Final pig products are ready for customers (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - As the Yearof the Pig approaches, the demand for souvenirs bearing the image of the pig increases.
That’s one of various reasons making manyfamilies in Duong Hong village, Thanh Da commune, Phuc Tho district on thewestern outskirt of Hanoi busier on these year-end days.
For more than ten years, dozens of households in the locality have earned agood living making zodiac animals.
And this year they are banking on the pigs by creating ‘piggy banks’ forchildren to store money.
“My brother initiated the craft in Hanoi first,” Duong Ngoc Tuan, who firstintroduced the skill to the village, said.
“In 2002, we decided to move the workshop here to increase production and useup free time between harvest seasons.”
Now Tuan’s workshop is the biggest supplier to wholesale customers countrywide.Each month, he produces around 16,000 animals.
He’s so busy, his family and ten staff have to work day and night to meetdemand.
The producing process includes designing,making plaster moulds then adding artwork.
“Designing sample products is the most challenging stage,” said Tuan. “Thisrequires artistic creativeness and is crucial to the attraction of the finalproducts.”
Duong Ngoc Tuan works on his products (Photo: VNA) After he and his younger brother brought the craft in the village, many localscame to work at their workshop.
“Our experience and creative designs confirms our product quality,” Tuan said.
“Customers are the most objective judges. They choose the best products. That’swhy we keep regular customers for years.”
When the mould is made according to a sample design, workers make many plasterpigs, dry them and use sandpaper to smooth the products before painting.
“Aworker with an artistic eye makes the pig more vivid with beautiful eyelashes,nice smile and cute dimples,” said Nguyen Thi Oanh, Tuan’s wife.
“Women can make plaster pigs from the small moulds, but bigger moulds requirestrong men to work on,” she said.
Oanh said even when customers need the products quickly, they don’t let qualityslip.
“Children will save money in the pigs,” she said. “The pigs will stay with thechildren for a long time so they must be beautiful and good quality.”
“I feel happy to finish a beautiful pig,” said employee Duong Ngoc Viet. “Ifcustomers say I make ugly pigs I will learn from that and improve my work.”
Tuan said in 2015, one of his nephews introduced the products to the onlinemarketplace alibaba.com and received an order from Pennsylvania in theUS for 2,500 pigs.
“Exported products require stricter criteria for deadline and quality,” Tuansaid. “Now we just focus on the domestic market.”
According to historian Le Van Lan, it is not clear how Vietnamese peoplestarted to save money in clay pigs.
“When we excavated at historical sites dating back 4,000 years ago, we foundskeletons of domesticated pigs,” he said.
“So pigs became close friends of human beings for 4,000 years. They have beenfriends of hard-working peasants. They have been featured in Dong Ho ancientfolk paintings,” he said.
“I remember at small age, I made my own clay pigs and put a hole in its back toput coins in,” he said.
The clay pigs that are used to save money could even be described as havingqualities similar to peasants.
They are diligent, thrifty and work hard to save money for the future.-VNA
VNA