Sunday, March 04, 2007

Hmong Friends

We're driving up to a trading village called Ba Ca in a cultural revolution era Russian military jeep. Without seat belts, this vehicle's shocks and struts have not been replaced since Mao was on the prowl. Bad day to have stomach upsets and try to go 120k in the mountains. The driver is a disheveled looking Vietnamese man in a Members Only jacket, accompanied by a persistent smoker's cough. To his right sits Su, the pretty young Hmong woman who will serve as our guide for the day. It is just Peggy and I in the backseat, no teenage tour group to ruin our fun.

There are about a half-dozen different village tribes within the region, each with their own ornate costume and head wear. Some have some very distinctive appearances, with protruding foreheads accentuated with shaved heads up past the temples. They all generally sell cloth weaving, clothes or blankets, sometimes silver. I've also been offered opium by a green complexioned, one-toothed woman. Not sure which tribe she's from. Surprisingly, a select few of the vendors have excellent command of English, a skill developed from years of haggling with tourists. Although their verbal skills are at times impressive, I would guess the reading and writing would be lacking a bit, given no formal education. Nonetheless, the tribal women, especially the Hmong, are extremely friendly.

We chatted with a lady who told us all about her Tet / New Year's celebration. She said she had in her village a pig, chicken, goat, buffalo and elephant. I inquired a bit further about the elephant, doing my best impression of one, to which she started talking about different sticky rice recipes, leading me to think that something got lost in translation.

Sapa (Sa Pa) is an old city in the mountains, which we surmise was formerly used as a trading village or perhaps a strategic town along the Chinese border. All along the surrounding mountain sides, rice paddies create stairways stretching vertically to the sky. The positioning of this city in a mountain valley exposes it to massive fog banks that come rolling through, reminiscent of our Golden Gate. Sapa will be basking in the sunshine one minute, then enveloped in fog the next. The town itself really isn't that big, maybe 40,000 people. Tourism is the main game here, having started in full 12 years ago (probably a through Lonely Planet mention) and peaking on the weekend market days during the dry season. Just where we're at.

Ba Ca is another remote village that hosts the regional market on Sundays. You can buy the same handicrafts that one could in Sapa, but there is more of a local feel and a much larger turn out. Any type of animal is either being sold or butchered in the food stalls. Puppies cost $8, water buffalo $250, baby chickens are a dime a dozen. The Flower Hmong women dominate here, called as such because of their very colourful and ornate dressing. A photographer's dream.

The village women do all the selling, while the men are back in the villages or transporting people and materiel to and for. If a pack of villagers gets a whiff that you want to buy something, either through a pause in stride or fleeting eye contact, you're suddenly surrounded. They'll wear you down with relentless 'buy from me' sales tactics. If you should sit down for a second, or stop to look at a map, a half dozen girls and women nab you and fight for your attention. Various pantomiming will be attempted to show off their craftsman ship, convey a desired price and finally find a buyer.

There is one exemption to the tourist mongering habits of the village tribes: the Chinese. They arrive in town stomping in perfectly ordered columns of four, with their tour leader in front of the pack. The Chinese wear these bright red baseball hats which signify a 'no buy zone', keeping any village peddlers at bay. They're allowed a buffer of ten feet or so in which no villager dares to cross. We're told that they never buy, so no one even tries any more. They certainly change the vibe of whatever block they're marching down with an air of intimidation.

posted by ncawthon at 3:10 PM