Can you keep a secret

Leather drums from Binh An traditional drum-making village are renowned for their first-class design and good sound

Hundreds of years in the profession

Binh An drum village (Binh Lang commune, Tan Tru district, Long An province), during the early days of spring, grows busier than ever when the sound of drum making and testing echoes in the quiet of the village.

Mr. Nguyen Van An, owner of a reputable drumming facility in Binh An village, said: “My father said that the ancestor of Binh An drum village was my forebear Nguyen Van Ty. Leather drums back then were very simple. There has been considerable advancement in design and sound quality since the time of my great-grandfather and grandfather.”

However, it was not until the time of his father Mr. Nguyen Van Men that the leather drums in Binh An village were perfect in sound. An belongs to the 5th generation of craftspeople and is elevating the model and bringing products to foreign markets.

The drums are made of buffalo hide and sao wood which first must be sun-dried.

Though sharing the same origin and facilities, individuals have their own skills and techniques. Therefore, only proficiency in drum making will equal a prosperous life, or else it is hard to live if you’re not qualified enough as poor quality drums can barely see a future.

There are 22 households in the village who work as drum makers, but only five are able to make a living by the profession. “It is challenging to make good drums and keep that a source of stable income. It demands passion and expertise and of course the aspiration to preserve traditional jobs,” said Mr. An.

In the last days of the year, prestigious artisans have to work restlessly as orders from communal houses and pagodas keep coming in.

The process of skin stretching and sealing the drum is very delicate so that the final products come out with the best sound quality.

“Annually customer demand is at its peak during the last few days of the year. Therefore, we only have time to wind down until the afternoon of the 30th or the 1st of the new year… On the 4th day of Tet, we get right back to the flow because there are many traditional festivals held after the full moon of January,” Mr. An added.

Sound quality says it all

Binh An leather drums are also available in international markets. According to Mr. An, recognized as a skilled craftsman years ago, the prerequisite for standard drums is the ear training technique.

Pinning the drum handle seems effortless at first glance, but only skilled craftsmen are capable of it.

“Drums that are up to the mark have sound characteristics that vary from type to type. For instance, drums for dragon dances should be noise-like, sharp and clattering, while praise drums are expected to be deep, smooth and penetrating. Artisans can adeptly identify pitches, chords and rhythms solely by hearing. How adept the craftsmen are is manifested by the sound their drums make.”

Weather, aside from ear training, also plays an significant role in drum production since it affects the quality of the materials like wood and buffalo leather. Absolute dryness is required for the best results. The preferred wood is Golden Oak which can be bought from big sawmills and then whittled before sun drying.

Buffalo hide used for the batter head is sun-dried until the desired waterlessness

While wood for small drums needs daily sun exposure, wood for big drums requires a whole year in the solar heat before it is ready. At Mr. An’s drum factory, there are many wooden logs with large diameter of 3-4 humans’ embrace. These logs were bought decades ago and mainly are for large pagodas domestically and abroad. Such giant drums take many years to complete and cost up to several hundred million VND.

No other drying methods are used but sunlight

Buffalo hide for drum sealing which is from back and shoulder skin is also dependent on the sun. Only natural daylight can dry the skin properly for successful production.

“Only these skin areas give the standard sound, but if bought on days of undesirable weather like rainy or cloudy days without prompt drying, the skin can’t be used. The purchased skin can only be exposed to natural sun so that it slowly drains. If artificially dried, it will get brittle, unable to stretch the drum.”

A large diameter monolith has just been hollowed out to make the body of a giant drum

Wood for giant drums requires months of hollowing. The cost for one from such monolithic wood is over 100 million VND

From January to the 3rd lunar month, drum manufacturers in Binh An village have to purchase and store the skin of more than 100 buffaloes which are enough for a year of production.

This job not only gives An a chance to contribute to preserving and developing traditional drum making but also keeps his chin up every time he hears the drums resounding on spring days.

Nguyen Son

9th generation descendant reveals know-how to make drums

With jackfruit wood and buffalo leather, the talented craftsman can make drums, creating the sounds of life.

He aspires to keep the traditional trade alive at a time when more attractive modern toys dominate the market

A Vietnamese man has spent multiple years earning a living out of handmade toy figurines, hoping to preserve the traditional creation of such objects for posterity.

Dang Van Tien has with determination followed the job of making to he – toy statuettes typically made of glutinous rice powder in the past – selling the products by traveling to different places from Xuan La, a rural village specializing in the tradition just south of Hanoi.

The 33-year-old and other craftsmen from the village would display their works and demonstrate how to make them in front of live audiences around the tourist attraction of Hoan Kiem Lake, and along the newly opened Trinh Cong Son Pedestrian Street in Tay Ho District, in the capital.

Tien, who was introduced to the art of forming toy figurines by his maternal grandfather, who taught him the skill at the age of 18, has experienced ups and downs with the job.

In 2008, Hanoi administrators began wiping street vendors off the urban face, endangering his sales as he relied on the streets for a living. Fortunately, he managed to obtain permission from local authorities to alternatively ply his trade at public parks.

Toy figurines usually use glutinous rice powder as the long-standing material, which means children could eat and play with them.

But Tien said the problem is that the statuettes left from the sales became rotten only within two or three days, while a deft craftsman can produce 100 to 150 toy figurines daily.

By experimenting with various alternative materials, he has found a secret powder able to retain its quality for a year. Other figurine makers in his village placed multiple orders for the new mixture from him.

Tien has nurtured the ambition of preserving and developing the traditional toy figurine making techniques of his village.

The desire has motivated him to join festivals and fairs held by the government.

“I told the authorities my wish to keep the village’s toy figurine making alive, and they gave me a priority, inviting me to provinces like Bac Giang, Hai Duong, and Phu Tho, and [the city of] Hue [for public events],” Tien said. “As I’m still young, I have to find new business links to have a stable income and advertise the toy figurine making.”

The man won a number of awards for his skillfulness from domestic competitions for craftsmen nationwide.

Also for the same purpose, he recently hired college students to create toy statuettes on Trinh Cong Son Pedestrian Street, which was inaugurated in Hanoi last weekend, in the hope of making the objects more popular.

He learned from children, his target customers, to increase his figurine repertoire.

“What I remember most is when a little girl asked me to fashion Ironman without giving me any picture of the character,” Tien recalled. “I then made a thing that fitted her description. After I’m finished, she brought the Ironman to her mother happily. So I just learn how to make attractive Ironman figurines after taking an order from a kid.”

OTTAWA — China poses a serious strategic threat to Canada, both through attempts to steal secrets and a campaign to intimidate the Chinese community, the head of Canada’s spy agency said on Tuesday in a rare public appearance.

The remarks by Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Director David Vigneault mark the second time in a few months that Ottawa – mired in a broad diplomatic and trade dispute with Beijing – has identified China as a problem actor.

Vigneault told an online forum that hostile activity by state actors seeking among other things to purloin business secrets and sensitive data “represents a significant danger to Canada’s prosperity and sovereignty” and singled out China.

“The government of China … is pursuing a strategy for geopolitical advantage on all fronts – economic, technological, political, and military – and using all elements of state power to carry out activities that are a direct threat to our national security and sovereignty,” he said.

The biopharmaceutical and health, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, ocean technology and aerospace sectors were most at risk from state-sponsored hackers, he said.

China regularly denies it is trying to steal secrets.

Vigneault also said China had used its Operation Fox Hunt – a search for what Beijing says are corrupt officials and executives who have fled abroad with their assets – to routinely threaten and intimidate political opponents in Canada.

“These activities … cross the line by attempting to undermine our democratic processes or threaten our citizens in a covert and clandestine manner,” he said.

Last November, the Communications Security Establishment signals intelligence agency identified state-sponsored programs in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as major cyber crime threats for the first time.

The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa was not immediately available for comment.

Sitting on the edge of the modern world, the little country Bhutan made a name for itself as the world’s happiest country. Their way of achieving it, with all things considered, can be echoed in Vietnam, as seen from the ample potentialities of the upland province of Yen Bai.

This anticipation is not exactly pulled out of nowhere, for it is grounded on the Yen Bai administration’s decision to include Gross National Happiness, or GNH Index, as one of the touchstones for the 2020-25 term of the municipal Party Committee.

In contrast to the much more well-known Gross Domestic Product (GDP) tally, which promotes a focus on material gain, the GNH Index rewards approaches leaning toward holistic well-being, one that goes beyond economic development.

This was also the secret to the bizarre policy success of Bhutan, which started as a radical initiative by the fourth king Jigme Singye Wangchuck in 1972 and is still upheld to this day.

The question that remains, however, is whether Yen Bai can pick up the rope and improvise its own way toward another GNH success story.

Happiness in the terraced fields

Terraced fields in Yen Bai’s Mu Cang Chai District have enjoyed both authority recognition as a special national site and the ardor of tourists who flock to the area to catch sight of golden paddies during harvest seasons.

During these year-end holidays, income from the crowds of tourists may even exceed the value of the harvest itself.

Seeing the fledging potential in local tourism, several residents of Mu Cang Chai became first-movers of the sector, building unassuming homestay facilities filled with cultural heritage of the land.

One of them is the guest house of Giang A De, a Hmong native in La Pan Tan Commune.

His place proves a real challenge for visitors as it takes a long walk through up a steep slope from the car park to reach the house, but the magnificent view at the end is absolutely worth it – the scenario spreads to the horizon, presenting layers of blue mountain peaks and clouds under the syrupy gleam of the sun.

Giang A De said his income has been axed significantly due to the COVID-19 pandemic that thwarted foreign tourist visits.

However, during this low-demand period, he found time to erect two more bungalows to preempt the next year’s tourism season.

Over the past years, the construction boom has seen intricate wood structures of the local community torn apart to make space for concrete monoliths.

De collected the fine pieces of precious Fokienia wood and reassembled them into two peculiar bungalows of his design.

Sitting in a composition of long-lived wood in the midst of terraced rice paddies like this can make a typical cup of tea or a sip of local corn wine more poetic than any urban experience.

Sensing the demand for a getaway from city dwellers, homestays in the fashion of De’s are emerging as a business trend in Mu Cang Chai.

However, having relished the laid-back experience at De’s place, it becomes clear to any visitor that the formula cannot be replicated with mass tourism or soulless copycats. It lives in fresh air, the woods, and terraced fields rather than concrete or string lights.

On top of that, the lessons of budding indigenous tourism destinations defaced by greed and urbanization in other provinces still stand as cautionary tales for any community tourism aspirants.

It is not easy for the vanguards like De.

“We once gain mere nourishment from the rice paddies, but now it draws in tourists and nourish their eyes. The same paddies also provide us with extra income now. It’s worth hundreds of thousands of dong, the amount that [Kinh people] use to build grand sights,” he said.

Tourists also bring new experiences, including free language lessons and exotic foods for local communities, De pointed out.

“It’s called a win-win economy. For that reason, we have to preserve the paddies, the woods, and nature. Without them, there would be no tourists. No tourists mean no fun,” De said.

“Forest and rice fields are pivotal issues to us,” said Nong Viet Uyen, secretary of the Mu Cang Chai District Party Committee.

After his appointment two years ago, Uyen has always considered the preservation of forests and terraced fields his utmost priority.

During his time in office, Uyen also learned about the art of keeping terraced fields from the indigenous community.

“Terraced fields are not only agricultural plots but also an important tool of the locals to prevent landslides,” he said.

“It also helps that the terraced fields become a visitor favorite and a driving force for local tourism.”

For the Mu Cang Chai leader Le Trong Khang, the lush and extensive forest of the locale is another thing to be proud of.

“Forest coverage of Mu Cang Chai amounts to 67 percent. Many years ago, we used to see forest fire every time we headed here from the Khau Pha Pass, but the situation has been now put under control,” he recalled.

The flavors of the woodland

Endowed with the most distinct gift of nature, Yen Bai boasts a repertoire of specialties and artisans with fine aromatic qualities, such as pomeloss in Dai Minh, cinnamon in Van Yen, green tea in Suoi Giang, or roses in Nam Khat.

“Dai Minh Commune rakes in around VND50 billion [US$2.2 million] per year from pomelo fruits, a whopping amount for a mountainous locale. It means even more when the profit does not come from the destructive operations such as sand and mineral mining,” said Ta Quang Cong, the leader of Dai Minh Commune, who has a master’s degree in environmental studies.

As of recently, the endemic pomelo of the commune has earned the VietGAP certification for good agricultural practices, which has paved the way for the product to enter big supermarket chains such as Vinmart or Big C.

This also requires the environment of the locale to be kept pristine, as the smallest indication of pollution can lead to the revocation of the certificate.

During this season, the pomelo fruits are glowing gold, effusing a delightful citrus aroma in the garden of Nguyen Van Dinh, a farmer in Dai Minh’s Minh Tan Village.

As per Minh’s estimation, the pomelo garden earns him around VND400 million ($17,000) per year, while some other gardens even make more for their owners.

Yen Bai is also known for its exceptional green tea and cinnamon products, which require a flawlessly unstained environment to develop their finest qualities.

Visitors to Yen Bai can take the opportunity to stay overnight in the tea fields of Suoi Giang Commune, looking up to the Fokienia wood roofing of Hmong people at the foot of Mount Chong Pao Mua.

These wood rooking tiles bend themselves slightly under the sun to let light beams inside the house, but will shade the house tightly against rainwater during the downpours.

Surrounded by old tea trees that soar over the roof, sensing the faint but everlasting scent of woods mixing with a tea flower aroma, with a cup of fresh green tea in hand and the flickering flames of firewood as the companion, one would understand the concept of GNH without a word spoken: it is as simple as remembering to live in the present.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!