My Nghiep Weaving Village

Walking into Mỹ Nghiệp, the first thing you hear is usually the loom. It is a dry, steady clatter that spills out of the houses along both sides of the road. It is the sound of a craft that is still alive.

The village stands in Ninh Phước commune. Since the provinces were merged in July 2025, that commune belongs to Khánh Hòa province. Before the merger it lay in Ninh Thuận. It is about 10 kilometers south of the old town center of Phan Rang and Tháp Chàm. So a listing that places the village in Ninh Thuận gives the name that was correct before the merger.

Brocade weaving in Mỹ Nghiệp is women's work, and the weavers are Cham. The Cham are a people of south-central Vietnam whose ancestors lived in the ancient kingdom of Champa. The craft is passed down in the matrilineal tradition, from mother to child. From an early age, Cham girls learn to spin thread, dye it, wind spools and set the threads, and only then to weave patterns. Each step takes years of learning and practice.

A piece of brocade does not come from one person sitting at a loom for a few hours. It passes through many hands and many steps. Separating the cotton. Spinning the thread. Dyeing. Winding the spools. Setting the threads. Only then comes the weaving. The hardest part is not passing the shuttle with an even hand, but keeping the rhythm of the pattern while counting threads. Each motif asks the weaver to know where to lay the crosswise thread among the lengthwise ones, and in what order. There is no drawing. There is only memory and hands.

Cham brocade has many kinds of patterns. The motifs of Mỹ Nghiệp include popped sticky rice grains, mai blossoms, chicken's eyes, turtle shells, buffalo and dragons. Others carry Cham names. One is Bingu Tamun, the shape of a trám fruit. Another is Bingu Bimong, the shape of a tower. A local government portal counts more than 30 kinds of pattern, and some complex old ones have been brought back.

The craft here is not newly discovered. The Nhân Dân newspaper calls one workshop a milestone in reviving it. That workshop is Inrahani, run by the artisan Thuận Thị Trụ from 1992. That milestone came when Mỹ Nghiệp brocade began to reach a wider market. In 2010, the Mỹ Nghiệp Brocade Weaving Cooperative was founded. It brought the artisans together, organized production and welcomed visitors. Today, besides traditional cloth, the workshops also make scarves, bags, purses, backpacks, vests and neckties. The craft has adapted to the market while keeping hand weaving.

According to a Cham legend recorded by many sources, weaving here is tied to the goddess Po Nagar. She is also called Po Yang Inư Nagar, and in Cham belief she is the Mother of the Land. This is a cultural and spiritual memory of the craft, not a historical event in the sense of a chronicle. By telling the story of their craft through a divine legend, the community shows that it sees the work as more than a way to earn a living. It is something sacred, handed down.

Mỹ Nghiệp tells a living story of how a community has kept a craft through many generations, by hand, through mothers, and with a memory that needs no drawing. The Cham regard this craft as handed down from the divine. At a loom that is running, the shuttle slips back and forth, and the pattern appears one thread at a time.