc Hà do not easily forget it.

What makes the market so alive is that it is not a display of culture put up for visitors. It is the market of the local people. They come to buy and sell, to meet friends again, to eat a hot bowl of thắng cố and to swap the news of the week. Most sellers come down only once a week, bringing what they grew and made themselves. A buyer who walks in steps into that living space as an invited guest.

Then, in the afternoon, as the plateau sun leans down over the hillsides, the crowd flows back to the villages. They carry salt, oil, a few lengths of new cloth, and stories they have just heard. The brocade colors thin out, the thắng cố smoke fades, and the market falls quiet to wait for another Sunday.

Out on the plateau, the laughter, the haggling and the hooves of horses all blend together into one sound. People travel as far as a hundred kilometers to be here on a Sunday morning.