Bamboo season in Ky Son
(Baonghean.vn) - Currently, it is the season when the cotton flowers are in full bloom. Therefore, if you go to the districts in the West, especially the border district of Ky Son, you can easily see cotton flowers spread out to dry along the roads. Motorbikes are loaded with cotton flowers. People of the Thai, Mong, and Kho Mu ethnic groups carry heavy bundles of cotton flowers on their shoulders. The mountains and forests have given people a profession to "cope" with the famine during the pre-harvest period.
(Baonghean.vn) - Currently, it is the season when the cotton flowers are in full bloom. Therefore, if you go to the districts in the West, especially the border district of Ky Son, you can easily see cotton flowers spread out to dry along the roads. Motorbikes are loaded with cotton flowers. People of the Thai, Mong, and Kho Mu ethnic groups carry heavy bundles of cotton flowers on their shoulders. The mountains and forests have given people a profession to "cope" with the famine during the pre-harvest period.
We arrived at Dinh Son 1 village, Huu Kiem commune (Ky Son) in the late afternoon. This is the time when people go into the forest to collect bamboo shoots and return. Groups of people are carrying bamboo shoots back to the village. At this time, groups of motorbikes of people from the central villages such as Ba village, Hom village, Na Luong village are also heading straight to Dinh Son 1. The scene of buying, selling, exchanging and transporting bamboo shoots makes Dinh Son 1 village, which is usually quiet, now bustling.
Despite the hardship of climbing mountains and wading through streams all day to cut and carry more than 50 kg of bamboo back home, Lu Van Kham still seemed excited about the results of his labor. Kham shared: “It’s really tiring! But if I don’t go into the forest to collect bamboo, what else can I do, because it’s not the farming season yet. Every day I earn about 100,000 VND to spend during the lean season. But because so many people go to collect bamboo, the bamboo has become increasingly scarce, and we have to go farther and farther, and the amount of bamboo we can collect is getting less and less.”
The trucks are loading
The palm tree is dried.
Some people in the central region (located along Highway 7A) go to remote villages to buy the bamboo at a price of 3,000-3,500 VND/kg. The bamboo is transported home by motorbike, then dried and imported to the lowlands. Therefore, along the communes of Chieu Luu, Huu Kiem, Ta Ca and Muong Xen Town, bamboo is dried in yards and on the roadsides. Occasionally, trucks are loaded with dried bamboo to the lowlands to weave into brooms.
Tuong Anh