H'Mong Girl Makes Horse Figure From Plant

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Ha (unsure of spelling) is a H'Mong girl living in Sa Pa, a city in NW Vietnam, not far from China. She demonstrates how to turn a common plant stem into a horse figurine in just a couple minutes. She can make several variations of this design. Notice how the "tail" of the horse is the seedy part of the plant and is never broken away. In other words, the horse is one continuous piece of plant.

The H'Mong are one of many, and one of the largest, minority populations living in this mountainous region. H'Mong have traditions and a language, all their own.

Ha is wearing traditional H'Mong attire. The clothing is all made from a particular dried-up plant called Ham (again, unsure of spelling). Women make the clothing, splitting the Ham branches lengthwise dozens of times into fine, hairlike strands which can then be twisted to form strong thread. After the clothing is made, the women soak the clothing in indigo dye to provide the color. Many of the women have lightly stained green-blue hands and forearms from the work.

Phạm Đức Thành's "The Moving Cloud" is playing in the background. His instrument is called the đàn bầu, a Vietnamese monochord.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• H'Mong
• H'Mung
• hmong
• hmung
• Vietnam
• Sa Pa
• arts and crafts
• horses
• Vietnam minorities
• dan bau
• đàn bầu
• Pham duc Thanh
• Vietnamese music
• music
• love waterfall
• Thác Tình yêu

[useahammer]

Very nice. She speaks English very well, and is a cool kid for helping you to make this video. I want to visit the H'mong People sometime soon. I live in Vung Tau City, and have been to only a few places in Vietnam so far.

[endsOFearthDOTCOM]

@useahammer She learned English 100% from tourists. I hope you get a chance to visit the H'mong, definitely my favorite memories of Vietnam.

[alladinmoua]

Ah, I hope to go to Vietnam and China some day to see my people.

By "ham" Ha probably meant to say "hemp". The Hmong have a very long history of spinning and weaving hemp into clothes. However, with the introduction of cotton and other readily-made fabrics (as well as Western clothing), hemp weaving is an endangered art of my people.

[endsOFearthDOTCOM]

Thank you! How did I never figure out it was hemp! I googled it then, but never found the plant name...now if I google "Hmong clothing hemp" I of course find that's what it is! Duh. Their word and/or pronunciation must be a little different because all the vendors who tried selling me clothing said "ham."

I hope you get to visit, too! The Sapa region was my favorite place in SE Asia because of the beauty of the mountains and the interesting minority populations, especially the Hmong.

[gkraz]

she knew more complicated figures but only showed you a simple horse.

[1000blahh]

i know some hmong people >.<

[niamtxiv]

Very impressive.