Thanh Tien Paper Flowers: Preserving the Age-old Beauty of a Hue Craft Village

Thanh Tien village, in Phu Mau commune, Phu Vang district, Thua Thien Hue province, is famed for a paper-flower craft that has lasted hundreds of years. According to the Dai Nam nhat thong chi, Thanh Tien paper-flower making already featured in the inventory of handicrafts from the 16th to the 19th century. It is a destination not to be missed when setting foot in the old imperial land.

Thanh Tien village, once also called Tan Lan or Tan Lan, is one of the rare places still holding the secret techniques for making bong lung and bong bup - flowers characteristic of the altars of old Hue. Thanh Tien paper flowers were usually made in the farming off-season and used in worship: placed on the altars of the guardian Grandfather and Grandmother on feast days; on the Kitchen God's altar on the 23rd day of the twelfth lunar month; or in the rite to the Land God. With a rich imagination and skilful, artistic hands, the villagers imitated flowers found in nature such as morning glory (trumpet flower), single and double chrysanthemums, the mam nem flower, the tuong vi rose, the sunflower and, later, the lotus.

Producing a spray of paper flowers is by no means simple. A distinctive feature of Thanh Tien paper flowers is that every stage of production is done entirely by hand. To begin, Thanh Tien artisans must prepare for many months. The bamboo must be the most supple lo o kind, split fine, whittled round and dried to make the sprays and stems. Coloured paper is cut into flower shapes, glued and shaped, the stamens assembled into each bloom and the blooms then fixed to the spray. Above all, in dyeing the paper the dyes all come from plant sap and leaves processed to a handed-down formula.

Nguyen Hieu (born 1980, owner of the Nguyen Hoa paper-flower workshop), an artisan with nearly 20 years in the trade, shares: 'Paper-flower making in Thanh Tien village has a 400-year tradition. I myself am the fifth generation of my family to follow this craft.' In the past, people mainly made paper flowers in the twelfth lunar month, first to worship ancestors and deities, then to decorate the home for Tet. Recently, however, as the range of products has shifted, paper flowers no longer serve only worship in certain traditional spaces but also meet decorative needs with items of high artistic value. Thanks to this, the craft has gained room to grow, produced strongly not only at traditional Tet but all year round.

According to Hieu, the technique for crafting high-quality paper flowers was once lost for about 50 years. Decorative paper flowers formerly served mainly the royal court or noble families. Later, when the feudal regime was abolished, these production techniques were lost. It was his father, the artisan Nguyen Hoa, who researched and restored these old secrets. In combination with several local paper-flower workshops, Thanh Tien paper flowers now form two distinct lines: traditional flowers for worship and spirituality, and a refined kind of high artistic value for display.

Today, Thanh Tien paper flowers are sold widely across the country - Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Hai Phong, Bac Ninh, Khanh Hoa, Phu Quoc and more. As an attractive tourist destination, the potential to export this product to international markets is also great, since visitors are thoroughly taken with these beautiful handmade flowers.

Even so, Thanh Tien paper flowers do not fetch a high market price. A Thanh Tien artisan takes three hours to make one spray of paper flowers, yet it sells for only 5,000-7,000 dong. As for the decorative line such as the lotus, a professional flower-maker can produce at most 12 blooms a day, priced between 25,000 and 40,000 dong depending on size. This is one reason the number of local paper-flower makers has dwindled over time.

Nguyen Chi Khoan (born 1964, a local resident) shares: 'This year I am nearly 60 and have been making paper flowers for over 50 years. About 30 years ago this village had only around 150 households, and almost every home made paper flowers. Today the population has grown tenfold, but only about a dozen households still follow the trade.'

Thanh Tien paper flowers are not merely a work of artistic beauty but also bear the deep imprint of Confucian philosophy. A traditional spray comprises three large flowers in the centre, symbolising the Three Bonds (sovereign - parent - teacher), and five small flowers around them, symbolising the Five Constants (benevolence - propriety - righteousness - wisdom - trustworthiness). The artisan Nguyen Hoa, with 40 years in the craft, once said: 'Making paper flowers demands great patience and meticulousness. Because of its spiritual meaning, Thanh Tien paper flowers have no scent, yet they still carry their own spirit.'

In the common course of many handicraft villages in Hue and central Vietnam, amid socio-economic upheaval and development, the risk of decline is alarming - from loss of demand and market, lack of successors, or products replaced by items of the same function made with modern materials and techniques. Although Thanh Tien paper flowers are tied to the community's ritual function and so always keep a certain place in Vietnamese life, in reality the traditional blooms are no longer the most favoured, limited by their seasonality and market, giving way to decorative flowers of high artistic value.

Therefore, to keep the soul of this craft heritage, to let the beauty of Thanh Tien paper flowers spread and pass on its finest values, and to enrich the distinctive traits of Hue's traditional handicrafts within the flow of folk culture, the local authorities need to pay still greater attention to preserving and reproducing the knowledge and skills of the village's craftspeople, as well as stepping up calls for investment, creating conditions to develop and widen the market for both the traditional and semi-modern lines; promoting the values and excellence of the craft more strongly; and cooperating closely with tourism and travel centres to increase the number of visitors who come to admire and buy the products.