Hmong, Hill Tribes of the Northern Vietnam

The mist moves in silent waves, breaking on dark mountaintops, dissipating momentarily to give way to vistas of the paddy fields below and then closing in again, an elegant wrap for the magnificent mountains that shoulder Vietnam’s borer with China. Further along the twisting dirt road, slender shapes materialize into members of the Hmong tribe making their 15-hour journey to the nearest market.

While the government continues to push forward with an ambitious resettlement program that will see the country’s hill tribes give up their nomadic way of life, a small contingent of Vietnam’s 767,000 Hmong inhabitants cling to a traditional way of life in the Ha Giang province, culling a meager living from the mountains.

Quyen comes from a Hmong village 300 km from Hanoi. After attending a rural school he went on to study Russian and mathematics at university in the capital city.

“The Hmong resist becoming part of modern Vietnam, the government is trying to stop them from moving around and burning plants and trees on the land to farm. No good for environment. The government build schools and hospitals, (which is a) big investment, and then the tribes move to another place, (leaving) empty schools,” he says.

The Hmong remain fiercely independent in their isolation, living at altitudes of 1500 meters. They are one of 54 ethnic hill tribes that together account for 14 percent of Vietnam’s total population.

During the Vietnam War, several Hmong tribes served as part of a covert CIA-trained militia, dismantling communist supply lines and serving in active combat. In Laos, the Hmong fought what came to be known as the Secret War, as the conflict spread over the border into Cambodia and Laos. When the war ended the Americans withdrew their support for the Hmong with their troops, leaving the hill tribe vulnerable.

In Laos, the Hmong were treated with extra cruelty because of their wartime loyalties. Soon after the US withdrawal and the Pathet Lao takeover, Hmong refugees reaching Thailand spoke of colored “rain” that helicopters let loose on their villages, causing massive hemorrhaging and quick, painful death for those it touched directly and a slower but equally painful death for others. Years later, the Soviets used it in Afghanistan, and scientists figured out the particular venom it contained: Triochothecene mycotoxin. But its first known use on humans was as part of the Laotian communists’ vengeance on the Hmong. In Vietnam their situation has not been as dire. The government’s main focus has been to assimilate them into some semblance of a modern existence.

On the nine-hour road journey from Hanoi, past Vinh Tuy, Quan Ba and several other towns and villages to Ha Giang, it appears the government has resettled many of the Hmong tribes along the roads hoping they will give up slash and burn agriculture. But despite attractive subsidies, free education and healthcare, you can still see fires clearing the way for cultivation on the steep mountainsides. The Hmong harbor a deep distrust of the ethnic Vietnamese, reacting to a policy of forced assimilation (in the 1970s) where the government outlawed their local customs and language. Then the government created New Economic Zones in the north, resettling people from overcrowded urban centers to fertile land in the north, resulting in severe food shortages for the Hmong. According to government records, 250,000 people were resettled in the north every year during the 1980s. In the 1990s a gentler policy went into effect, with ethnic minority languages being taught at schools.

Another protection for ethnic diversity in Vietnam came from an unlikely quarter — tourism. During the 1970s foreigners were banned from roaming the central or northern highlands because the CIA was known to have recruited in those areas. When the restrictions were lifted, hundreds of thousands of adventure seekers flooded the Sapa region, hoping for contact with the bizarre Dao and colorful Montagnard tribes. An eight-hour train from Hanoi to Sapa and a slew of tourist buses meant the birth of a lucrative industry. But the Hmong of Ha Gaing are uncertain they want any part of that new industry.

My Ngoc, a black Hmong, recognizable by their dark-panel skirts, sits on her porch in the village of Tam Son, weaving hemp cloth on a bamboo loom from a continuous roll of thread made from knotting many strips of dried husk.

“I make three or five meters a month to sell in market; sometimes I keep it to make dress but dying the cloth (takes) thirty days and then I embroider for many months, (so is) not for selling. Take one year in making.”

My’s views differ sharply from the Flower Hmong of Sapa, in northwestern Vietnam, who sell their multihued creations to tourists and dress in more sparsely embellished outfits themselves. There are very few hotels to clutter the panoramic views of the paddy fields so travelers have to spend the night in local homes approved by the local authorities, ensuring that tourism provides an income for the inhabitants of the hills. While government magazines applaud tourism as a new source of income for the ethnic hill tribes, critics are concerned that tribal people who find it easier to accept tourist dollars than cultivate crop are endangering their ability to sustain themselves once the novelty of the experience wears off. (Note to traveler: It is hardly dignified to bargain.)

There are no traffic bulletins here in Ha Giang. A broken bridge we find out about ten km too late, and then a landslide that farmers alert us to along an alternate route turns a six-hour journey to Ba Be into a twelve-hour odyssey across country roads. The detours take us deeper into the northern region, through a Tay village near Bang Lung as the mellowing sunlight gilds the stilt homes and paddy fields.

The Tay (Tie) tribes, Vietnam’s most populous hill people at 1.5 million, depend on fertile valleys just as the Hmong rely on the mercy of the mountains. The Tay make their homes facing the paddy fields, avoiding a view of mountaintops because the peaks, according to their beliefs, are arrows that pierce their hearts. They also avoid building homes near streams, because they are afraid the water may flow prosperity away from the home.

Everywhere there are reminders that this is a communist stronghold. From Ho Chi Minh’s benign face on billboards all over Phu Quoc’s fishing villages in the south to remote hamlets in Ha Giang reminding citizens that they must unite in working for the glory of their country. Every home, however run down, flies bright red flags printed with either a yellow star or the sickle and hammer. The people believe in the rural Vietnamese dream, “Nha lau, xe hoi, len xe, huong ngua” which translates as “Step off the horse cart and into a car, to your multistory house.”

Whether you stop to take in a dramatic view through a mountain pass in Meo Vac or to savor a strong concoction of coffee and condensed milk with the locals in Quan Ba, there is an incredible, infectious lightness in the air. It is in the toothless smiles of the little children or the farmers’ grateful nods as you fork over a few dollars for the hot bowl of noodle soup and tomato and tofu stew.

They have so little, and they manage to make so much out of their existence as they cull a living from the earth. Contained in their every gesture is a lesson I would do well to remember the next time I think I work hard. In particular, I will think of the slim, delicately boned girl shouldering a stick that balanced two massive buckets of manure across two miles to her field who stepped aside, calling for me to pass in case she splashed me with a little muck.