Coc Ly

On Tuesday mornings, the dirt road into the center of Cốc Ly fills up. Baskets of greens, lengths of brocade and brightly colored costumes all drift in the same direction. Below the road, the Chảy River runs clear and green, quieter than the market taking shape on its bank.

Cốc Ly is a commune of Lào Cai Province. It belongs to the Bắc Hà area and lies in limestone mountains cut through by the river, with mountains and water around it on three sides. The Nhân Dân newspaper once called it an "oasis" of Lào Cai. That was a figure of speech for a place both remote and closed in, as it was before the roads improved.

The commune has 19 villages. It is home to the Hmong, Dao, Nùng and Tày peoples. The Tày and the Nùng are two peoples of northern Vietnam with closely related languages and similar cultures.

Because of this setting, the Cốc Ly market matters a great deal. It is held every Tuesday. On each market day, people from the villages across the commune, and from neighboring communes, come down together. They bring brocade they wove themselves, crops they grew, animals they raised, and household goods to swap. The market is a place to buy and sell, and just as much a meeting place, where a family can share a hot bowl of phở with an acquaintance from a faraway village.

The Lào Cai newspaper described the market on a busy day this way: "a whole region of forest and mountain crowded with people buying and selling local goods, bright with the colors of brocade." There are Hmong skirts embroidered with geometric patterns, red Dao headscarves, and glossy black indigo shirts of the Tày. These are the everyday clothes of the people who wear them, not props.

On the Bắc Hà route, the second thing that sets the commune apart is the boat line on the Chảy River. Boats run from the landing at Bảo Nhai to Cốc Ly, and back again the other way. The distance is about three kilometers, and the trip takes about 30 minutes. The route is served by 20 boats, each carrying at most 10 people. The river here is gentle, with cliffs and forest on both banks and villages tucked in between.

All 20 boats are fitted with life jackets. It is a small sign that this stretch of river is well organized and not a makeshift ferry.

On some mornings, from the bow of a boat, the two cliffs and the forest slide away behind, and the surface of the river lies flat and gives back the color of the sky. At the start of the trip, the Tuesday market still rings with voices. The steam of hot phở still rises, and the colors of the brocade have not yet faded.