Performed by: Duc Thao | August 7, 2024
(Fatherland) - From handmade palm leaf fans, people in An Binh (Ninh Binh commune, Ninh Hoa town, Khanh Hoa province) hope to promote cultural beauty, attract tourists to visit and experience, to develop sustainable economy.
Palm leaf fans are a famous handicraft product of Ninh Binh commune, Ninh Hoa town, Khanh Hoa province, with high aesthetics, light weight and durability. Currently, An Binh village has only 3 households producing with a few dozen workers, making about 10,000 pieces a month, exporting to many regions in the country and abroad through affiliated companies.
At 3 a.m., Nguyen Thi Kieu Loan, 52, tears up palm leaves to prepare to weave fans. Loan’s family specializes in making both plain and colored fans, and makes more than 100 finished fans a day. Because of sitting for long periods of time, Loan says this has a negative impact on her health, often causing back and joint pain. “This job requires sitting in one place, but it is just as difficult as any other job,” Loan laughs.
Meanwhile, her husband, Mr. Do Huu Truc, 55 years old, is in charge of rolling the handle. This is the final step to produce a finished palm leaf fan. To make a palm leaf fan, it must go through 5 steps, including drying the leaves, tearing each branch of leaves, shaping the fan, weaving, and finally rolling the handle. This job is mainly done by women, but he has been helping his wife for 16 years, before that he worked as a hired hand.
According to Mr. Truc, the profession of making palm leaf fans appeared in the locality about 50 years ago, but the "golden age" was more than 20 years ago, when there were about 10 households with hundreds of workers "selling out as they made them". However, in the era of integration and development, traditional handmade palm leaf fans lost their position and were replaced by electric fans and air conditioners.
The palm leaf fans are hand-woven, the palm leaves are dried in the sun for 2-3 days to avoid mold. This job is only done during the dry season, from December to August of the following year. During the rainy season or on days without sunshine, people stop working.
Despite the hardship, Loan and her husband only earn about 10 million VND per month after deducting expenses, enough for food and living expenses. However, this job also creates seasonal jobs for many women in the village with an income of about 100,000 VND per working day.
About 500m from Ms. Loan’s house, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh, 48 years old, and 4 workers are weaving fans. Ms. Thanh said that the most difficult part of the job in the past was finding sources to sell and dry the leaves because households doing the job had to go to the forest to “hunt” for the leaves, but now there are suppliers in Khanh Hoa province and the southern provinces that supply and sell wholesale at 1,000 VND/leaf sheath.
Now, the difficulty that households making palm leaf fans face is finding an outlet for their products. Currently, each finished fan is sold wholesale to purchasing units for about 5,000 VND/plain fan and about 10,000 VND/colored fan. Because colored fans have to find a third party to dye the palm leaves, there is a difference in price.
Palm-leaf fans are often purchased by units and then supplied to souvenir shops, tourism services or exported to countries in the Asian region. However, in order to develop sustainably and bring high economic efficiency, the people of Binh An village all hope that local authorities at all levels will pay attention to supporting the finding of output for the products, at the same time developing craft village tourism, organizing tours for visitors to visit and experience, bringing Khanh Hoa palm-leaf fans far and wide, not letting the village's handicraft be lost.
Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hung, Head of the Department of Culture and Information of Ninh Hoa Town, assessed that An Binh palm-leaf fans are a unique local handicraft product with great potential for tourism development, attracting tourists to visit and experience. In the near future, the local government will coordinate with the Nha Trang - Khanh Hoa Tourism Association to conduct surveys with travel agencies, from which to research and propose to the province on developing tourism tours. The profession of making palm-leaf fans in Binh An village has not yet been recognized as a traditional profession. The People's Committee of Ninh Hoa Town will pay attention and urge the local government to prepare a dossier to submit to the competent authority for consideration and decision on recognition.
Source: https://toquoc.vn/doc-dao-nhung-chiec-quat-lam-bang-la-buong-2024080716031681.htm
Comment (0)