Hon Village of the Lu

Most Vietnamese have never heard the name of a people who live in the mountains of Lai Châu. They are the Lự.

The Lự are one of the smallest ethnic groups in Vietnam. They live mostly in Lai Châu Province, around Tam Đường and Sìn Hồ. They have their own language and their own writing too, the old Lự script. Their customs, festivals and crafts are entirely their own, and no one could mistake them for the Thái, the Hmong or any other people of the region.

In all of Vietnam, there is only one community tourism village of the Lự. It is Bản Hon.

The village is made up of two hamlets, Bản Hon 1 and Bản Hon 2, both in Bản Hon Commune in Tam Đường, Lai Châu. In 2013, the village was officially developed as a site of community cultural tourism. It was not chosen by chance but because Lự culture and architecture are kept here almost intact.

The first thing to see is more than 100 wooden stilt houses standing on stone foundations. This is the traditional architecture of the Lự. It differs from a Thái stilt house in how the inside is divided. There is a separate room for worship, set entirely apart from the sleeping area and the kitchen. The Lự do not put the altar in the middle of the house, as many other peoples do. The worship space has a fixed place and is clearly sacred.

In the village, women sit beside their looms. A Lự woman is tied to the loom from the time she is small. She grows her own cotton, spins her own thread, dyes her own colors and weaves the cloth, all by hand. Lự woven cloth has distinctive geometric patterns, and its colors and techniques are entirely its own. It cannot be mistaken for Thái or Hmong cloth. Each bag and each length of cloth holds many hours of careful work by one person. It is handcraft, not mass production.

Among the older grandmothers, some have black teeth. This is not a disease. It is an old beauty custom of Lự women, and the dye comes from tree bark. In the traditional view, white teeth were ugly, and only animals had white teeth. The custom was once common among many peoples of Southeast Asia, including the Kinh long ago. Now it can be seen almost only on elderly Lự grandmothers, and the younger generation has not kept it up. It is a part of the culture that is slowly fading.

The Lự have two important farming festivals. Kin Khẩu Máy celebrates the new rice once the harvest is done, and it is the most important occasion of the year. Sú Khon Khoài honors the spirits of the buffalo. It reflects a spiritual belief about the animal that has been bound to the rice fields for generations.

In many farming cultures of Southeast Asia, the buffalo is more than a tool for work. It is a member of the family and a symbol of prosperity. The Lự have a festival of their own to honor the spirits of buffalo. That says how much the bond matters between people and the land, between the farmer and the animal that plowed beside him through the generations.

A slow walk through the village shows the small details. The stilt houses rise on foundations of laid stones. Patterns are woven into every length of cloth. Old and young live in the same space. It is one of the few places in Vietnam that keep the culture of a small people intact.

The dry season runs from October to March of the following year. Sunlight spreads gold over the stone foundations, and the roofs of the stilt houses stand out clearly among the hills.

Bản Hon is not a noisy tourist spot. It has no dazzling shows. It offers something few other places do. It is the chance to stand in the cultural space of the Lự and see the everyday life of a small people, not through a screen and not through a museum, but right where they live.