Stephanie TaylorRice paper making class
April 25th 2008 01:49
Jet lag.....for me it's worse when the time difference is minimal. My first morning in Hoi An, Vietnam I woke up at 5am. I didn't wake and feel compelled to roll over and go back to sleep... my entire body woke up and said 'get out of bed!'
As I exited the room I noticed a garden path and the faint sound of churning. I had no idea what this would lead to but I grabbed my camera and followed the garden path to an open shed at the rear of the resort. Outside the shed where rows and rows of drying racks for rice paper. I knew I had stumbled onto something pretty cool here so I popped inside for a closer look.
What I discovered was a fascinating insight into daily life for these women. Between the hours of 4am - 9am, whilst their husbands fish in the river, was a tedious job that required strength, patience and good humour. The women made hundreds of rice paper circles per day, possibly thousands and their rate of error was minimal. They mixed up the ingrediants - at best guess (with the language barrier paramount) was fibers from the bark of the mulberry tree, plenty of water and some sort of formation aid. It was thick and I could visably see the strain on their arms and faces as they churned up this mixture without the assistance of appropriate tools. It apparently takes 2-3 hours to get the mixture ready. Surely, there is some technology available that could complete this task in a fraction of the time?
Once the mixture was ready, four burners were lit and two women straddled a small upturned basket to manage two burners each. From years of practice the women slapped on the perfect amount of mixture, rolled it out into a circle and watched it harden. After 20 seconds they effortlessly pushed a thin wooden pole up under the hardened mixture and eased it off the burner only to throw it onto the drying racks. I was staggered by how quick and easy they made this look.
In case you are wondering I did have a go and my effort can only be described as dismal. It was incredibly difficult and when I tried to remove it from the burner I tore a big hole in the centre. The ladies laughed along with me and to save me further embarassment they placed it on a drying rack and sent it outside into the hot sun to dry.
I stumbled across this wonderful scene by chance - just imagine what you can discover if you follow that laneway, enter that shop, speak to the locals etc.
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