Upland Transformations in Vietnam

11. Changing Labour Relations in a Hmong Village in Sa Pa, Northwestern Vietnam

 Upland Transformations in Vietnam 11 Changing Labour Relations in a Hmong Village in Sa Pa, Northwestern Vietnam Dương Bích Hạnh1 Introduction Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Hmong2 in Lao Chải village, located in Sa Pa District, in Vietnam’s northwestern province of Lào Cai, have seen great shifts in their traditional economic systems. New forms of family, gender and labour relations that are not traditionally Hmong have also emerged. Many of these changes can be attributed to an intensifying process of contact and integration of the village within Vietnamese society at large, brought about primarily by rapid tourism development in the area. In this chapter I will document and discuss these shifts in traditional economic and labour relations, thus shedding light on the current debate on recent changes in Vietnam’s uplands. The chapter uses information collected using anthropological research, mainly through in-depth interviews and participant observation, in both Sa Pa town and Lao Chải village. I went to Sa Pa for preliminary field research in 1999 and spent most of the two years between October 2000 and August 2002 in the area, primarily in Sa Pa town, with daily visits and a few short stays in Lao Chải village. Since then I have returned to Sa Pa many times, most recently in August 2009. Sa Pa and the Hmong Development of Sa Pa Sa Pa, located more than 350 kilometres from Hanoi, was a charming summer resort in the 1920s and 1930s. Archival documents and stories  Changing Labour Relations in a Hmong Village  of elderly Sa Pa residents recall a European-style mountain town with more than 200 villas, housing officials of colonial society and their family members during the hot summer months.3 As Sa Pa transformed into a colonial resort, the indigenous residents of the area, primarily Hmong and Dao, stayed rather removed from the scene in town, living their traditional life of working the lowland and upland fields, and making indigo and hemp. Most former French villas were set on fire by the Việt Minh in 1947 to prevent the return of French troops at the start of the First Indochina War. For decades after this, Sa Pa was forgotten by most outsiders and experienced no significant development, except waves of immigrants, primarily in the 1960s, under the New Economic Zone programme sponsored by the government. The labour immigrants, most of whom were Kinh, set up vegetable farms and built temporary houses, and concentrated in the central part of town, leaving the vast surrounding areas to the ethnic minorities. The early 1990s marked a significant turning point in Sa Pa’s history. With the coming (back) to Sa Pa of foreign tourists then, and Vietnamese tourists a few years later, the influx of ethnic minorities from surrounding villages, interventions by district authorities, the setting up of travel agencies, and the establishment of new hotels, bars and restaurants by Kinh residents, Sa Pa has become a town full of new sorts of interaction, a bustling “contact zone” (Pratt 1992). The development of tourism in Sa Pa has brought to the town an ever-increasing number of Hmong girls and women from Lao Chải (and a smaller number of Hmong and some Dao from other villages surrounding Sa Pa) to engage in activities unknown in traditional village life. In the beginning, Hmong and Dao girls and women engaged in selling handicraft pieces, ranging from old garments pulled from dark and dusty attic rooms to more recent innovations with Hmong/Dao embroidery patterns—such as hats, blankets, shirts, pillow covers and bags. The handicraft business in town attracted not only local Hmong and Dao, but also Hmong from other districts of Lào Cai province and even other provinces in the Northern Mountain Region. Besides buying and selling handicrafts, many girls found work as tour guides, either on a freelance basis or in formal employment with travel agencies or hotels in town. The girls’ and women’s participation in these activities has brought about significant changes in gender, family and labour relations in Sa Pa. Although there are women and girls from both Hmong and Dao groups in Sa Pa, this chapter focuses on the Hmong sellers and tour  Upland Transformations in Vietnam guides, especially the Hmong girls, whose ages range from the early to late teens. It shows how their...