MEMORIES OF TRAVEL:


DISCOVERING TRADITIONAL LACQUER PAINTING IN VIETNAM

by Michael J. Clark

I. The Arrival, December 1999

I had lost my fanny-pack in the China Airlines terminal at the San Francisco Airport. I had realized my loss only after my wife and I had settled in on the 747 flight to Taipei. I panicked, of course. Our airplane tickets, to Vietnam and back, were in the fanny-pack. I'm not the kind of person who tends to lose things. So this was a major shock.
I explained what had happened to my wife.
" Are you sure?" she asked.
She began looking in the seat, on the floor. But I had checked there already. I leaned across the man to my left to see if the fanny--pack was lying in the aisle. Nothing. My face was getting hot. I sat down again, not knowing what to do. Could I ask the pilot to delay the flight while I re-traced my steps? 
Just then one of the China Airline stewardesses stopped at our row and handed me my fanny-pack. 
She said in halting English: "We found it out in our seating area."
I was impressed.
It was a good sign. The gods seemed to be with us.

The flight was pleasant. This time I slept. 
My wife and I had traveled to Vietnam three times in the last five years. I hadn't slept the first two times, too excited by the adventure to want to miss anything. The fourteen hour flight could become a major labor unless one slept.
Hoa-Lan had grown up in Saigon. She had lived there with her family during the war years. She had not been scarred by the war really. Most of the horror had happened in the countryside. She had lived ten years under the new revolutionary government, from 1975-85. She had known more fear and deprivation during this period. The country sank deeper and deeper into poverty. There were floods and famine. Still, somehow, guided by her mother, the family had survived.
In 1985, the family left Vietnam, coming to live, for a short time, in Kentucky; then they resettled in Portland.
Hoa-Lan came to Eugene to study fine arts and, eventually, architecture. I met her in 1989. We were married in 1995.

This trip seemed almost too easy. I slept. I ate. The fourteen hour flight was over; and we banked down into Taipei.
We had a ten hour layover scheduled in Taipei. We asked an airport official if we could tour Taipei while we waited.
He said: "You need to hurry to catch your flight. A plane leaves for Hanoi in ten minutes."
We hustled down the long hallway, of course carrying more luggage than we needed; we slid into our seats on a small Vietnam Airlines coach ten hours ahead of schedule.

We did not know northern Vietnam very well. Our first trip together, in 1995, had been concentrated in Saigon and in the southern countryside. We had taken trips south and west into the Mekong Delta, and north into the central highlands, to Dalat, a vacation mountain resort. Still, most of the month had been spent in Saigon, a sprawling, fast, mysterious city of some 8 million people.
Our second trip, in 1996, was more adventurous. We hired a car and driver (foreigners don't drive in Vietnam) and looped up the coast, through Nha Trang, Da Nang and Hue. We spent a couple of days in each location, taking in the sites. Nha Trang is noted for its wonderful beaches; Da Nang has "China Beach" close by, and Marble Mountain, a rugged peak inside of which the Vietcong had hospitals and centers of operation during the war. We took the requisite hike up Marble Mountain with several young self-employed "guides" who took us through all the tricky passes and kept us from falling off the mountain. 
Hue is the traditional capital of the country, former home of the emperor and his government. It is a "university town" par excellence. It is also the "rain capital" of Vietnam. It is like Eugene in some ways. It rained every day we were in Hue. We did spend a day in the old citadel, the emperor's historical Forbidden City, which the Vietcong had turned into a modern fort during the Tet Offensive in 1968 and which the American army had bombed relentlessly in an effort to extricate the enemy. Many of the wonderful buildings were damaged or destroyed during the battle.
We also visited My Lai, the site of the worst incident of American crimes against civilians during the war. The Vietnamese have built a museum on the site, documenting each murder and each destroyed home. Walking the grounds was a very sad, solitary experience.
I apologized for My Lai to our driver through my wife. We talked about the war a bit. I mentioned to him that the Vietcong had taken control of Hue during the Tet Offensive and had murdered several thousand city officials, teachers, students, and police officers. He had never heard of this. The government does not mention this, of course, in any of the war crimes museums.
We spent about five days in the small town of Hoi An, formerly the major seaport in central Vietnam, known historically as Faifo. Hoi An was eventually eclipsed by Da Nang; and settled into the role of "antique village". Foreigners love Hoi An for its rustic charm and its slow pace; it is a really civilized small town, highlighted by traditional Chinese architecture in one part of town, and Japanese architecture in another. 
We then flew to Hanoi, where we spent five days, getting to know the city a bit. It was much slower than Saigon. The people seemed more dreamy, less competitive. The city, itself, was lovely, especially the old quarter, with narrow, tree-lined streets being the rule. 
We liked the city so much we decided to fly directly to Hanoi during our next trip. Our intention was to explore the north finally as we had already explored the south.

Entering the country through the Hanoi airport was surprisingly easy. The Saigon airport had always been a bit unfriendly: petty officials looking for a bribe to process paperwork; delays searching luggage; flower girls greeting visitors with a cold face of suspicion. We sensed none of that in Hanoi.
There was an official ceremony going on at one end of the terminal, some formal exchange between America and Vietnam. We moved into the terminal to meet friendly faces. A quick look at our passports and we were processed. It was such a breath of fresh air compared with Saigon.
Hoa-Lan bargained a taxi driver's price down from $15 to $6 for a trip into town. The airport is situated about 20 miles out of town. He was a quiet man with a family, two children. He and Hoa-Lan talked about the country; and I quietly watched the world go by through the window.

Vietnam is so different than America. Whenever I enter the country it is as though I step into a dream. The air is thicker and warmer. The scent is richer, sweet and sour, the smells of flowers and rotting fruit and garbage and meat all wound together. The country is dusty. There is no grass. Everywhere one looks there are people. It is as if the private life has been outlawed; or perhaps it never existed. One must be rich in Asia to have privacy. Foreigners, by definition, are rich in Vietnam--it is still sometimes hard to find privacy.
We drove directly to the Hahn My Hotel on Hang Gai Street (Silk Street). The old district of Hanoi is the most charming part of the city. One street changes into another without warning. Silk Street becomes Peach Street (where peaches are sold) becomes Sweet Potato Street becomes Copper Street. Each street takes the name of the commodity sold on the street.
Within walking distance of the hotel we could find streets that sell only boats, silver, cotton, mats, baskets (one street sells small baskets, another sells large baskets), leather, oil, waterpipes, sugar, chicken, combs, curtains, hats, aluminum, bamboo, drums, fabric, limes, and even gravestones. All day long people on this last street sit out on the sidewalk and hammer out granite headstones. I call this street "Tap Tap Street" for the endless staccato sounds of the tiny hammers tapping out a beat against the stone.
We chose the Hanh My Hotel because we are both creatures of habit. We had stayed there in 1966. Hoa-Lan then had bargained the suite, the best room overlooking Hang Gai Street, down from $140/night to $25/night. She insisted on the same price this time. The woman working the desk called the owner. They agreed again. The woman said they were doing it only for us because they remembered us from our last visit and they considered us friends and they wanted to show loyalty to friends. It also helped when we said we were staying for at least ten days, perhaps more. As it turned out, we stayed at the hotel for 27 days.

Hanoi (really all of Vietnam) had dramatically overbuilt in the last decade. Money flooded into the country after doi moi, the governmental liberalization in the early 1990's. Visions of Vietnam becoming a vacation paradise like Hawaii inflated expectations and engendered a building boom. Then the Asian crisis hit, causing a major outflow of investment moneys back to South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and even Taiwan. The Vietnamese currency--the dong--had traded at about 11,000 per US dollar in 1996; now it was trading at about 14,800, a 35% decline in value. Clearly, Vietnam was also suffering under the weight of the currency devaluations that were plaguing the region.
But the Vietnamese are familiar with poverty. They are not without hope. They seem inspired by the dictates of Lao Tze: "When there is poverty, think of wealth. When there is wealth, remember poverty." Deeply ingrained in the east is a belief in cycles. When things are bad, they will get better. When things are good, they will get bad again. Learn to be hopeful when you are in despair. Learn to be modest when you are enjoying fortune.
The people we met who had little money had family. They found strength in their family. And they all seemed to believe that things would get better.

We settled into the hotel and began to discover the neighborhood. Our plan was to spend ten days in Hanoi, ten days in central Vietnam (mostly in Hoi An), and ten days in Saigon. Our ticket required us to leave the country January 4 from Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon.
But our plans changed rather quickly. A series of cyclones had hit the central coast. There was major flooding in Hoi An. There was concern about disease. We were advised to avoid central Vietnam on this trip.

My wife and I are both artists. Art galleries are high on our list of things to see whenever we travel. So we spent much of our second day in Hanoi visiting galleries.
Most of the galleries in the old district are tourist traps, two- and even three-story shops with some interesting work by local artists, all wildly over-priced. A large painting by one of the more popular Hanoi artists might cost $3500. Clearly the locals could not pay this, especially considering the average annual income of Hanoians is around $200 US.
Artists who do sell work live like kings in Vietnam. Some can live all year off one major sale to a tourist. Most artists do not live like kings obviously. The artists we met in Hanoi lived on very modest means. They did speak of artists who had been discovered by the west, however, and who were now quite rich.
I found the most interesting paintings in Hanoi to be abstract lacquer paintings with a traditional Vietnamese theme. We kept the names of the artists whose work we admired in a notebook. We intended to buy some art work to take home with us. We would try to visit the artists at their studios. It would be cheaper to buy the work directly from the artists.

Hoa-Lan decided she wanted to learn the lacquer painting process during our stay in Hanoi.
We had made one friend during our 1996 stay in Hanoi, Hung, a thirty-something artist who made a living creating water puppets for one of the local water puppet troupes. We looked him up our third day in the city. We spent the evening with his family, having dinner, talking. He was married now. And his wife was 8 months pregnant. Hung's mother was a playful old woman who ran the family. She was smart, healthy--although she complained of hyper-tension--well-versed in Chinese astrology, and with a large capacity for laughter.
Hoa-Lan mentioned her desire to learn lacquer painting. Within a week, Hung had made an appointment for us to visit a friend out near West Lake to learn more about this technique.

II. The Lacquer-Master Han

Hung met us at the hotel at about 1:00. I wasn't sure what day it was; I had lost all track of time, which is one of the real wonders of traveling. Space becomes everything; Time becomes a kind of footnote, something stretched very large, losing its shape.
We took a taxi out of town.

I knew very little about West Lake the day we traveled out to our lacquer lesson. We wound out of the city, through light traffic. Hanoi was much better than Saigon for traffic. Hoa-Lan spoke with Hung; but he spoke little English. I had no idea where we were, where we were going really. Hoa-Lan did point out the bank of restaurants on our right that specialized in dog meat (Quan Thit Cho), a delicacy appreciated in the north but hard to find in the south. Many southerners found the northerners uncivilized for eating dog.
As it turned out, the West Lake area was the most beatiful part of Hanoi. It is actually north of Hanoi proper, but west of the Red River which runs north-south along the eastern edge of the city.
There are two legends surrounding the creation of West Lake (Ho Tay), also called the Lake of Mist and the Big Lake. One folktale has West Lake being formed when the Dragon King flooded the area to drown an evil nine-tailed fox. The second story is set in the 11th Century. A Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Khong Lo, rendered a great service to the emperor of China, who rewarded him with a vast quantity of bronze from which he cast a huge bell. When Kong Lo rang the bell it was heard all the way to China, where the Golden Buffalo Calf, mistaking the ringing for his own mother's call, ran southward in search of his missing mother. His hooves were so large and his body so heavy that when he trampled the Ho Tay area it became a lake.
In truth, West Lake was formed by the regular flooding of the Red River. Magnificent palaces once ringed the edge of the lake; but these were destroyed in the constant feudal wars that plagued Vietnam for centuries. Today, exclusive housing again rings the city. Foreigners live in quiet enclaves at West Lake, one of the few places one can find silence in the greater Hanoi metropolitan area. Government officials also have housing around the lake. And there are villas reserved for visiting dignitaries.

The ride seemed almost too long. We eventually turned on to a side street. Construction workers were repairing the road. They had just laid down a stretch of large sharp rocks that would act as a base. They would eventually use a steamroller to crush the rocks; then they would apply asphalt. But right now it was just rocks. The taxi driver didn't want to drive over the sharp rocks. He did so reluctantly, fearing that they would damage his tires.
Down a small embankment of five steps was a garden gate, padlocked. First came the large black dog, barking. Then a small man with a sleepy face, the gardener. Then Han, a thin, energetic man, bespectacled, thirty-two years old, with high cheekbones, bright laughing eyes and a warm smile. He welcomed us to his home, unlocking the gate.
We moved into his garden, which was an orchard in front, sa-bo-che trees, Siamese persimmon. There were rows of flowers, chrysanthemums, roses and daisies; and then a large vegetable garden. In back was lakefront property. This wasn't West Lake we were told, but a tributary. A solitary man was taking his boat out, armed with a patient face and a fishing net. He was looking for his family's dinner, we were told.
The setting was very peaceful.
Han showed us a small independent one-room house by the lake. The main room was sparsely furnished, with two bamboo beds and a table. The roof was made of interlaced bamboo, exposed beautifully from the inside, over which was laid typical Vietnamese red tile. This was the gardener's house, Khanh. Khanh was thirty-nine years old, did all the work around the house, gardening, cooking, and cleaning. He was married, with two children. But his family lived in the countryside. He hadn't seen them for a year. He sent them money each month; that was how they survived.
Han then took us into his house, the main room. This house had two rooms, a large living space, which he had turned into his studio; and a small bedroom on one end.
Khanh brought us tea. Hung had to return to work. Hoa-Lan translated between Han and myself.

Han had attended art school in Hanoi. After graduating, he had gone to live with Buddhist monks at a mountain pagoda. He had given up the world; he studied the ancient Nom language (old Chinese) so that he could study the ancient spiritual texts with the monks. He learned to wander into the woods without food, eat what the animals ate, survive by watching how the other creatures of the forest survived.
He did this for two years. Then he returned to the world. He began to paint again. He lived iniitially with his family in the countryside several hours from Hanoi. However, a friend of his, another artist, who owned a farmhouse along West Lake, asked him to look after his property while he went to live in Saigon. Han agreed to move back to Hanoi.
Han and I had some kind of magical connection. I had studied world religions after my father died in 1977. He and I both had a mystical nature; and the communication of ideas flowed easily and rapidly, through our medium, Hoa-Lan. He had a smiling, laughing spirit. Many of his own lacquer paintings were stacked against the wall. He wanted to teach us what he knew about lacquer painting. When we offered to pay him for the instruction he looked at us as if we were joking.
He wanted us to start immediately. He had a small lacquer-treated plywood board voc ready for us. So I did a quick drawing on the board with a yellow wax pencil.
Lacquer is a resin extracted from the son tree (cay son). It is a creamy white in its raw form but it becomes dark, either black or brown, when it is mixed with resin in an iron vat for about 40 hours. The lacquer settles in three parts. At the bottom is the rawest sediment; the second part is the black lacquer (son then); the third part, at the top, is the most refined, the amber-colored lacquer (canh dan, 'cockroach wing'). This refined lacquer is used in lacquer painting.
The object to be lacquered (generally plywood for painting, teak for household furnishings) is first treated with a fixative; then 10 coats of black lacquer are applied. Each coat is dried for a week in a humid environment, then sanded with pumice and cuttlebone. The eleventh coat is the special refined lacquer which is sanded with a coal powder and a lime wash. The design is then drawn on the wood and the actual "painting" of the wood begins.

Lacquerware came to Vietnam from China in the 15th Century. It had been used only as a waterproofing sealant up to that time. In the 1930's, the Fine Arts School in Hanoi hired several Japanese lacquer masters to teach the Vietnamese the Japanese style and technique. This had led many artists to experiment with lacquer painting. Before long it had caught on.

Han took out his bowl of lacquer, showing us its rich amber color. It was sticky, like tar. He used a paint knife to draw some lacquer out of his palatte. "What color do you want for this part of the drawing?" he asked. 
"Red," I said. 
He opened a bag of red paint pigment (son). There were four shades of red, Han explained. He opened the different paints and asked which tone I wanted.
He said: "Watch what the lacquer does to the color." The bright red darkened as it was mixed with the lacquer. "Everything darkens in lacquer,"he explained.
" If everything darkens in lacquer, how do you get light tones?" I asked.
 He explained that white could be gained either by using mother-of-pear or crushed eggshell. An off-white could be gained by using whole silver leaf or crushed silver leaf. A golden tone could be attained by using gold leaf. Silver and gold leaf were also used as an undercoat to lighten pigment tones.
 Our education had begun.

We both hovered over my small drawing of an ornamental face, which I would later call "Princess", most of the day. Han mixed colors; I painted. Hoa-Lan watched, translated, and photographed the session.

It was not easy work. The lacquer is pungent. Several times Hoa-Lan had to leave the room to get fresh air. Han had two large fans working to try to air out the fumes of the lacquer and the kerosene used as a thinner. Han told us that some people were allergic to raw lacquer; their skin would break out in sores, much like poison oak. Finally, I too had to get some fresh air. I was getting a headache.
Hoa-Lan and I sat out on the porch. It was so quiet.

Han and Khanh had quite a menagerie on their property. There was the large black dog, the Patriarch of the brood. Then nine small puppies, all dusty and ratty-looking. Khanh had rescued the puppies after two different females had died during birth about a week apart. Khanh had nursed the puppies, feeding them rice mush and giving them love. Then there was a blonde cat, a kitten really, maybe six months old. The kitten was the boss. The kitten went wherever she wanted. She attacked the puppies in play, jumping at them, making them run. The kitten even slapped the Patriarch too, trying to get him to play. The Patriarch was gentle; he spent most of his time circling the property, making sure the nine puppies were not getting in trouble.
They also had a house full of chickens, down by the water.
Han and Khanh had a serene life here among the dirty puppies and the chickens. The streets below our hotel room were noisy by six in the morning and stayed noisy until eleven at night. Here, there was hardly a sound. We both felt relaxed, at home, in Han's place.

We worked to finish the first painting. When all the coloring was completed, we applied a masking of lacquer to the painted areas of the voc. We then let it dry under a wet mat for a day. The next step, when it was dry, would be to sand and polish the painting. If we were not content with the coloring, we could apply as many coats of paint as necessary, always masking, drying and sanding and polishing.
Han handed me another voc. He was excited to be working in this collaboration. I sketched out a second drawing. He said we would have to return the next day and continue our work.
We did return the next day. And four more days after that.
In all, I completed five lacquer paintings while in Hanoi. Hoa-Lan and I bought lacquer, brushes, and pigments to bring home. We had a fax number to reach Han. He could send us supplies by boat; just let him know what we needed and he'd send it.

We left Hanoi feeling like we were leaving a second home. We had intended to spend ten days there; instead we spent 27 days. We flew to Saigon; stayed with Hoa-Lan's sister for three days. Then we flew home. 
We brought home with us a new knowledge; and friendships we were certain would endure. We knew we would return to Vietnam again, in a year of so. The war in Vietnam is just a dim memory now. Whatever there had once been between America and Vietnam (and North Vietnam especially), there was now the potential for friendship and a sharing of knowledge. If it could happen between individuals, it could also happen between nations. And the Vietnamese in the north were clearly eager to learn more about America.

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