Van Phuc Silk Village

The clack of a shuttle rings out from a weaving room. A weaver sits behind a wooden loom, sending the shuttle back and forth. When the light slants across the cloth, patterns rise and sink in the silk, clear one moment and faint the next, like thin clouds passing by. This is Vân silk, the signature product of Vạn Phúc silk village.

The village lies beside the Nhuệ River. Today it belongs to Vạn Phúc ward in Hà Đông, about 10 kilometers from the center of Hanoi. According to the newspaper Hànộimới, silk has been woven here for thousands of years. In March 2014, the Vietnam Book of Records Center presented a certificate naming Vạn Phúc the oldest silk-weaving craft village in Vietnam that still works today. The certificate was handed over right at the village communal house.

A legend kept among the villagers says that the woman who brought weaving to Vạn Phúc was Lady A Lã Thị Nương, also called Lã Thị Nga. It is a legend, not an event established by scholarly records. Still, the people of the village have told it through many generations. Every festival season they hold a procession at the communal house in honor of the founder of their craft, as the newspaper Nhân Dân reports.

Both Hànộimới and Nhân Dân report that under the Nguyễn dynasty, this silk was chosen to make clothing for the royal family. The Nguyễn dynasty was Vietnam's last royal dynasty, and it reigned from 1802 to 1945. In the first half of the 20th century, Vạn Phúc silk also went out into the wider world. According to Nhân Dân, it appeared at the international exhibition in Marseille in 1931, then again at the one in Paris in 1932. The French judged it the finest handcrafted product in all of Indochina.

What built that fame is the craft of weaving Vân silk. Once the silkworm thread has been reeled, it is boiled clean and dyed before it ever reaches the loom. The weaver then sets the threads in an arrangement all their own. The pattern comes not from color but from the rise and fall of the weave. That is why the Vân pattern shows clearly only when the cloth is seen at an angle in the light. Looked at straight on, the silk is as smooth and sleek as the surface of water.

Vạn Phúc is also a place of revolutionary history. According to Hànộimới, the village was once a safe zone for the Party's Central Committee, from 1939 to 1945. Here, in late 1946, President Hồ Chí Minh wrote his Call for Nationwide Resistance. The house where he worked is still kept as a historic site.

Today, the communal house, the Silk Street area and the weaving rooms around the village make up one connected route for visitors. According to Hànộimới, more than 100 households work in the trade. Each year they produce from 1.2 million to 1.5 million meters of silk of all kinds.

Along the lanes, the real working rhythm of the artisans is easy to hear. The click of shuttles drifts out of one house after another and into the street. This is a living village, where every length of silk comes from the hands of a weaver at the loom, day after day.

Vân silk has lasted to this day because of the weavers' patience. As long as the sound of the shuttle still carries through the village, the Vân pattern will keep rising out of the cloth under the light.