A little bit about Sapa and Taphin Village ...

Sapa is a small hill station town in very north Vietnam. Set in beautiful hills, very close to the Chinese border, the town is a centre point for many local villages. There are more than six indigenous groups of people living together harmoniously in this region. They all maintain unique, strong cultural indentities through their way of life and, most noticably their clothing. The different groups of people can be identified by the way that they dress and even the specific villages that they come from are differentiated too. People come from the villages to the market in Sapa, particularly on a Saturday, to sell textiles and clothing to each other and to the steady influx of tourists. The majority of people who come to Sapa are either Red Dzao or Black H'mong, as these are the closest villages to the town. It is all women who come to sell textiles in the market; many have been coming for years and can speak very impressive English. Going to the market to sell is the primary way that families earn some cash. Apart from this most families are pretty much self-sufficient, growing their own rice, vegetables and keeping pigs and chickens. Their way of living is hard work, but very inspiring and very healthy. Thanks to new grains of rice from China everyone can produce double the yeild of rice that they could before, which, as there is only one growing season each year, has had a very positive impact on local life. One thing that is so so amazing about life in and around Sapa is the importance placed upon the sewing and textiles, it is genuine and at the moment does not look like a dieing tradition. Identity, success, skill, patience, love, money, time, are all interwoven with every stitch, both for the Red Dzao and for the Black H'mong people. So many things about a girl or a woman in this culture can be read through a piece of sewing. Women are not bound to, or by, their sewing, but are awarded status and prowess. It is so exciting to dive into the complexities that lie within these pieces of cloth and explore something so alien to the way that most of us wear clothes in the West. Look in the clothes section to discover more about Red Dzao textiles...

Tamay, and hence most of the clothing we are selling, come from Taphin village just 7km south of Sapa. This is a beautiful village with a close community of Red Dzao families. Although they all live quite separately from each other they meet up for social occasions and festivities, help to build new family homes in the traditional style, children play together and and mums chatter away and help each other out. The men are sadly renowned for drinking a lot of rice wine and this can be a problem, however the strength of the women is so admirable and it is the women who seem to really keep village life running smoothly. I may be a little biased here because none of the men can speak any English and my Dzao is equally minimal. Tamay's husband was always very kind to give me lifts on the back of the motorbike. Tamay understands her positition with modern life to be one where she can pick and choose what feels like the right ways in which to modernise but at the same time being able to treasure their culture and live sustainably within the fragile environment and look after her families health. She has an amazing knowledge of natural remedies and is adament not to feed her children chicken from the factory in Lao Cai. All children go to school in the local area, although there are some young girls who begin to 'go selling' at a very young age but these tend to be more H'mong girls than Dzao. Education is free up until sixteen, provided by the Vietnamese state. Tamay's daughter is thirteen and a very keen student, Tamay would love to be able to help her to continue her education and perhaps go to university in Hanoi. Maybe this little enterprise will help, I hope so!

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