Co Chat villagers work to keep silk craft alive

According to the village’s elders, raising silkworms and weaving silk thread in Co Chat have existed for a long time. During the French domination, Co Chat silk thread was so well known that in the early 20th century the French built a factory to unravel silkworm cocoons right in the village to exploit the villagers’ professional skills and the great potential of the mulberry growing and silkworm raising area along the Ninh River. Since then, the silk thread making craft in Co Chat Village has developed substantially. Before 1954, merchants from other regions in the country came to the village to buy silk thread then sell at Do Che Wharf - a bustling port in Nam Dinh province. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

The technique of manual raising silkworms and weaving silk thread of workers in Co Chat village is rare and it cannot be seen in other regions. Silkworm cocoons are required to be carefully selected and sorted before being put into silk reeling machines. There are two types of silkworm cocoons: white cocoon and yellow cocoon, depending on silkworm varieties. The most popular is white cocoon because it will create high quality and value silk. For hundreds of years Co Chat villagers have been trying to preserve their traditional craft of weaving silk as a means of subsistence. The local residents are proud to have contributed to Vietnam’s high quality silk products. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

An old Vietnamese saying describes the hardship of people involved in the job: “A pig farmer can sit down to eat, but a silkworm farmer must stand up to eat”. Farmers must keep careful watch over the silkworms. After two or three days, each silkworm will have spun about a kilometer of filament. You must bring the silkworms outdoors at 6 a.m. so they can make their cocoons and bring them back indoors in the afternoon.  At that time, silkworm breeders must use electric bulbs to warm them. They must match the light and temperature of the open air. As soon as the silkworms make cocoons, they start releasing silk. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

Nowadays, the elders in the village are still keeping the habit of making silk thread using the traditional method to preserve their ancestors’ craft. Whatever the reason, they are still passing on their passion and the local cultural identity of the village to the next generations. While the younger generation use modern machines and invest in workshops to increase the productivity of silk thread. Made manually or by machine, Co Chat silk thread is very delicate, soft and durable and has natural bright colours. It takes about 30 days to make silk thread, from silkworms eating mulberries to rolling the silk thread around a tube. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

Above the sound of the machines in the silk production workshops, Nguyen Thi Yen, a villager, said in the past, there were 9 out of 10 local families specializing in raising silkworms and weaving silk thread but now only 5-6 households in the village continue this craft. “I fear that no one of the next generations will pursue this business”, she said. Raising silkworms is a difficult job because silkworms only live about 20 days. It requires extreme carefulness from breeders. The broad flat drying baskets must be clean. You must feed the silkworms moderately, otherwise the silk quality will suffer. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

The best months for sericulture are February, March, August, September, and October due to good weather conditions. These days, you will see glossy yellow or white silk buns hung all over Co Chat village everywhere on bamboo sticks to dry in the sun. The Co Chat pagoda and temple, which were built in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, is where the silk weaving craft began. After being dried, silk will be purchased by textile factories for spinning and weaving into fabric. Most of Co Chat's silk is exported to Thailand, India, and Laos, or sold at Van Phuc silk village in the capital city of Hanoi’s Ha Dong district. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

After harvesting cocoons, the silkworms are put into boiling water before extracting the individual long fibers to be fed onto the spinning reel. Silk reeling is the longest stage. It must be done by veteran workers, otherwise the silk thread will not be smooth or equally-sized, and the woven cloth will not be of high quality. This is what makes handmade silk different from machine-made silk. It is a strenuous job, requiring workers to sit down in the heat and also be dexterous. If a person works with his/her full capacity, he/she can reel 20 spools of silk thread a day. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

After reeling silk thread, workers in Co Chat village must pick up impurities and roll around a tube smoothly and evenly.  Silk thread tubes must be white and clean before dried. There are two types of cocoons. The good ones are white and very clean. A good cocoon will be hard and dry. A bad cocoon will be broken and soft. It is said that “One flat basket of silkworms is equal to five flat baskets of cocoons; one flat basket of cocoons will turn out nine baskets of silk threads”. The saying tells us the hardship of the workers in silk production workshops. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

According to Pham Van Dong, who has been working in the craft for 30 years, it is difficult to find markets for the product. The silk is mainly favoured abroad rather than at home. Meanwhile, local residents have faced difficulties in borrowing capital for maintaining production, so many of them quit the craft. Amid severe difficulties caused by the COVID-19 outbreaks over the last two years, those raising silkworms and weaving silk thread in Co Chat village in Truc Ninh district, Nam Dinh province, have faced more difficulties as their silk cannot be exported abroad. The Co Chat pagoda and temple, which were built in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, is where the silk weaving craft began. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

There are two types of cocoons. The good ones are white and very clean. A good cocoon will be hard and dry. A bad cocoon will be broken and soft. Made manually, Co Chat silk thread is very delicate, soft and durable and has natural bright colours. The craft of making silk thread provides jobs for a large number of local workers in the region. The village’s silk thread is sold domestically, and exported to the neighbouring countries of Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia for about 37 USD a kilogramme. The local residents are proud to have contributed to Vietnam’s high quality silk products. (Photo: VietnamPlus)

Now, the elders in the village are still keeping the habit of making silk thread using the traditional method to preserve their ancestors’ craft while the younger generation use modern machines and invest in workshops to increase the productivity of silk thread. The process of making silk thread lasts about 30 days, from silkworms eating mulberries and creating cocoons to reeling silk. The silk thread is then rolled around a tube and dried. The development of the craft of making silk thread in Co Chat provides jobs for a large number of workers in the region with an average income of about 2-3million VND/month. (Photo: VietnamPlus)