A period of rustic clogs
History tells that shoes have appeared in Vietnam very early. According to some ancient books recorded, Ms. Zhao (in the third century) went on the clogs with ivory. In the past, in the countryside, only when the summer festival came, men and women would take bamboo clogs to bring. Simple clogs worn by people first appeared in Phu Yen (South Central Vietnam). Until 1900, the clogs "emigrated" to the South with the image of the male students in public schools wearing white cloaks and feet with wooden clogs. When the clogs began to be introduced into the daily life of the Southern people, it was also the time when the craft village in Binh Nham was born.
Mr. Van Racing, owner of Ut Dua carpentry establishment - Hamlet of Binh Thuan, Binh Nham commune, Binh Duong province said that the most flourishing period of clogs in Binh Nham was after 1975. Easy to understand because that was when Vietnam was difficult towels, also closed to the world, so there is no material to produce leather and plastic footwear ..., so reuse the traditional clogs. In the family, a person makes clogs and then teaches vocational training for spouses, children, and siblings. Such home-based facilities usually have 3 to 4 outsourcers, the other half are blood-related relatives working together. Each neighborhood (also known as the camp) has more than a dozen houses building clogs, the sound of the drumstick gouging the wood fibers from beginning to end. Binh Nham at the time had more than a hundred houses making wooden clogs, every day a farm producing more than 700 pairs was normal. And from then on, this place is known as a famous trade village that provides wooden clogs to many regions in the South.
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| The process of forming wooden clogs |
In the early days, to have double clogs, it took a lot of stages, requiring skill and meticulousness of the specialized workers at each stage. First, one has to divide the trees (rubber, oval, jackfruit, ...) materials into chunks - people in the profession called "cutting trees". Next, the women take care of each pencil line to make sketches of the clogs and clogs. Due to the craftsmanship, there was no measure, so they estimated and based on experience to aim the length and width of the left and right ones. Therefore, the design is quite modest, divided into two types of height 5 inches high and 3 inches low. This stage is light, but requires a high degree of accuracy because only a few millimeters of deviation will produce a low high. After the painting of the women's union, the men used a saw to cut the lines they had prepared to give the shape of each clogs. Women 's shoes have a waist in the middle, and men should not be called "canoe". Tam - a clogged painter said:"In the old days, to hide gold and silver when away, people still carved a hollow part of the heel to carry as a travel fee . "
For the shape of each clogs, each heel, the people of Binh Nham bring them to roast to absorb less water in the wood to make the finished shoes sometimes light, the wearer does not feel heavy feet. We were led by Mr. Racing to the back of the house to see the furnace burning with dry wood and sawdust. Waiting for the clogs to cool down, the scrubber will help the wood splinter on the body go away and the final stage is to paint, close the straps and then produce the finished product. Gradually, there are machines, the sawing process of clogs, rub faster, workers do not have to use much power but instead, labor accidents are also potential. Mr. Phuong Tung - Mr. Ut Racing's son just put the wood fibers into the saw machine while laughing and pointing at the scars on his hand, saying:“I used to wear gloves for protection, but I was too entangled so I took them off too. These scars are caused by the sawing through the back of the clogs' waist . ”
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| Workers are drawing clogs |
Have witnessed firsthand how to see the hard work of the worker when making a pair of clogs. Looking at your hands full of "stars", sometimes "shooting stars" and sometimes "Jupiter" is the count of how many times the saw blade nearly cuts through them. Looking at the shackled back of a woman in her forties, she stumbled down the scrubbing machine of every clogs, knowing that she sat from morning to afternoon, sometimes too late for dinner because the goods folded around her. When eating should make, how much is sold out all that much. Both owners and workers can take care of the family full of rice cooker, sour bowl of hot snakehead fish soup, every restaurant has both a fragrant pepper pot and vinegar, more or less accumulated by itself.
Very softly the old language echoed on ...
Saying "very quietly" is because, Binh Nham now no longer thrills the beat of old wooden clogs. Currently only the family of Mr. Ut Racing and his nephew produce wooden clogs manually. Hundreds of other families have quit their jobs for more than a decade. They could not stand due to the stagnant goods because people are forgetting this Vietnamese-style product, due to the fashionable footwear imported from Korea and the West with a lot of modern options.
For young people, who wear T-shirts and jeans, who come with clogs of the 90s, they think it is fashionable and unfashionable, so clogs are only sold to the old women in the countryside, tourists to Vietnam want. bought as souvenirs to bring home, or sometimes as props for a folk music and dance show. On the face of the man who was over sixty years old, more than 40 years with the profession of wrinkling wrinkles with age, and the wrinkles of sadness when looking at the fading career day by day, he said: “I don't count guys for my career because it's so extreme, and now I can only hold 500 pairs for a while but sometimes I sell them sometimes, life is more than enough. And working up to now is due to the fact that I have a crush on it.
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| Glue stick sole stage |
Because of the difficulties, they did not do the whole process, they just stopped at processing embryos, then moved to paint shops in Thanh Loc - District 12, Ho Chi Minh City. Then traders here come to pick up the goods, bring the straps and sell them, sometimes on the Ben Thanh market - downtown Saigon for tourists, sometimes back to the countryside or suburbs for the sisters buy and take to market
The best in the clogs industry now in Binh Nham is Hung Thai Enterprise, the former family base of Ba Than carpentry family that has grown into a limited company to export clogs to foreign countries. When the domestic market went down without braking, they turned to foreign markets. According to Thai Van Anh Hung - business owner, the clogs here are mainly exported to European countries and often the goods will run in the summer, every day so they release 1,500 pairs of shoes. When he was still able to do business - between 2000 and 2007, he employed more than 200 workers, but that number is now only half. The Hero shook his head.There are many businesses going to the company and then going bankrupt because of heavy capital - wood has to be imported from abroad because domestic wood has unclear quality standards and toxic substances inside, so customers do not accept. In addition, the design must always be renewed in a timely fashion. Then the Chinese goods devalued, especially the Kimonô clogs that are easy to imitate. These challenges make production increasingly shrinking while still having to ensure the lives of our brothers and sisters ”. After saying that, he mused, putting his glasses on his forehead and sighed, "Big boat and big waves. Do small worries according to small parts, enlarge to worry about big things ” .
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Visit Binh Nham, you can listen to the sounds very simple and elegant, feel the lightness in each new noise to understand the wooden spirit that has moved the heart of musician Tran Quang Loc: "... Go back here wearing mules and clogs ..." . Suddenly fluttering ... Then two or three years back when I came here, could I still hear that sound again, though even now it only comes from two houses at the alley?
