Photo of 77-rear old Red Dao woman. Not my picture but taken from the brilliant book “Textiles: A World Tour” by Catherine Legrand (T & H, 2008)

Couldn’t we make a little trip to Sa Pa I asked, as if it was the equivalent to making a detour from John Lewis and popping down Regent Street to Anthropologie. Not really came the reply, given that Sa Pa is so much North Vietnam that it’s practically in China – some 350 km from Hanoi. (That’s roughly the distance from London to Middlesborough or from London to the sea beyond Land’s End, just to give  bit of perspective). Even worse, not only was Sa Pa a long way away but part of that route was along precipitous and not always perfect mountain roads and I’ve since read from the guidebook that January/February, though the best time to go in terms of not being too touristy is the worse time in terms of weather when there is often thick fog and the temperature is usually below freezing. A little day trip was definitely out.

Picture of Red Dao woman on the way to market and showing her headdress of multiple scarves and tassels. (Once again this is not my photo but is taken from the excellent “Textiles: A World Tour” by Catherine Legrand (T & H, 2008)

Daughter No 2 has been to Sa Pa several times – once on the overnight sleeper (a practical but not elegant experience) and other times with a hired car and driver – and even then she had moments when her past flashed before her as the turn of the steering wheel mismatched the curve of the road.

Photo 1: Red Dao embroidered shoulder bag

Photo 2: Red Dao embroidery showing detail of hand stitching

Photo 3: Red Dao embroidered shoulder bag: ever finer detail to show how tiny and neat the stitches are

She last went in Autumn when one of her friends came out from the UK and the two of them got chatting with a group of Red Dao ladies who during the day occupy a booth outside the Eco Lodge, just to the north of Sa Pa town. (The Red Dao have been forbidden to go into the lodge as  tourists complain about them being too pushy – which is rich really as tourists love nothing more than walking through their villages and watching them about their everyday life and offering to buy their wedding trousseau, etc., etc.)

Red Dao embroidered little bags

Close up of one of the Red Dao embroidered little bags shown in the previous photo

I say chatting – and that is chatting in English (and they could probably chat in French too) yet remarkably these women are largely illiterate, cannot write and have had no, or almost no. formal education. The English they have, they have picked up through interactions with tourists – a reinforcement of the idea that the best way to learn a language is to just throw yourself in and get talking.

Red Dao embroidery: small zipped purse

Well, it must have been a slack day in the Red Dao booth – or Daughter No 2 ‘s + friend’s conversation must have offered the equivalent of a couple of hour’s of evening class – for The Red Dao ladies decided to leave their post and tag along for a walk into the countryside. They talked about having babies (they liked to stay in the village rather than go to a distant hospital) and dentists (they saved  up cash for gold fillings which they preferred and which most proudly sported). But their fingers are never still and the end of this walk  several of the women had made twisted grass horses for daughter No 2 and friend. Naturally, daughter No 2 bought several of their embroidered bags. Why wouldn’t you?

Grass horses made on a walk by Red Dao women

The Red Dao are one of the most distinctive of the ethnic groups, and in large part this is down to their headdresses. Their hair is wound up and secured under a red scarf which sits cushion like with large tassels trailing over the shoulders. At home they just wear one scarf but when they go to Sa Pa to market, they add several more, one on top of another for extra glamour. Plucking eyebrows and hair from their natural hairline opens up the face and draws more attention to the bright red headdress and its trailing tassels.

Red Dao zipped purse: side one

Red Dao zipped purse: side 2

Detail of Red Dao zipped purse side 2

The embroidery of their clothes is more subtle, often because they are very happy for the indigo of the garment to leak into the colour of the thread – orange fades to a mottled yellow, yellow turns to green and red becomes maroon, while white turns pale blue. This is evident from the embroidery on the little bags shown here. Sometimes the blue of the fabric has almost overwhelmed the embroidery and you have to look with a magnifying glass to see the tiny – very tiny – stitches, especially in dark thread. Do compare the size of the motifs with the ruler I’ve included in most of the photographs. At first I somewhat disdainfully thought the bags were made with woven fabric – a fine brocade. It took me sometime examining the stitches and where I could looking at the wrong side before I appreciated how very intricate was the work and how very very small were the stitches. I was – and am still – hugely impressed. Lovely as these bags are I think the quality of the work is so high it should be mounted and framed – I can’t bear the thought of putting coins in the purses or filling the bag with the handbag paraphernalia.

Red Dao shoulder bag with coin decoration

Close up of Red Dao shoulder bag with coins

But the embroidery is not just decorative, many motifs have traditional meanings – some motifs represent nature, others symbolise the Taoist balance between people and landscape. The symbols are often passed between the ethnic groups as women imprint individuality on what they wear. On the little bags shown here, I can see what I think are pine trees,  peach blossom, possibly banyan trees (the tree under which Buddha sat) and the gibbon’s paw – what we call the swastika. Other embroidery looks like variations on basic themes. All is so beautifully done that it makes machine made braid on a couture suit look crude and heavy handed.

Some common Red Dao motifs (taken from Catherine Legrand’s Textiles: A World Tour; T & H 2008)

Red Dao embroidery: meaning of motifs shown in the above photograph (taken from Catherine Legrand’s Textiles: A World Tour; T & H 2008)

Just to be clear:  the Red Dao (pronounced Zao,) are also known as  Dzao or Yao (the latter term is used in my constant companion, the unparalleled and  enlightening Catherine Legrand’s Textiles, A World Tour, T & H, 2008).

Sa Pa has one of the largest ethnic populations in Vietnam, with 15% of the 36,000 people living in and around the town so defined. Of this 15%, half belong to the Hmong group (mainly the Black Hmong). The Red Dao tribe is one of the smaller groups.

Red Dao embroidery: detail of one of the bags

For more about just some of the ethnic tribes see an earlier post of mine here or even better pick up a copy of Catherine Legrand’s ‘Textiles, A World Tour’, T & H, 2008 which has a fantastic overview of many more Vietnamese tribes and copious beautiful coloured drawings of their clothing complete with full descriptions. As the title suggests, the book covers stunning ethnic textiles from all over the world.

Red Dao/Yao vintage jacket with embroidery.

The jacket shown immediately above was photographed in an ‘antique’ shop in Saigon round the corner from our hotel. Wouldn’t you know it the woman in the shop greeted daughter No 2 enthusiastically, remembering she’d visited the shop before (and undoubtedly brought something). You travel half way round the world to find your daughter is well known in an antique shop – well better that than a bar…although now I come to think of it she’s probably well known in bars the length and breadth of SE Asia too – being one of the few woman in a male dominated sphere of action makes you very visible.)

But back to the embroidery – the Red Dao embroidery which we have is heavily indigo and the dye has obviously changed the colour of the thread used for embroidery. I’m uncertain whether this is a new trend or whether in their own garments (see this post’s first 2 photographs and the vintage jacket above) repeated washing reduces the indigo from intense midnight blue to a grey-black shade. Only the 2 little purses have white motifs. Was the white added after a first washing. Who knows? Perhaps before I mount the panels on the bags I’ll give them a few washes – without the addition of salt to fix the colour – and see what happens.

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