{"id":267,"date":"2011-03-01T03:24:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T03:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/?p=267"},"modified":"2013-09-25T03:43:09","modified_gmt":"2013-09-25T03:43:09","slug":"trekking-to-trang-trangs-traditional-hmong-jewelry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/?p=267","title":{"rendered":"Trekking to Trang & Tea\u2019s; Trang’s Traditional H’mong Jewelry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trekking to Trang & Tea\u2019s; Trang’s Traditional H’mong Jewelry<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sure we\u2019d make it.\u00a0 Between the recent soaking rains and the prevailing hilltribe conviction that switchbacks are inefficient, the steep route ahead look unforgivingly slick.\u00a0 Especially for my 79-year-old mom.<\/p>\n

\"Trang<\/a>

Trang and Tea\u2019s home in Lao Cai Province.<\/p><\/div>\n

Our friend and guide, Sho Lythi (featured in Newsletter #6), led the way.\u00a0 \u201cMy brother-in-law Trang is just up the hill,\u201d she chimed.\u00a0 \u201cMaybe 20, 25 minutes more.\u201d\u00a0 Of course she weighs about 80 lbs. and has danced on these slippery slopes since she could first walk.\u00a0 \u201cThis is no problem \u2013 I will help your mother. I will pull her from above, and you can push from below.\u201d\u00a0 My confidence was not increasing.<\/p>\n

\"Sho<\/a>

Sho and Ari helping Grandma across a slippery, steep slope.<\/p><\/div>\n

10 minutes later, Sho\u2019s sister, Tea, came gliding down the thick mud slope.\u00a0 Incredibly, not a spatter of muck touched anything but her thin flip-flops.\u00a0 She laughed as she looked at our trepid stance.\u00a0\u00a0 Tea said something coyly in H\u2019mong to Sho and quickly fell to pushing and pulling us up to her modest home at the very top of the habitable mountain-side slope.\u00a0 Fortunately, we encountered no crisis that the laundry couldn\u2019t resolve.<\/p>\n

\"Trang<\/a>

Trang crafting an earring while the cat warms by the fire.<\/p><\/div>\n

Tea\u2019s home nestled on a carved terrace ledge overlooking the valley; each 10-foot wide terrace had an abrupt wall-edge that dropped several feet to meet the next terrace.\u00a0 Scraps of wooden branches were cleverly woven into fences to protect the precarious mud-walls from the pigs, buffalo and humans that might damage the sculpted farmland.\u00a0 Being winter, the terraces lay mostly fallow save for a few pumpkin plants and a rich array of leafy greens.\u00a0 Spring would see corn, rice, and other crops filling every fertile corner.<\/p>\n

Tea\u2019s husband, a talented Black H\u2019mong metal-smith, greeted us shyly, then returned to his crouched position next to the slatted window that allowed sunlight to illuminate his workspace.\u00a0 A variety of small hammers, pliers, and metal punches sat on a work stump.\u00a0 He worked quickly, methodically, efficiently; metal shavings littered the ground at his feet.\u00a0 He was eager to complete the \u201cfern-frond\u201d earring set before lunch, knowing he had one more sale if he could finish the task.\u00a0 And, in truth, we bought every necklace and set of earrings he completed.<\/p>\n

\"Tea<\/a>

Tea wearing earrings and hair comb crafted by Trang.<\/p><\/div>\n

Tea disappeared into the side-room kitchen as Sho stoked the living area fire with one stick of hardwood and a couple splinters of wide bamboo.\u00a0 We all appreciated the extra warmth on this mid-winter day, and the smoke smelled good.\u00a0 To a westerner, the home, like much of rural Vietnam, offered an eclectic mix of Spartan simplicity and modern practicality.\u00a0 The simple fire on the dirt floor was juxtaposed with the rice cooker\u2019s glowing red light.\u00a0 Tea and Trang\u2019s youngest son, a smiley 3-year-old, played on a wheel-less bicycle set in the front room.\u00a0 A large sow slept a few feet outside of the front door, and grunted greedily when a pumpkin was split open.\u00a0 The daughter helped wash greens using the hand-pump in the kitchen.\u00a0 Drying corn hung from the rafters.<\/p>\n

\"Trang<\/a>

Trang and Tea\u2019s youngest on his bike.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sho had thoughtfully requested that we purchase food at the morning market to contribute to the meal as the family\u2019s means were modest, and the addition of our appetites would stretch their resources.\u00a0 Within an hour of our arrival, a large meal was set for our family of five plus five more \u2013 the adults guests got to use the four chairs.\u00a0 Steaming plates of greens with pork and ginger, fresh bamboo shoots with buffalo, fresh tofu from the morning market with tomatoes, and garden pumpkin soup were served with gracious smiles all around.\u00a0 It was delicious!<\/p>\n

Trang had learned his metal-working skills from a local elder.\u00a0 Trang knew that farming alone would not support his family in this sparse environment, and living a couple hours walk away from the tourist town of Sapa granted him access to a wider customer base.\u00a0 Several members of the extended family (which including Sho before she moved on exclusively to guiding services) offer his jewelry to both western and Vietnamese tourists in the local market.<\/p>\n

\"Tea<\/a>

Tea cutting up pumpkin for lunch.<\/p><\/div>\n

Trang can work with silver as well as nickel-bronze.\u00a0 But the high up-front cost of silver and its limited market appeal pulls Trang to work more with nickel-bronze.\u00a0 Most H\u2019mong women as well as tourists prefer more affordable nickel-bronze or aluminum \u201cbling\u201d as well; locals relegate silver jewelry to wedding-wear and dowry value, and not to the desired everyday use of bright dangly and hoop earrings and extravagant necklaces.<\/p>\n

\"Trang<\/a>

Trang crafting earrings for us to buy that day.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"His<\/a>

His workbench is a slab of wood, his tools simple, and his workmanship traditional & exquisite.<\/p><\/div>\n

After three hours of eating and chatting, and our promise to sell Trang\u2019s jewelry in the USA and come back seeking more, we gathered up our treasured bag of finished jewelry and prepared to slide back down the mountainside.\u00a0 Luckily, an hour of afternoon sun had set the mud a bit firmer, and our careful steps, with Sho\u2019s firm support and freshly-chopped bamboo walking sticks, got us back down the hill without catastrophe.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Hmong shaman mid-trance, chanting to invoke healing spirits.<\/p><\/div>\n

Near the bottom, we heard a constant drumbeat and a monotone female chant coming from another hillside home.\u00a0 A rather distraught and inebriated gentleman stumbled out of his dark, smoky home and, bleary-eyed, indicated for us to enter his home.\u00a0 Sho confirmed that indeed a H\u2019mong shaman had been hired to clear his home of recent illness.\u00a0 We were unsure as to whether it would be appropriate for us to interrupt the healing ceremony, although we were intrigued with the rare opportunity to see a shaman in trance doing her work.\u00a0 The man looked desperate and again, through Sho, urged us forward.\u00a0 We tiptoed into the dark home, and watched the candlelit shaman rock back and forth intently as she wailed a fast, tuneless prayer.\u00a0 We stayed only a minute or two, feeling both honored and out-of-place.\u00a0 The old man nodded quickly as we bowed with gratitude for the honor of bearing witness to the ceremony.\u00a0 Afterward, Sho confided to us that the elder thought our family\u2019s presence in his home might intimidate the malevolent spirits so they would exit more quickly.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The gracious kindness of Trang and Tea and the heartfelt plea of a mourning elder were the bookends of an amazing afternoon\u2019s adventure.\u00a0 And we can\u2019t let the story go by without thanking Sho Lythi and her extended family for welcoming us into their lives in rural Lao Cai Province in northern Vietnam; she has opened so many unusual and wonderful doors for both our pleasure and our business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trekking to Trang & Tea\u2019s; Trang’s Traditional H’mong Jewelry I wasn\u2019t sure we\u2019d make it.\u00a0 Between the recent soaking rains and the prevailing hilltribe conviction that switchbacks are inefficient, the steep route ahead look unforgivingly slick.\u00a0 Especially for my 79-year-old … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hilltribeart.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}