• Preserving and promoting traditional craft villages
  • Traditional craft villages during Tet
  • Traditional craft villages are fading away.
  • Developing tourism from traditional craft villages

Enduring vitality

In Hong Dan commune, many long-standing traditional craft villages such as carpentry, blacksmithing , weaving, mat weaving, rice paper making... still maintain their activities. After many ups and downs, facing the competition of modern market products, the craft villages thought they would gradually fade away, or even no longer have the strength to survive, but with the loyalty and passion of the people to preserve the craft, the features The quintessence of traditional crafts hundreds of years old is still preserved.

Mr. Truong Minh Danh (Thong Nhat hamlet) has followed his father's carpentry profession since he was young. Although his life is not as rich as many others, he still loves the profession and wants to do it.

It is not difficult to find the blacksmith shop of Mr. Tran Van Tan and Mrs. Nguyen Thi Giang in Thong Nhat hamlet, because this is one of the few family blacksmith shops that still have fire burning every morning in the hustle and bustle of modern life. Mrs. Giang said that she was originally a daughter of Can Tho , and because of fate, she came to this place to be a daughter-in-law. Since her husband's parents were still alive, she knew that blacksmithing was a family profession.

“At first, many of my husband's brothers followed the profession, but gradually, because of the hardship and the dominance of modern machines replacing manual labor, the traditional blacksmith profession became weaker, and everyone left the profession their ancestors left behind. Only my husband and I, because of our love for the profession, were willing to stick with it,” Ms. Giang confided.

Mr. Tran Van Tan (Thong Nhat hamlet) has been involved in the traditional blacksmithing profession for three generations.

Mr. Tan and Mrs. Giang's household is one of the few households in Thong Nhat hamlet that has flexibly adapted to the times by combining traditional blacksmithing secrets with modern designs to compete with today's imported and processed products. Having maintained meticulousness in each product as well as durability, although the daily production quantity is only a modest few dozen products, items such as bib knives, cleavers, planers, scissors, planers... of Mr. Tan and his wife are still favored by local consumers and customers everywhere seek to buy the famous " Ngan Dua knives " (Ngan Dua is the name of a town before the merger, now Hong Dan commune - PV).

Keep the profession with love

Ms. Nguyen Thi Giang prepares goods every morning before taking them to the market to sell and wholesale.

According to the People's Committee of Hong Dan commune, currently in the commune there are 159 households maintaining traditional occupations such as blacksmithing, mat weaving, carpentry, making silkworm rice cakes..., creating jobs for more than 500 workers. Although traditional occupations do not provide outstanding income for people here to get rich, they are stable jobs, helping to support families through many generations as well as raising many young generations to adulthood, have jobs, and have stable lives.

Coming to the traditional craft village in Hong Dan, you will feel something very special, that is, the people who keep the craft always have a deep love for their homeland, do not want to leave their homeland, and no matter how things change, they always stick with their craft.

Many people like to visit traditional blacksmith families to buy knives and scissors for their family's daily needs.

By changing to adapt to the times, rural people in their 60s combine local consumption with introducing their traditional crafts to customers at inter-commune and inter-provincial markets. They even know how to introduce products made by their own families via social networks such as Zalo, Facebook, or send products to introduce at fairs and exhibitions in and outside the province, thereby increasing connectivity with the community and maintaining wholesale and retail customers.

Products with the brand name "Dao Ngan Dua" of the traditional craft village of Hong Dan commune are present at fairs and exhibitions.

Just like that, they have been making an important contribution to "keeping the fire" for hundreds of years old craft villages, preserving unique cultural features and passing on to future generations the pride of continuing to preserve the traditional craft of their family and hometown.

Thanh Hai - Tu Quyen

Source: https://baocamau.vn/tram-nam-giu-lua-lang-nghe-a121676.html