Vietnamese Culture of Conical Hat Village

Most Chuong villagers focus on making conical hats instead of farming due to the village's dense population. The exact origins of this craft remain unknown, according to village elders.

Chuong Village is renowned as one of the most famous cradles for conical hat making in Hanoi

Unique Chuong village market

The market has become an integral part of life and a cultural hallmark of this ancient conical hat-making village, which has existed for centuries. It operates for just two hours each morning on the 4th, 10th, 14th, 24th, and 30th days of the lunar calendar. Notably, "buyers sit in one spot while sellers move about to sell."

The market starts at 4 a.m. and lasts till 6 a.m. Sellers, buyers and visitors flock to create a bustling, simple scene, unique to this rural market. It starts to bustle at 5 a.m. The communal house yard, over 400 square meters, brings together hundreds of sellers and dozens of buyers. Most customers are old and often buy in batches, at least 10 hats a batch. Unlike traditional markets where buyers look for sellers, at the Chuong hat market, sellers walk along entrances to the market to find buyers who usually sit in fixed positions waiting to check products and negotiate prices. Buyers want to buy beautiful and durable conical hats made by Chuong craftspeople. In addition to buying finished conical hats at the market, buyers can also easily find materials for making hats such as plastic thread, silk chin straps and leaves there for hat-making.

Ms. Le Thi Hoa in Tan Tien village, Phuong Trung commune, has purchased hats here for wholesaling and retailing in other provinces for over 40 years. Besides Chuong Market, she also goes to Van La, Kim Thu and Cao Duong communes in Thanh Oai district to buy hats and make them more good-looking. She said that each buyer has different requirements for hats, depending on the style, quality and price of conical hats. This is also the reason why some traders only choose cheap hats, but others only buy beautiful ones, priced from VND80,000 to over VND100,000 each. Having been involved in hat-making since her childhood, Hoa happily said that hat-making has existed for centuries. Although there are now many types of headwear, Chuong conical hats are still popular and in high demand.

Preservation and development

The attractiveness and uniqueness of the conical hat market is that visitors can directly watch how famous conical hats are skillfully made with the kindness, enthusiasm and warm welcome of Chuong villagers. Additionally, Chuong village retains the ancient Vietnamese architectural space with banyan trees, wells and communal house yards. The government and people of Chuong village have been cherishing and preserving them as precious cultural assets passed down by their ancestors. Chuong market is a unique feature. After each market day, tens of thousands of conical hats follow tourists or merchants to be sold all over the country.

Chuong village is one of the most famous conical hat-making cradles in Hanoi. However, like other craft villages, currently very few people live on hat-making, most of them are elderly, or middle-aged men and women trying to preserve the profession left by their ancestors.

Artisan Ta Thu Huong, a woman passionate about the traditional trade, keeps the values of Chuong conical hat village from the risk of being lost, bringing Chuong village's conical hats to many international tourists and exports them to many countries around the world. On average, each year, her production facility exports 20,000-30,000 conical hats to Japan, Korea, Europe, China, Russia and other markets where selling prices are expensive domestic ones.

Currently, Chuong village still lacks a linking organization to form a systematic chain of experiential tourism. Phuong Trung commune has gathered craft villages with typical products like conical hats and hand fans but there is no interconnection, resulting in small scale and mostly spontaneous production. Therefore, experiential tourism remains sparse. “I hope that the Party and the Government will have mechanisms and policies for development of the Chuong Village Conical Hat Tourist Site to create a space for domestic and foreign tourists to experience the hat-making village. So, we will preserve and promote the conical hat village and ensure social security for local people,” said artisan Ta Thu Huong.

Mr. Pham Viet Hung, Chairman of Phuong Trung Commune People's Committee, Thanh Oai district, said that about 3,000 out of more than 4,000 households still live on conical hat production. Most of them are elderly people who want to preserve the traditional profession and hope to have more income in their spare time. To continue the profession, the village has collected, preserved and stored documents on its traditional values and its products, and supported building galleries, craft museums, craft villages and traditional craft showrooms. Chuong Village has a conical hat museum which displays its typical conical hats along with tools, instruments and making techniques.

Moreover, Phuong Trung pays special attention to vocational training, transmission and propagation. The commune has introduced support mechanisms and policies for the maintenance and development of artisans and encouraged artisans to participate in this work. Artisans regularly open training classes for students and local residents to pass on skills and love for the profession to next generations. They are guided by experienced, highly skilled, and dedicated artisans to practice making conical hats, from processing palm leaves and weaving hats to decorating, said Hung.

By Bao Ngoc, Vietnam Business Forum

The page in collaboration with Hanoi Rural Development Department