A master of bamboo basket boats

A man is seen on a basket boat

The old man, who is also called by his neighbors as Bay Nam, has followed the job for decades as he regards it as not only a mean of earning his living but also a great hobby in his life.

“It has been a good job so far as it has helped me earn my bread and lead a happy life,” Anh says when he is sitting in a workshop full of bamboo at his residence in Go Village, Dong Hai Commune, Phan Rang City in the south-central province of Ninh Thuan.

The nearly-70-year-old man was born and grew up in another central province of Quang Ngai. He followed his father to Dong Hai Commune at the age of 20 to set themselves up in the business of making bamboo boats.

“My father brought to Dong Hai Commune the job which I started to learn when I was a little boy. That was why I succeeded my father to keep the traditional job for our family job,” Anh says.

He recalls his family went ups and downs with the job in the past. “Business went tough during the time when the country adopted a subsidized economy, and I had to take my wife and children to Dalat to work as a tailor. However, we had to return to Dong Hai and restarted the business of making bamboo basket boats in 1981 when tailors could not buy cloth to make clothes,” he says.

With simple tools including chisels and sticks, the job of making bamboo basket boats sounds easy for outsiders but it is a job that requires people of much patience and a lot of efforts.

Pointing at the huge pile of bamboo in the workshop, Anh says choosing bamboo to make basket boats is already a meticulous step. In order to create a quality boat, the bamboo must be must be big and firm. With his decades of experience, he can tell where the bamboo is taken from only by looking at its shape and color.

Anh prefers bamboo from Dien Khanh District in central province of Khanh Hoa but selecting material is only the first step to go. There is no way of creating a quality basket boat if it is made of quality bamboo but substandard technique, Anh explains.

Sharpening bamboo laths is the most important part of a process of creating durable boats. All laths must be made flat and smooth and in the same size before they are dried until they turn yellow. Normally, the peel of the bamboo is used to make such boats.

Anh has showcased bamboo basket boats made at his small workshop at many events in the central region.

Before 2011, when the business throve, around 250 bamboo basket boats were made at Anh’s workshop a year. All members of his family had to work overnight to meet orders when fish harvest seasons came, according to Anh’s wife Hua Thi Kim Cuc.

Fishermen in the central coast provinces usually order for bamboo basket boasts with diameters of from two to three meters. Bamboo boats of these sizes cost from VND2.7 million (US$124) to VND3 million per unit, and quality boats can be used for four years.

As making bamboo basket boats is a hard job to do, only two sons of Anh’s seven children have followed it and they are now seen frequently working with him at the workshop.

“Many people have asked me to teach them the art of making bamboo basket boats but they have quitted all because they have not had enough patience,” Anh says.

“The job requires people to be patient, calm and cooperative with others,” Cuc says.