Phu Vinh Rattan and Bamboo Village

From early morning, a clinking sound of splitting carries out of the open rooms in Phú Nghĩa commune. A worker sits low, gripping a length of rattan between the knees, and runs both hands along its stem to part it into thin, even strips. The Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports calls this the hardest step in making Phú Vinh rattan and bamboo ware. It takes a highly skilled hand, because if the strips are uneven, the whole piece comes out warped.

The village of Phú Vinh belongs to Phú Nghĩa commune. That is in Chương Mỹ, part of Hanoi, about 27 kilometers southwest of the city center, according to the same department. Weaving with rattan and bamboo here goes back more than 400 years. People often call the area the land of rattan.

A legend the villagers tell says that long ago, egrets gathered here in great numbers. People picked up the feathers the birds dropped and wove them into hats, then gradually turned to rattan, bamboo and giang as feathers grew scarce. No academic history confirms the legend. Still, it has been handed down through many generations as a reminder that the craft began with the skill of turning natural materials into something useful.

In the old days, Phú Vinh workers made baskets, colanders, sieves and baskets for holding vegetables and fish. Today they make hundreds of decorative designs: ornamental trays and plates, lanterns, hotel furniture, fashion bags, and portraits woven from rattan alone.

The artisan Nguyễn Văn Khiếu was born in 1905. According to the newspaper Hànộimới, he was the first in Phú Vinh to develop a way of weaving portraits with just two colors, the ivory white and the natural brown of rattan.

Once the rattan, bamboo and giang are gathered, they are split, then dried in the sun or smoked to bring out their color. The Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports says this stage lasts about ten days, to make the ware durable. Rattan dried in the sun turns ivory white, and smoked giang turns yellow-brown. Workers combine the natural color of each kind of strip into patterns, with no chemical dye.

The department also reports that the commune has more than 2,400 households in the trade and more than 4,200 regular workers. Nine artisans are officially recognized, six of them named outstanding artisans. Products from Phú Vinh reach users in nearly 50 countries, from Japan, the United States and the Netherlands to Germany and France.

In the department's count, the Chương Mỹ area has 172 villages that weave with rattan, bamboo and giang. Of these, 33 are recognized as traditional craft villages. Phú Vinh is the most prominent name among them.

A visitor to Phú Vinh sees the real rhythm of work in the workers' own homes. This is a living neighborhood, not a place staged for display. In front of each house, pale strips dry in the yard beside coils of rattan waiting for a hand.

Every day, the hands of Phú Vinh workers still split strips and weave, making goods that travel around the world. Each woven piece holds many hours of effort and a technique built up over more than 400 years. And the clink of splitting still rings out every morning, living proof of the rattan land of Chương Mỹ.