Choan Then Village

A hand laid on the thick earth wall of a rammed-earth house finds it cold and rough. The marks of pressing hands, made over many days, are still in the surface.

Morning mist rolls in below the village, and the mountain wind brings the smoke of Hà Nhì kitchen fires, a smell all its own. This is Choản Thèn, a village in the commune of Y Tý. It lies in the Bát Xát area of Lào Cai province.

According to the Lào Cai newspaper, the People's Committee of the province issued Decision 1926 on June 7, 2021. The decision recognized Choản Thèn as a tourist site.

The village sits high in the Bát Xát highlands, close to the northern border of the province. The land folds into sharp ridges, the air is cold, and fog is common.

The Hà Nhì are one of Vietnam's ethnic groups, and they live in the high mountains of the north. Most of them in this province live in the Bát Xát area, about 99.2 percent of all the Hà Nhì here. The people of this village are Hà Nhì Đen.

The Hà Nhì Đen keep a style of building that is very much their own, the rammed-earth house, called nhà trình tường. The most painstaking step is the ramming of the wall itself, the newspaper says.

Earth is mixed, packed into wooden forms, and pressed down hard, layer by layer. All of it is done by hand, with no cement and no sand or gravel. Even so, the wall is no less sturdy than concrete. Almost every Hà Nhì man knows the technique.

These houses stay warm in winter and cool in summer, which suits the highland climate.

The Hà Nhì see the rammed-earth house as the core space of their culture. Many traditional crafts, folk games and festival activities all belong under its roof.

Another heritage is the Khô Già Già festival. It is a festival of the Hà Nhì Đen to pray for a good season. Since 2015 the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has ranked it national intangible cultural heritage.

In 2025 the festival ran from June 28 to June 30 by the solar calendar. It was held in four communes. Two of them were Y Tý and A Lù. The others were Nậm Pung and Trịnh Tường. People prayed for steady rain, gentle wind and a full harvest.

Many people are drawn to Y Tý for the cloud season. The newspaper describes it this way: on long cold days with drizzle, when the sun breaks through, water vapor rises and gathers into a thick layer of cloud over the mountains.

Choản Thèn drifts in that cloud. Its houses appear and vanish, as if floating on a sea of white cotton.

This is a village of the Hà Nhì Đen, who live with their fields, with walls of pounded earth that last, and with the slow pace of the clouds.

The earth walls still hold their warmth through each winter. When the sun comes up, Choản Thèn floats once more on its sea of white cloud.