Foreign artists to hew at Hue sculpture camp
Tailoring technology: Hoi An's new cyber-cloth heritage
Xuan Khoat, Che Cong Loc, and Luong Dung, That's cricket!
Greetings Vietnam art lovers - and welcome to the Vietnam Art Gallery April 2004 newsletter.
This month sees us celebrating the artistry of sculpture, cloth and food - namely, a dish of tasty crickets which will see you rubbing your legs together with glee!
Click here to view a special sampling of our paintings!
=============== CONTENTS ===============
- This month we feature the work of new art in the Vietnam Art Gallery - Xuan Khoat, Che Cong Loc, and Luong Dung. Go >>
- Foreign artists to hew at Hue sculpture camp - Fifty-two foreign artists and 10 Vietnamese artists are soon to converge at the Hue Festival 2004 sculpture camp, due to open on May 10. Go >>
- Tailoring technology - Hoi An's new cyber-cloth heritage. Go >>
- That's cricket - According to a least one Vietnamese produce supplier, nothing can beat a good home-cooked meal of crickets. Go >>
- Artist Roster - Our database of up-and-coming artists has doubled in the last few months and we now have over 850 original art pieces in our database - one of the largest virtual galleries on the Internet! Go >>
=== New Art Feature ===
New artist: Introducing Xuan Khoat. Xuan's current love is cats: cats lounging, playing and mousing their way across his vibrant canvasses. Dog lovers beware!
Xuan Khoat - The Cat 14 - $300 - more >>
Xuan Khoat - The Cat 23 - $300 - more >>
New art from Che Cong Loc. Che Cong Loc brings us a new painting this month entitled My Sister 3 - a peaceful study of beauty.
Che Cong Loc - My Sister 3 - $800 - more >>
New art from Luong Dung. Luong Dung's minimal works would be ideally suited to the frame of a white wall, or a room with a warm-toned interior.
Che Cong Loc - The Fishing basket 1 - $650 - more >>
=== Foreign artists to hew at Hue sculpture camp ===
Fifty-two foreign artists and 10 Vietnamese artists are soon to converge at the Hue Festival 2004 sculpture camp, due to open on May 10.
Sculptors will hew statues at the National Statue Park by the Huong River. Their works will then be unveiled a month later at the Hue Festival - a cultural event which attracts much local and international attention.
Mr Xe Nha Nhac, head of the festival organising committee, said the Hue Festival will showcase the cultural heritage of Hue and Vietnam and also feature works from the visiting international artists. The festival runs from June 12 to 20.
Royal music from the Nguyen dynasty, recognised by UNESCO in 2003 as an 'intangible cultural heritage of humanity', would also be promoted at the event.
Art troupes from Vietnam, France, China, Russia and Argentina will also stage performances. A rich mix of both local and international culture is anticipated. The organising committee is scheduled to soon hold a news briefing in Paris to announce the agenda for the Hue Festival. Future Vietnam Art Gallery newsletters will keep you posted!
== Tailoring technology - Hoi An's new cyber-cloth heritage ==
When asked for their impressions of Vietnam's world heritage town of Hoi An, many tourists instantly show off their cut-price clothes. What began as a few tailor shops catering to locals has exploded into a clothing mecca with tourists coming back for more.
"I got a new wardrobe for about US$100," said enthused Australian student Susan Martin about her visit to Hoi An five years ago. "They fit me properly on the first try, it was like a miracle."
If Susan had the chance to return to Vietnam today she would be amazed to see the number of tailor shops that have mushroomed in the past few years. When you walk around any of Ha Noi's or Ho Chi Minh city's popular sites, you'll see many young backpackers sporting garments made of Vietnamese silk from Hoi An.
The owner of Hoan My tailors, Pham Tu Hien, said some people in the town still observed the death anniversary of Nguyen Thi Sang, who first introduced sewing to Hoi An in the 16th century. According to Pham, between the 1970s and 1990s Hoi An was a small quiet town with only three big tailor shops. "Customers were mainly poor working people, who had almost no other special request than getting clothes at a cheap price," he said.
But everything changed after the town was granted World Heritage status by the United Nations' Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1999.
"Tourists have totally changed the tradition of the handicraft here," Hien said. "In the past two years alone, some 200 clothing and tailor shops have appeared." The old tailors from the sleepy 1970s have virtually been replaced by a new era of quick-turnaround silk artisans.
It's 8am and Thanh Tam is already staring at her computer screen. There are several emails from overseas customers ordering clothes. She will scan in cloth samples, send emails back to the customers and wait for their choice before ordering their clothes to be made.
This is a daily task for the 25-year-old university graduate at Thu Thuy Tailor Fashion, one of some 300 tailor shops in Hoi An.
The internet has been a turning point for some of Hoi An's businesses, which mainly offer quick tailoring for tourists pressed for time. "At first, we just installed a few internet-linked computers to give customers something to do while they were waiting for their clothes to be made," Bui Thi Thu Thuy, owner of one of the first tailor shops in Le Loi Street, said. "But then, some customers e-mailed their friends at home for their measurements to order clothes to take home as presents."
When she realised the potential the internet held to bring in orders, it didn't take long for Thuy to create her own website and e-mail address. And after nine years, the number of customers ordering over the net now accounts for 30-40 per cent of sales.
People ordering through the net are mainly from the UK, US, Netherlands and Canada. "Most of them have visited us and had clothes tailored here," Thuy said. "We keep their measurements so they can email orders to us."
Thuy started her career as a cloth seller at the local market, and now manages a shop staff of 20, each of who can speak at least two foreign languages, and a team of 100 tailors. She puts on little extras to keep the tourists hanging around her wares, offering drinks as well as a free internet service. In the past two years she said the shop has served local musicians, embassy staff, the mayor of a South Korean city and Spanish Queen Sofia de Grecia Y Hannover, who ordered five silk ao dai (the traditional Vietnamese dress).
While Thu Thuy caters to big groups of tourists on package tours, A Dong Silk, managed by Thuy's brother-in-law Tran Thai Do, focuses on independent travellers who also want their wardrobes made in the blink of an eye. "To complete the items within the shortest time, we divide workers into groups, which then undertake separate parts of the clothes," Do said.
That's why customers shouldn't be surprised, he said, when three tailors appear to help them with their first fitting.
The steady stream of tourists to Hoi An ensures that shops like Thuy's and Do's employ 2,000 locals every year to help them meet all the orders. But the quick-turnaround times that Hoi An's tailors have become famous for means that staff have to endure sporadic working hours, sometimes lasting long into the night.
That's why when returning to your hotel after an exhausting day of shopping and sightseeing, you may hear the clattering sound of rusty sewing machines working at full steam as the rest of the town sleeps.
For more information, go to:
- Thu Thuy tailors: http://www.hoianthuthuysilk.com
- A Dong silk: http://www.adongsilk.com
==== That's cricket ====
According to a least one Vietnamese produce supplier, nothing can beat a good home-cooked meal of crickets. Le Thanh Tung, 24, of the village of Tan Phu Trung near Ho Chi Minh city, used to be particularly fond of a menu of chicken, pigeon and snake featuring at his family's dinner table.
But when he was 20 he saw a television programme about a Thai man who got rich by raising crickets and selling them to restaurateurs. Tung decided to give the same endeavour his best shot - and he's never looked back.
Crickets were no stranger to Tung. He used to da de (cricket fight) with his friends, and he knew where to catch them. He began breeding them and fed them grass. But they died within two days, so he experimented with ground fish and vegetables.
Nothing worked until he came up with a mixture of pulverised meat, fish and rice bran. The crickets thrived on the stuff. "When the first crickets gave birth, I was crazy with joy," he said.
Six months later, Tung hightailed off to Ho Chi Minh city loaded with a kilo of crickets. One restaurant owner who had tasted cricket in Thailand agreed to place them on his menu with one vital condition - he would pay Tung only if customers bought the cricket dishes.
Diners couldn;t get enough - and by the late afternoon of that first day, Tung was VND100,000 richer. Today, Tung maintains a farm of 150,000 crickets. Every 50 days, a new batch is delivered to 50 restaurants in Ho Chi Minh city, which fetches Tung about VND50 million a year.
His village has now become cricket-mad. Business people from Australia, Japan and Taiwan call at Tung's to taste de 7 mon (seven dishes of crickets), a delicacy that Vietnamese people living overseas often report is nearly impossible to find.
Thank you for reading! We wish you peace and good fortune for the coming month!
============== Artist Roster ==============
Our database of up-and-coming artists has doubled in the last few months and we now have over 850 original art pieces in our database -- one of the largest virtual galleries on the Internet! Here's a rundown on the artists you'll find in our pages. Think you can pick the next Bui Xuan Phai?
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