A step of noodle production.

In Dong Am Vang village (Viet Lap commune), the images of poor villages with earthen roads and earth-wall houses were replaced with beautiful concrete roads flanked by spacious houses.

In the past, fields in Dong Am Vang were just under one rice crop per year and then abandoned for the rest of the year. More than 60 percent of local families suffered from hunger then.

In 1987, Giap Van Thiep retired from his job in the taxation sector. Facing hardships, he wanted to seek some jobs to support his family. In 1989, when visiting an acquaintance, he spotted a bamboo broom and came to an idea. After that, he dismantled the broom to look into its structure and then re-assembled it. 

After several times of assembling and disassembling the broom, he came to understand the broom making methods. Later, he, together with his wife and five children, began making bamboo brooms. Although the first products were not truly beautiful, they were sold at 2,000 – 2,500 VND each, giving them profit worth over 50 percent of the prices.

The broom making techniques were then gradually perfected, helping his family produce more than 60 brooms every day. Thiep used the revenue to invest in livestock farming, thus gradually improving his family’s living standards.

Broom production in Dong Am Vang village developed when Thiep instructed his relatives and neighbors to do the craft. Among them, Nguyen Hoai Muon brought the broom making to a new level. In 2002, Muon, who learned the craft from Thiep, was invited to teach the craft to 30 war invalids by the nursing centre for revolution contributors of Bac Giang province in Que Nham commune, Tan Yen district. 

Finishing the course, many people expressed their wish to do the craft to raise their income. Muon set up a handicraft cooperative with 12 members who were war invalids. The cooperative now has 17 members, including persons with disabilities, producing bamboo, grass and rice straw brooms.

Muon, who is also Chairman of the cooperative, said: “Making bamboo brooms has generated stable income for people in Dong Am Vang village, helping to diversify lines of business and change the economic structure of Viet Lap commune. The household poverty rate has decreased considerably, to below 5 percent at present. Many families have become rich thanks to broom production.”

Noodle production has created high income for many families in Chau Son village.

Meanwhile, in Ngoc Chau commune, the rice noodle village of Chau Son is now a trustworthy destination for customers from Hanoi and Bac Ninh, Thai Nguyen and Hai Duong provinces. Nguyen Van Hoi was the one who introduced noodle making to the village. His family migrated to Ngoc Chau when he was small. In 1970, Hoi returned to his hometown in nearby Bac Ninh province and saw that the traditional production of rice paper and noodles improved the lives of local residents. He actively learned how to make noodles, bought necessary tools and brought them to Chau Son. In 1980, some families began to learn noodle making techniques, helping the craft to gradually expand.

Local households have installed machinery to produce noodles instead of making by hand. About half of the 170 households in the village make noodles at present. Each of them produces 120 – 150 kg of noodles each day and 2.5 – 3 tonnes each month. Chau Son sells more than 1,500 tonnes of noodles to the market every year at a price of 15,000 VND per kg at the production places, earning each household 15 million – 20 million VND (nearly 660 – 880 USD) in profit per month.

Package is the last step in the production chain.

The annual revenue from noodle production in Chau Son exceeds 37 billion VND (1.6 million USD). In 2014, the Bac Giang provincial People’s Committee recognized the noodle making village of Chau Son as a craft village. In 2016, Chau Son rice noodles were recognized as a trademark by the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam under the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Residents in Tan Yen district have developed many crafts, such as producing bamboo brooms in Dong Am Vang village and grass brooms in Noi Hac village of Viet Lap commune, producing noodles in Chau Son village of Ngoc Chau commune, producing incense in Ca Am village of Phuc Hoa commune, poultry breeding in Hung village of Lien Son commune, mushroom growing in hamlet 284 of Que Nham commune, and fish farming in Ha village of Cao Thuong commune.

Thanks to those crafts, the livelihoods of local households have been improved, giving a facelift to rural areas of Bac Giang province.

Chau Giang