Lung Tam Linen Weaving Village
Some details about Lung Tam linen weaving village
Lung Tam is a long-standing inhabited place of the Mong ethnic people. The village is about 50km from Ha Giang city center, nestled beneath the Quan Ba twin mountains. According to the people here, linen weaving is a craft that has existed for a long time, passed down through many generations until today. This job not only helps them increase their income but also preserves the values of their nation’s cultural identity.
Coming to Lung Tam flax weaving village, visitors will encounter green flax fields right in the homes of the Mong people. According to tradition, every Hmong woman, when she reaches adulthood, has her own flax field. Although there have been many changes, such flax fields still play an important role in people’s lives.
When the harvest season comes, the women will harvest flax, dry it, and begin the typical linen making process of the Mong people. To create a linen cloth, it must go through more than 40 stages, each of which is very sophisticated, all handmade using recipes passed down from ancient times.
After drying, flax is stripped into many small fibers. After being stripped, the flax fibers are boiled, steamed and then skillfully joined together so as not to form knots at the joints. This is an artistic step, demonstrating the skillfulness and meticulousness of the women of Lung Tam linen weaving village. Hmong women’s weaving looms are usually belt looms, a fairly simple type of frame, with one end resting on a house pillar, the other end connected to the weaver’s back belt.
The profession of making linen is quite strenuous, going through many elaborate steps, so the finished product is very unique and of high quality. Mong girls from the age of 13 have started spinning linen and weaving fabric and will stick with this work all their lives. For them, weaving linen not only shows skillfulness and hard work but is also a criterion for evaluating women’s talent and virtue.
After weaving, the linen fabric still has to go through many other stages such as whitening, dyeing and then creating textures and patterns for the fabric. Lung Tam linen weaving village has a unique folk shaping technique, which is drawing beeswax on fabric. Young beeswax is yellow in color, melted with black old beeswax, this is the main ingredient to create patterns on costumes. When drawing, people dip their pens in hot beeswax and then skillfully draw lines on the fabric into different patterns.
These motifs are the Mong people’s view of the universe and of the human world. In addition to beeswax patterns, Mong women also keep the technique of embroidering on fabric. From a colorful piece of fabric, the women skillfully cut different patterns, then sew them onto the fabric.
These linen products have followed many tourists to all parts of the country and countries around the world. It was those products that introduced friends everywhere to the special features of the way Mong women dress. The uniqueness of materials, patterns, textures and handcrafting methods has brought the linen brand of a mountainous craft village far and wide.
Tags: Ha Giang loop
