Natural air freshener: An elderly farmer piles up cut rice stems in front of the gate to his centuries-old brick house in Duong Lam. Drying rice stems along village roads is a practice typical of the northern farming scene during crop harvesting, when the fragrance of fresh rice imbues whole villages. — VNS Photo Doan Tung Laughing well: A Mong Phu woman relaxes at the village well where people come to chat with neighbours. — VNS Photo Tran Dinh

Northern village vies for world recognition

"Conservationists describe the village as the last stronghold of northern Viet Nam’s wet rice farming culture."

by Tri Binh – Tran Dinh

Just north of Ha Noi, a small village that has somehow managed to escape the winds of change sweeping through the country, has its heart set on becoming Viet Nam’s next world heritage site.

Vietnamese and Japanese conservationists have given themselves six years to turn Duong Lam village, 50km north-west of Ha Noi, into a worthy rival to Hoi An on the central coast.

They think Duong Lam is worthy of such recognition because of the village’s unique layout, time-honoured architectural designs and adherence to traditional farming techniques.

The conservationists describe the village as the last stronghold of northern Viet Nam’s wet rice farming culture.

The only noticeable change over the past 400 years is the division of the village from one small community to nine riverine hamlets, among them Mong Phu, Cam Lam, Cam Da and Mia.

The hamlets lie scattered along the Day River and were established to accommodate Duong Lam’s growing population.

Archaeologists say few villages in rural Viet Nam can match Mong Phu’s "zoning" which highlights the villagers’ old vigilance against possible bandit attacks.

Mong Phu is the only one among the nine hamlets to still have its old village gate. The main road runs straight through the hamlet, while five smaller routes – which are so small two buffaloes could not make it through together – branch off on either side serving as roads to five smaller hamlets.

At the end of each hamlet there was a brick nightwatch hut.

Phan Van Chung, the 63-year-old village chief and retired lecturer from the Ha Noi Teachers’ Training College, said the nightwatch huts were demolished in the early 1960s.

Although, villagers are rebuilding the huts after discovering that what they thought were "remnants of Viet Nam’s feudal regime," are considered architecturally valuable to the outside world.

Keeping up appearances

The first attempts to uncover the secrets of Duong Lam were made in the early 1970s by Vietnamese and French archaeologists and historians who stumbled upon stone artefacts believed to be made several thousand years ago.

They named the village the "ancient laterite village" because most of the surviving houses, built three or four centuries ago, were made of laterite bricks. Laterite is red clay formed from weathered basalt and is found in northern Viet Nam’s hills.

He said Mong Phu has nearly 400 family homes, of which 100 houses are regarded as old and the oldest 30 houses are estimated to date back 200-400 years.

One of the criteria used to judge whether a house is old is the type of roof tiles it has, with "fish scale" tiles indicating age.

But all the owners of the old houses share the same problem of failing to maintain their houses due to fierce financial shortages.

Owners of the only 400-year-old house in Mong Phu, Nguyen Van Hung and La Thi Thao, said they are just making ends meet.

"We can hardly live on our 1,500sq.m of paddy rice field let alone have money for maintaining our 16th-century house."

They said they know their house is that old because they still keep their ancestors’ records, which were first written in 1646 and state that the house was built in the early 16th century.

Hung and Thao’s plight is common among other owners.

They all said their houses had been restored at least two times and that due to their limited resources they had to demolish parts of their houses when wooden columns and rafters were eaten by termites. This has resulted in the wooden partitions being reduced from five to six, down to three or four.

Some wooden houses were falling into ruin so the families have demolished them and built two-storey flat roof houses to hold their expanded families.

Chung said in the past three years 40 such new homes had been built, dwarfing the surviving 30 old houses.

To stop people building the new mansions, village authorities have marked off lots in adjacent paddy fields for big families to build additional housing.

Historians and archaeologists believe Mong Phu and other hamlets in Duong Lam are important because the villagers have clung to their conservative communal farming lifestyle.

Duong Lam villagers have devoted their efforts to centuries-old farming practices and ignored other non-farming businesses.

Historians point to the short-lived business of growing mulberry and raising silk worms as a case in point.

They said even though the trade was very brisk in the 1930s and 1940s, few villagers persevered with it once the domestic market took a downturn.

Some locals argue that even before the silk worm business came to the village, few residents wanted to abandon their hard farming labour for more lucrative occupations.

They said the 300-year-old Mia Market, one of the biggest in the region, lies next to Mong Phu but the villagers remain indifferent to trading. Hence the saying:

What Mong Phu men were famous for was their buffalo purchases. They travelled far to the west to Hoa Binh Province to choose their buffalo, and for years buffalo traders complained their sales had been swooped away by Mong Phu traders.

Chung said another feature of Mong Phu’s communal life is the sharing of village wells.

Mong Phu has five wells which are carefully maintained, because subterranean springs in the region can only be tapped to a depth of 20m.

Chung said the water fetched from the well is very pure, which makes the local tea fragrant and soya sauce sweet and salty.

Villagers use the memory of the well’s purity to test the loyalty of people who now live elsewhere.

"Former villagers who return should be able to recite: Water from Giang Well and sweet potatoes grown in Buong field, to demonstrate to the old folk that they haven’t forgotten their roots," Chung said.

The out-of-the-way village is also known for the few famous people it has reared.

Birthplace of two kings

It is the birthplace of Viet Nam’s first two kings – Phung Hung (791-802) and Ngo Quyen (939-944) – who were famous for their staunch struggle against invasions from China.

In the 17th-century, Duong Lam’s scholar Giang Van Minh (1573-1637) became famous for losing his head at the Qing Court as deputy head of Viet Nam’s diplomatic mission to China. Giang lost his temper when the Chinese intimated Viet Nam was its inferior, and he reminded them that the Bach Dang River still flowed with blood from defeated Chinese soldiers.

And more recently, it is the birthplace of Phan Ke Toai (1892-1992), who served as a senior official in the Nguyen Court, Viet Nam’s last feudal dynasty, before becoming Vice President to President Ho Chi Minh.

The age old rustic existence of Duong Lam flies in the face of the Government’s push towards modernisation, but conservationists hope higher public awareness of the village’s cultural value will help the village raise money for restoration works.

Conservationists expect it will take six years to help the villagers preserve their remaining old houses and restore other buildings. But at the end of it all Duong Lam will be able to present itself as a living example of a time long past. — VNS

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