Nón bài thơ - còn ai thích đội?

[Đỗ Huyền My (Sagittarius)]

World famous conical hat of Vietnam
April 30, 2003


In Vietnam, the national hat is without question the nón, or conical hat. Along with the lithe ao dai, the conical hat has become a sort of informal Vietnamese national symbol recognised worldwide.

Nobody really knows when the first conical hat was donned in Vietnam, but doubtless it dates back to the region's earliest civilisations thousands of years ago.

The ingredients, after all, remain quite basic - bamboo and palm leaf - and the need for a sunhat would have probably paralleled the first cultivation of rice.

The non has been around a long time, and this distinctive hat may well be one of the most timeless aspects of the Vietnamese landscape.

Today the conical hat is made in different parts of the country, from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City.

Different regions put their own spin on the basic design. The conical hat of Hue remains famous for its lightness and supple thinness. The central province of Quang Binh makes its own Ba Don non, which is a sturdy version inlaid with elaborate decoration.

The different countries of southeast Asia, in fact, have all designed their own unique versions of the basic palm-leaf hat. Thai women, for example, favour a palm-leaf hat that resembles an upside-down basket.


HEAD & SHOULDERS ABOVE REST

In the northern province of Ha Tay, a tiny village has devoted itself almost exclusively to the production of conical hats. Situated just a few kilometres from Hanoi, the poky village of Chuong is, so to say, the headgear capital of Vietnam.

The community makes a number of designs, including the non dau (the smallest model), the non quai thao (a flat design), the non thung quai thao (a larger version of the flat design) and the basic non.

Conical hats have been the community's traditional product for as long as one can remember and they are marketed throughout Vietnam. An estimated 3,000 families - roughly 80% of the community - are involved in the hat-making industry.

Visitors will often find roads to the village are completely covered with bright green palm leaves, which villagers have spread out in the sun to dry.

The process is relatively simple: the leaves are dried, whitened, stitched into bamboo frames and given some decorative touches.

It takes five to six hours to craft a basic, no-frills, conical hat. When sold in a typical town market, a conical hat might turn a VND 5,000 profit.

Fortunately for the village of Chuong and other conical hat producers nationwide, the non has gained popularity among western tourists. Visitors to Vietnam often buy the hats as souvenirs, as decorative wall-hangings, and of course, as highly-effective sunhats.

You will frequently see these hats, often embellished with complicated decorations, for sale wherever foreigners shop. The simple non does look slightly out of place sitting in a gift shop on Hang Bong Street or Noi Bai Airport duty-free (which also sells such intriguing items as air conditioners and washing machines), but they are typically the establishment's most sought-after item. The markups at such exclusive shops generate a profit far higher than VND 5,000, of course.

If you want a basic conical hat at local prices, go to the market and bargain with a smile. You won't get a hat at local prices but, with persistence, you can come close. After all, any price is a bargain. Remember that taking home a non is like taking home a piece of Vietnam.

Reprinted with permission from Nhan Dan Newspaper

 

[Đỗ Huyền My (Sagittarius)]

"Non Bai Tho" or "Poetical Leaf"

By Tran Thong

Take a peasant's common conical hat, add a touch of this and a little of that, and you will have the idea, but not quite an authentic Non Bai Tho or "Poetical Leaf" from Central Viet Nam. Just a few simple arrangements added to the conical form are enough to give the Vietnamese leaf-covered hat unique features found nowhere else among Asia’s various types of conical hats.

Vietnamese girls become milder, more elegant and more delicate when once they put on a hat which gives shelter to their blushing cheeks like a crowing bud protected from sun, rain or rough wind. Now, Vietnamese girls do not like just any conical hat they come upon. The dearest to them is inevitably the one called the "Poetical Leaf ".

Looking at the inside of the hat, when held ,against the light, one finds widely popular, romantic poems, proverbs and old sayings; sometimes there is the image of a temple, palace or tomb. The hat originated in Hue, the ancient cultural capital of Viet-Nam, and the birthplace of many eminent literary men. It is true that the place where the hat comes from has been romantically famous with its peaceful Huong (Perfume) River and its majestic Ngu Binh (Peace) mountain. Moreover, Hue has been famous for her attractively sentimental, soft-voiced and long-haired girls who often gave inspiration to poets whose creative works have been handed down to the present day. And the "Poetical Leaf" has a prominent place in all that poetical, dreamy and yet scholarly diet of the ancient city.

The hat is meticulously and creatively made from simple materials of nature. Thin wooden pieces with notches are used as a frame to shape the conical form and to hold the hat rims together. All this is done solely by hand, for no machine ever touches a " Poetical Leaf ".

The leaves used to cover the hat are brought from the forest. Then they are exposed to the dew for one night to soften them. When the leaves become dry but still soft they are flattened either by hand or by ironing. Only young leaves are selected. Old or dark ones are discarded. A hat usually consists of 16 to 18 rims made from a special kind of bamboo. The poem and picture frames are made in advance and then attached to the hat between the leaves. 1n order to have a well-made hat, it must be knitted together with a peculiar kind of thread called "doac" made from the ]eaves of a special kind of reed.

Finally, the hat is trimmed and painted with a coat of attar oil to keep it clean and smooth.

All the attraction and unique value of the hat depends upon the arrangements of the dextrous craftsman.

The "Poetical Leaf" is not only a symbol of the mysterious dreamlike beauty of the girls in Central Viet-Nam, but has also become part of the national cultural spirit.

 

[Đỗ Huyền My (Sagittarius)]

Gracious & Aged old Vietnamese Non

The Vietnamese Non (palm - leaf hat) is not only used to keep off the rain or the sun shine, but also of some monumental historical and cultural significance, closely associated with the life of the Vietnamese people.

In such a tropical land, with so much rain and sunshine as Vietnam, non is quite useful and handy for travelling or working in the open air. It is a miniature roof on the move, to help keep off the rain and the sunshine alike. It has been closely associated with the Vietnamese for generations, even though there is now a great variety of other hats. Furthermore, apart from protecting the head, non is an indispensable ele- of the traditional costumes of Vietnamese women. Wherever you notice a lady in an "ao dai (long dress) and a non, you may be sure she is a Vietnamese woman. The hat graces the gentleness and lissomness of the young lady in a traditional long dress, a four-flapped gown or a national blouse. For this reason, non has been an endless source of inspiration for quite a few writers, poets, artists and painters in creating masterpieces that will live forever.

The long history of the Vietnamese hat may be seen in the engravings on the Ngoc Lu bronze drum, the Dao Thinh bronze jar, made 2,500 - 3,000 years ago. Thanh Giong a well known legendary hero in Vietnam (under the reign of King Hung VI, more than 2,000 years ago), went to battle with an iron hat, not only to keep off the rain and the sun, but also as a shield against the enemy's arrows.

In the old days, the Vietnamese made a great variety of palm-leaf hats for use according to age, occupation and social position. Pham Dinh Ho, an 18th century writer, recorded in his Wu Trung Essays" 10 different categories of hats and the way to wear them, for instance, for elderly people, school students, little children, city dwellers, farmers, army men, armymen's spouses and handmaids, and Buddhist monks. Unfortunately, today, some of them are virtually non-existent.

In the 19th century, many more types of hat made their appearance with names according to their material the feather hat made of goosefeathers, the pineapple hat made with pineapple leaves, the painted hat made of bamboo plaits painted with a thin coat of lacquer (usually for seafarers who had to brave the stormy sea). The hats are named also accord- to their shapes, for instance, the "non Chan Tuong" that looks like an elephant's foot, the "non Mom bo' like the cow's muzzle (for rickshaw pullers), the "non Thung quai thao' like a bamboo basket. In addition, the hats are named according to the local- of their origin: "non Thanh" (from Thanh Hoa Province), "non Nghe (from Nghe An Province), "non Hue" (from the imperial city of Hue), "Non Chuong (from Chuong Village in Ha Tay Province). You can hardly recall all the names of the types of hats pro- by the clever hands of the Vietnamese handicraftsmen. In Hanoi today, you can still find "Hang Non" Street, where all types of hats used to be sold. The one that you see Vietnamese women wearing today is the conical hat made of palm-leaves, areca leaf petioles, toddy palm strings... all harvested from the jungle.

The first thing to be done in the process of making a hat is to treat the palm leaves. The crumpled green palm leaf must be ironed out with a warm, flat piece of iron and some

rags. If the iron is too hot, the leaf will be crisp, or even burnt, and, if it is too cool, the leaf will flatten out initially, but will crumple up in the longer run. Burned sulfur helps make the leaf go white and protects it from mold.

Long thin bamboo-internodes, smoked to protect against termites and bamboo-borers, are used for the brims The palm-leaf hat currently in use is 50 cm in diameter, and 32 cm from top to brim with 16 circles of bamboo. The number 16 is the result of a long study and is now an unchangeable principle. The beauty of the hat depends largely on the clever, skillful fingers of the maker. The bamboo circles, big and small, are put on a wooden mould, then come the leaves, one overlapping the other. Now it is time for the maker to show his clever skill: even, wellspaced stitches, with well-hidden connections, show only regular stitches, somewhat like a sewing machine. The toddy-palm strings hold the 16 bamboo circles in place, and the hat is done to perfection.

There are a variety of ways of decorating the hat to make it more attractive. The simplest way is to stick printed pictures of flowers in different colours on the inside of the hat. Coloured strings of linen help connect the two ends of the multi-coloured hat straps, usually made of silk, another fine decoration. Young girls of the age Of puberty like white or pink straps, while adults often choose those of darker shades.

During the years of the wars, to show their faithfulness to their hus or lovers fighting at the front, the women and the girls chose violet straps, the colour of loyalty. The Vietnamese also laboured to create an original strap for their hats. The vil- of Trieu Khuc (in Thanh Tri in the outskirts of Hanoi) is quite well known for its weaving of hat straps of "non Quai thao", an indispensable item in the traditional ceremonial cotumes of women under the Nguyen Dynasty (19th cent.), when this type of hat was for brides or ladies from noble families, particularly on festive days (now you can find it only in the classical dramas on the stage).

For the Vietnamese women, the hat is sometimes an object to share their feelings and looks. A small mirror is stuck to the inside top of the hat for the purpose. The most elaborate deco are the highly-stylized design motifs: roses and chrysanthemums, bamboo-groves or buffalo-boys, pa y-fi Ids or lyric poems that can be seen when placed against the background of the sky, hence the name of this hat "non bai tho" h (hat with poems). Some young men choose the hats with the poems that express their own innermost feelings and give them to the girls. Seeing off their daughters to their new husbands' home, mothers used to give them palm-leaf hats that could give so much advice and recommendations, love and affection.

Non is also a loyal friend of the working people, who toil for their living, becoming part of their daily life. Besides keeping off the sun and the rain, the hat may serve as a seat for a short rest on the roadside during a long journy, or as a fan to refresh the farmer working in the paddy-fields. It may serve as a bucket to fetch water from a well, for drinking to quell the thirst, or washing to cool off under the scorching sun. It may also serve as a hand-basket to hold things bought at the market. In cultural performances, the hat dance by charming Vietnamese girls is quite an impressive item. It is used to express their gentleness and secretiveness. In the alternate singing of "Quan Ho Bac Ninh" the female singer always holds a large-brimmed palm-leaf hat that helps shield her shyness when hearing the boy's declaration of love. At the up-to-date fashion shows, non usually goes well with stylized traditional dresses.

Today, in the hectic and frenetic rhythms of life in the large cities and towns, non is less used, but you can still find it with the farmers in all cor- of rural areas, where its uses are still brought into full play.

(Source: Vietnam Tourism)