My hometown, the village that makes conical hats.

About 20 years ago, the Lunar New Year issue of Quang Binh Newspaper published my poem "Conical Hat": "White from inside out/Always white since time immemorial/The hat makers of my hometown/Weave layers of leaves, hiding their words within…". My hometown is Tho Ngoa village, one of the "Eight Famous Villages" of Quang Binh, a traditional conical hat-making village recognized by the Quang Binh Provincial People's Committee.

(QBĐT) - About 20 years ago, the Quang Binh Newspaper's Lunar New Year issue published my poem "Conical Hat" : "White from inside out/Always white since time immemorial/The hat makers of my hometown/Weave layers of leaves, hiding their words within…". My hometown is Tho Ngoa village, one of the "Eight Famous Villages" of Quang Binh, a traditional conical hat-making village recognized by the Quang Binh Provincial People's Committee.

Hidden secrets of Tho Ngoa conical hat village

The conical hat first appeared around 2,500-3,000 years BCE. Images of the hat have been carved on Vietnamese artifacts such as the Ngoc Lu bronze drum and the Dong Son bronze drum, attesting to this.

However, researchers have yet to definitively determine when the conical hat originated in Vietnamese history. The Vietnamese Encyclopedia defines the word "hat" as follows: "The legend of Saint Gióng wearing an iron hat to fight the An invaders allows us to believe that the hat has existed for a long time in ancient Vietnam..." From the Lý dynasty onwards, historical records have documented the hat as part of Vietnamese attire, mainly folk costumes. By the Nguyễn dynasty, the hat had become a common garment among the people, providing protection from the sun and rain for civilians and soldiers.

Making conical hats. Photo: V. Thuc

Legend in my hometown tells the story: “Once upon a time, there was a year when it rained heavily for weeks, flooding houses and land, making life miserable. Suddenly, a goddess appeared in the rain, wearing a giant hat made from four large leaves sewn together with bamboo sticks. Wherever the goddess went, the dark clouds dispersed, and the weather became cool. The goddess also taught the people many skills before disappearing. To commemorate the goddess's kindness, people built a temple and tried to create a conical hat by stringing palm leaves together. Since then, the conical hat has become incredibly familiar and close to Vietnamese farmers.”

As for when the hat-making craft actually originated in Tho Ngoa village, that remains a legend. Therefore, the debate continues without resolution. None of the genealogical records of the long-established families in the village mention the hat-making craft.

Nevertheless, my villagers agree that the hat-making craft appeared in the village in the latter half of the 19th century. However, they disagree on who passed on the craft. The Tran family, a prominent clan in the village, provided information to the press regarding their research, stating that a member of their family taught the craft. This Tran ancestor, seeing that the people of Tho Ngoa had little land and suffered from saline intrusion, often leading to famine, was deeply saddened. He then traveled across the fields and seas to Hue to learn the craft and then returned to teach it to the villagers. However, the only evidence supporting this claim is: "We heard it that way."

Unlike the Trần family, Mr. Nguyễn T., now 96 years old, asserted to reporters from a television station, when I took them to his house to film "The Story of the Hat," that: "The person who brought the hat-making craft to the village was a man from Dinh hamlet (now Dinh residential area). However, he was a selfish man. He only openly made hats during the day. All the processing of raw materials like the leaves, rims, and molding were done secretly at night. One villager was very angry about this. Every night, he climbed onto the roof, peeked through the thatched roof, and watched. After a while, he learned all the secrets. The hat-making craft then flourished throughout the village…" Mr. T. didn't have any documents, only saying that my grandfather and father told him the story. I believe Mr. T.'s account is more reliable. According to the family tree, his grandfather was 118 years older than him, so he likely knew the story of passing down the hat-making craft and could tell it to his descendants.

Hat-making artisans often gather together for fun, and stories about passing down the craft are even more enjoyable. The women often sigh, saying, "Who passed it on, or when, doesn't matter. What's important is that our village relies on hat-making; otherwise, we'd starve!"

Will it all just be... a memory?

Most people in my village started making conical hats when they were only 7 or 8 years old. Because of poverty and hunger, they had to make the most of the labor of children and the elderly. Skinny children like me, when sitting making hats, had their faces completely covered by the hat molds. The hat-making profession has a low income, but it utilizes the labor of all social classes, allowing people to make, sell, and earn a living every day.

I learned hat-making back when hats were only sold to the government. When things were good, the shops paid immediately after the hats were bought. But by the late 1970s, they were constantly in debt for the hats. The people, already poor, became even more frustrated. The hat-buying shops dissolved, giving private hat traders a chance to thrive. The hat-making industry in my village boomed in the 1980s.

Every night by the oil lamp, the father whittled the rims, the mother ironed the leaves, and the children sewed the hats, the complex sounds blending together in a rustling murmur. Well-off families had transistor radios playing music. Some houses had cassette players, and with the addition of a traditional lamp, many people came to help with hat-making.

At this time, we were at the age for courting girls. Every night, groups of young men would ride their bicycles to the girls' "hat-making clubs" in the village to have fun, sing, and play music. Late at night, they would often "settle down" at the club where their girlfriends were. When the girl finished making a hat, the boy would get up and take her home, standing at a street corner somewhere to chat. Usually, in the dim night, the white conical hat was the most striking, sometimes even serving as a shield for passionate kisses.

The colors of Thổ Ngọa. Photo: Phạm Văn Thức

What hat makers fear most is the hot, dry wind from Laos, which dries out the leaves, making them stiff and impossible to iron smooth. During these times, my mother would tie bunches of leaves together and hang them near the well's surface. Some nights, returning home and seeing my mother's hands stroking and ironing the leaves sent shivers down my spine, and verses would spontaneously come to mind: "Dry hands stroke tender leaves / Leaves become hat flowers, mother's youth is worn away…" Night after night, every household ironed leaves, the smell of charcoal smoke, burnt leaves, and even the acrid smell of burning fabric from the ironing machine wafting into my dreams.

In the 1990s, people in the North no longer favored conical hats. Tho Ngoa hats had to be re-imported into the South, through traders in Hue. From there, the Hue method of boiling the leaves and making the rims spread, along with coconut leaf hats from the South. The traditional hat-making methods of the village gradually faded and then disappeared completely.

In the 21st century, with economic development and bustling, modern streets filled with traffic, the traditional conical hat has become cumbersome and unsafe in strong winds. Even cyclists and pedestrians have opted for hats instead. Mainly, only farmers in rural villages still wear hats to the fields. Hat makers in my village earn very little compared to the average income, so they abandon hat-making and pursue other work. Today, very few people make a living from hat making. Hat traders have to buy raw hats from other villages in the region, and children and elderly people in my village do the rest of the finishing work.

Fortunately, because of its inherent beauty, the Tho Ngoa conical hat remains a timeless symbol in poetry and an indispensable element on the ao dai fashion runways. The hat continues to be an "accessory" paired with the ao dai for photoshoots and filming during Tet (Lunar New Year) and springtime, and for... nostalgia!

Do Thanh Dong

Source: https://www.baoquangbinh.vn/van-hoa/202501/que-toi-lang-cham-non-2224019/