Between mountainous topography, in lush, subtropical rainforest, a river hums amid the buzzing cicadas in a small village in Bắc Quang, Việt Nam. This specific village is made up of the Dao Đỏ ethnic minority community, one of 54 documented ethnic minority groups in Việt Nam. Here, a masterful papermaker, Lý Văn Cúi, builds a paper post about two-feet high, methodically and fluidly forming each sheet. His body and arms sway in motion as he clasps the chây lìm chá (wooden frame) and plunges it into a large 6 x 4-foot concrete vat of water and pulp. He moves with precision; one dip from front to back, forming the first layer of captured pulp on the chây lìm (woven bamboo screen), and then another dip from right to left, forming the second layer. Each pull moves the water rhythmically. Then, he pivots right, crouches over his bench to the paper post, and gently couches the chây lìm on the post. Cúi is practicing a type of papermaking tradition called chây in Dao. In a time of growing uncertainty, where the history of war and rapid industrialization continues to threaten how communities can preserve ecological knowledge of their traditions, Cúi and his family are resilient. They have been practicing chây for the last five generations and they rely heavily on each season’s cyclical patterns to continue this sacred tradition.  

In the summer of 2022, I was studying in Việt Nam to learn directly from masterful traditional and contemporary papermakers still practicing the craft. I collaborated with friends from the Zó Project, a grassroots social enterprise working to preserve papermaking traditions in Việt Nam, and we decided to go to Bắc Quang in July. Initially, we wanted to visit the Dao Đỏ community to meet one of the last remaining bamboo-screen weavers in this region. We were hopeful that there would also be a community of local papermakers. When we arrived in the village, I was astounded. Almost every household was making handmade paper. We unknowingly arrived in the peak season for papermaking in the Dao Đỏ community. Around 96 out of 126 households make chây in the months of June through August. Vầu (bamboo) grows wild near the village and is an easily accessible plant fiber for papermaking. Vầu is collected in March when it has grown to a desirable maturity and soaked in wood ash and lime in large pools of water for three months. By June, the vầu has transformed and become soft and malleable enough for the cleaning phase when it is washed, picked, and separated. A small machine beater, constructed by local papermakers decades earlier, quickly breaks down the vầu. The resulting pulped fiber is short yet strong and is a beautiful light-yellow ocher color. The mucilaginous plant used to slow the drainage of water in sheet formation grows nearby in streams. This plant has recently been identified as a type of kiwi, Actinidia fulvicoma, more commonly known in Dao as sê kêu.

What is fascinating about chây is its multifaceted use within the Dao Đỏ community. Families will trade paper for vầu, sê kêu for paper, or sê kêu for vầu, and value trading these materials necessary to maintain their livelihood. Chây also has domestic uses including food wrapping, napkins and toiletry, and ancestral burning. Most importantly, the community burns chây during Tết (the Vietnamese Lunar New Year) and the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival in October for ritual worship, purification, and cleansing. Additionally, making chây symbolizes the preservation of traditional ecological knowledge. From where the fiber grows to the paper’s functionality, it is inseparable from the community. Eventually chây is recycled back into the soil, beginning where it started. These moments of shared tradition that rely on seasonal cycles makes the celebration of chây a unique form of both heritage craft and ecological regeneration.

When the stacks of chây have been pressed and separated for drying, they are laid out under the sun to dry. The sight resembles mosaic tiles shimmering on the ground in the blistering summer heat. I asked the chief village leader, Lò Đức Chìu, what chây meant to him. He exclaimed that when you use the word chây “everyone [in this village] knows its meaning.” Chây not only refers to paper, but the lived moment of tradition itself. Holding a stack of chây is a reminder of the working hands keeping this tradition alive. As the river continues to hum, the sounds of the water, the people, and a centuries-old tradition coalesce together for just this: a moment of chây.

Author’s Note: I want to thank the papermakers in Việt Nam who have shared their wisdom, time, tea, and rượu with me. Thank you to my dear friends Trần Hồng Nhung, Phan Hải Bằng, Lê Phúc Duy, and James Ojascastro who have contributed to the research in hand-papermaking traditions in Việt Nam and for their continued guidance.

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NOTES

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Dao - /yaow/ Đỏ - /dAW/; Red Dao ethnic minority group in the northern regions of Vietnam. More commonly known as Yao ethnic minority in Southeast and East Asia; an aboriginal people inhabiting chiefly mountainous parts of southwestern China, northern Thailand, Laos, and Tonkin (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

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Chây lìm chá - /chay leem chah/; wooden frame used for Dao Đỏ traditional papermaking.

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Chây lìm - /chay leem/; woven bamboo screen for Dao Đỏ traditional papermaking.

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Chây - / chay /; handmade paper and traditional papermaking in Dao Đỏ ethnic minority community.

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Members of Zó Project: Trần Hồng Nhung, founder of Zó Project; Lê Phúc Duy, lecturer in Graphic Design, Cần Thơ Campus, FPT University, Việt Nam.

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Trung Tanh, “Papermaking Craft of Dao Ethnic People in Ha Giang,” posted October 3, 2022 on Việt Nam Administration of National Tourism online, http://www.vietnam-tourism.com/en/index.php/news/items/17116 (accessed November 20, 2022).

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Bùi Nhật Đại, Head of Culture and Information Office of Bắc Quang district, Hà Giang province, Việt Nam, message to the author, March 10, 2023.

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Phan Hải Bằng, Artist, Senior Lecturer of Arts, Huế University, message to the author, March 9, 2023.

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James Ojascastro, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Population Biology, Washington University in St. Louis; William L. Brown Center, Missouri Botanical Garden, message to author, October 29, 2022.

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Sê kêu – /seh kew/; a type of kiwi, Actinidia fulvicoma, used as a mucilage to slow the drainage of water during the sheet formation process.

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Lò Đức Chìu, Dao Đỏ village chief and head of chây commerce in the Thanh Sơn Hamlet, Bắ Quang district, Hà Giang province, Việt Nam, interview with the author, July 23, 2022.

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