“The corn will be dried. Part of it is for pigs, anoth­er part is for chick­ens and the last part is used to make corn rice.”

Grand­ma Đậu, 87, sits in her house shelling corn, talk­ing about her vil­lage and cul­ture. She is wear­ing the tra­di­tion­al clothes of the Dao eth­nic group, one of the 54 eth­nic groups in Viet­nam. “I made my clothes a long time ago. It is all hand­made” she explains. It’s quite com­mon to see mem­bers of the Dao eth­nic group wear­ing their tra­di­tion­al hand­made clothes in every­day life.

“When I was a kid, my ances­tors told me that this area was just forests. My vil­lage is new, my cur­rent house used to be my ancestor’s rice field. I used to live in the oth­er vil­lage. It is more than 200 years old.”

The old vil­lage she refers to sits on the moun­tain­side over­look­ing the val­ley she lives in now.

“I have nev­er trav­eled to any places far away from my vil­lage. I only go to town.”

“I am hap­py on Tet (Viet­namese Lunar New Year) because on that occa­sion the locals vis­it each oth­er and drink togeth­er. Nor­mal­ly, I stay at home alone or walk around because young peo­ple are busy and don’t have much time for me.” 

“I wish I could become younger to see the dif­fer­ences in my vil­lages in the future.”

“In the past, there used to be just corn and rice here, none of us thought there would be cars vis­it­ing our vil­lage. I want to become younger, so I can live longer to see how my vil­lage will change in the com­ing years.”

Lý Thị Đậu, 87 years old
Dao Cham Eth­nic Group
Ha Giang, Vietnam

Dao Ethnic Group — Summary