The night before my trip, I lay wide awake in bed not knowing what to expect for the next five days. I was nervous at the prospect of helming my very own research project which my group and I have worked on tirelessly for months. It was finally time to head down to the vibrant and bustling city of Sa Pa in Vietnam, full of culture, food, and most importantly, motorbikes (seriously, the people in Vietnam love their motorbikes). 

Some of my most memorable moments of the trip have to do with the mouth-watering food. The Vietnamese love their rice noodles, and now I can say I do too. I’ve had phở for breakfast for three out of the five days we were in Sa Pa, and I can definitely tell why it’s the national dish of Vietnam.  

In Vietnam, I realised that it was over good food at which the people share their unique stories. There are countless times when I’ve listened to many stories that my tour guide shared with me about his country and people, like how he grew up eating the food we were trying for the first time. He also shared with us about education in Vietnam and his own stories in university, and there I learned how English was a highly sought after skill in the job market. These little stories made me feel closer to this country and its people, who have persevered through rapid change and development. The stories and laughter shared across the dinner table are memories I will never forget.  

Food is often a key to unlocking the soul of a culture. Within the Hmong community, their culinary customs are intricately linked to their history and folklore. Besides the food, I learned many things about the history and culture of the people there, especially about their traditional costumes and embroidery practices. This is largely due to the focus of my research project, which focuses on how tourism is diluting the authenticity of Hmong embroidery culture and how Hmong businesses are preserving their cultural heritage in Sa Pa. The Hmong is an ethnic minority in Vietnam with a large population in Sa Pa, where they can be easily identified by their vibrant cultural clothing, which features detailed embroidery and distinctive patterns. 

We visited many local businesses selling Hmong embroidery and the Hmong people shared their personal stories and viewpoints which greatly broadened my perspective. I noticed how the people took pride in their work and costumes.  

In one interview with the Hmong women of a local business, IndigoCat, our interviewee, spoke enthusiastically about the motifs used in their embroidery. These symbols emulated things women saw in nature, from spirals representing snails to intricate twists of flowers repeated in fabric. 

A woman’s feelings and energy are said to be woven into the fabric, meaning that another could look at her work and tell if she was happy, sad, or frustrated. Sometimes, signages before a particularly complicated piece would proclaim loudly, “2000 hours of work”, a boast of the time and labour put into their work. Truly, these Hmong women were artisans in their own right, and I only truly understood the fact when I saw this for myself. 

Overall, this experience taught me a lot about the culture of the people living in Sa Pa. Before, the concept of “culture” seemed a particularly nebulous one to me, perhaps just a word to outline the boundaries of food, music, customs, and other things in an arbitrary list. Being there, interacting with the locals and eating their food, made me realise that I was researching on a tangible lineage of people forming a complex, untraceable system of practices, metaphors and habits, which I perceived and heard through their art, their food and their cultural practices.  

Another thing that became glaringly apparent to me was that I was researching a community of people thriving and living right now, which cannot be fully reduced into a couple of words on paper. Because of this, I became even more determined to represent this community accurately in my final project, to allow others to understand what I have understood from my short trip there. In my final project, I will write knowing that it’s not my story to tell, but a story that must be told.

Submission by Chong Xiu Wen, Year 1,  English and Philosophy