| Muller | Hitchhiking Vietnam
Page 115 |
Saturday was Market Day. The sudden appearance of hundreds of Hmong and Zao in their Sunday best was enough to temporarily banish all thoughts of mountain treks. The minorities in their turn attracted dozens of itinerant traders, who set up their wares on long mats at the bottom of the market and did their level best to relieve both tourists and tribespeople of cash and kind.
The Hmong women all wore indigo-dyed hemp clothes embroidered with inhumanly intricate designs in the thinnest thread. The Zao held their own with elaborate stitchery and enormous red headcovers, layered and twisted into a pillow-like pad that hid their shaven heads. Small knots of teenage girls ventured arm-in-arm among the foodstalls, simultaneously attracting attention with their lovely costumes and rebuffing it with waving hands and averted faces. I saw infants less than three weeks old, their mothers having walked as much as fifteen miles to attend the market day activities. The children slept endlessly, or looked upon the world with wide, attentive eyes. I never saw one cry.
Almost everyone was barefoot, their soles a mass of layered calluses and dirt and hard as rhino skin. Those who could afford footwear had but one choice - a cheap Chinese sandal, sold for the forbidding sum of ninety cents. I watched a bent old woman try on one pair of plastic sandals after another, enviously fingering the rigid straps and then shuffling away, unshod.
Everyone arrived with their purchasing power in hand - a couple of carefully padded eggs woven into a tiny reed basket, a string of gnarled mushrooms or a bulbous sprout of mountain orchid. It was the middle of winter and the life-giving earth was hard as iron. Planting wouldn't begin for several months and attic stores of unhusked rice were already running low. Many families bolstered their meager resources by foraging in the forests for tubers and roots, bamboo shoots, tender leaves and edible insects. They sold the excess and used the money to buy salt and medicines, blankets, kerosene and a few iron cooking pots. If anything was left over they wandered down to the trader's mats to pore over the latest gadgets and tempting trinkets.
Market day was clearly more than just a shopping trip. It was a time where villagers could meet and chat, where romances were kindled and conflicts resolved. It was a day without the usual burden of chores, a time to temper the rigid daily discipline with a few minor luxuries. Stalls advertised peanuts by the tinful, tangerines, balloon-sized cabbage heads, crackers and candies and tiny, prepared pineapples on a stick. One smoky corner of the market was devoted solely to food and advertised itself with the mingled odors of sizzling tofu, rice gruel, deep fried batter, blood soup and fully developed embryos, cooked shortly before hatching and served with fresh basil and a dash of chili.
Market day had functioned this way for centuries, filling the meager needs of its feeder population. New products occasionally appeared and traditional items faded away, but the market itself continued, unchanging.
