The path through the rice paddy to Mu's house is narrow, muddy and rocky, but she negotiates it like someone who has been doing it several times a day for 10 years, which she has, whilst we slip and fall over and twist our ankles.She points to a red blob in a tree in the distance and says "That's my other son, Che, he likes climbing".
Below the tree is a pond filled with ducks and lillies, around which are a couple of houses and a pig pen filled with piglets. There is a vine covered arbour growing small pumpkins and a system of bamboo waterworks carrying water from the stream, past the house (with an off shute for washing and drinking water) and into the pond. The house is built in a lower case 'n' shape with the front door in the curve of the 'n', so outside there is a covered porch area overlooking the pond, rice paddies and the mountains across the valley.
I ask Mu if she thinks where she lives is beautiful and she replies "No, sometimes, when tourists tell me it is. I have only been here and to Sapa, and twice to Lao Cai, so I don't know". I assure her that it definitely is beautiful. She says we are lucky because the afternoon sun has burnt away the mist and we can see the mountains - as if it wouldn't be beautiful otherwise.
She unstraps Chan, sits him on the floor and introduces us to her other two children, a two year old girl also called Tsu, and Che, aged six, who begins to peel hard green peaches (which taste bitter but nice) with a very big and sharp knife. I can't watch. He later 'entertains' us by catching a dragon fly, pulling its wings off and throwing it in the air. I can't watch that either. Tsu is very shy and seems to like putting things on her head, her leggings, wellies, rocks, her wellies full of rocks and, at one point, a puppy, upside down.
Whilst Mu chops wood, washes clothes, washes children, cooks dinner and does some sewing we play with the children and eat peaches. We offer to help but she says "You are, you're looking after my children.". She tells us that her children are always saying "Mummy, why don't you go to Sapa and bring back someone to play with us?". Her house is big, twice the size of Tsu's, but she wants to put in a second floor where tourists can stay.
In the evening her husband arrives on a motorbike with bottled water and, when Tsu returns with her husband we sit down for dinner. We have the same as what we had for lunch, as well as pork and spring rolls and boiled potatoes covered in butter and grilled pepper and pumpkin. The children eat their food on the floor whilst the ten of us; me, Charlotte, the Americans Adam and Caroline, Mu, Tsu, their sister in law (Mu's husband's brother's wife, the pregnant girl whose name I don't know) and their husbands squish around a low table below a single naked light bulb.
Halftime way through the meal the men produce a bottle of rice whiskey or "happy water". They teach us the word for 'cheers ' - 'Jun-Kha' - and for 'drink until you're finished - 'Hamazu'. This is said a lot and there is a lot of laughing at our inability to remember the words. They ask about our nose rings and tell us that they saw a girl in Sapa with a piercing through the middle of her nose. They said to her "Are you a water buffalo? Come with me and you can plough my rice paddy!".
Through out the evening we find out a lot about village life. Husbands normally look after the children while the women sell and go to the market, except when farming, when the whole family is in the fields. All children go to a Government funded school until the age of thirteen, where they mostly learn English. At home girls are taught to weave and sew. Mu tells me that if her daughter cannot sew then no one will marry her. Women over the age of twenty five- ish are considered too old to get married, although some will marry outsiders - Vietnamese, Westerners, other Asians - or marry into other tribes, such as the Red Dao. The h'mong are friendly with other tribes, they do not speak the same language but Mu tells me that they will say hello to each other at the market.
By the time we have finished eating and the bottle of rice whiskey is empty it is 23:00 The H'mong wake up at about 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning in order to make the most of the light and to walk to Sapa, so this is a late night. Tsu and her husband walk home and Mu's husband makes up beds for us on raised wooden platforms topped with mattresses, pillows, blankets and a mosquito net. The family sleep on similar bedding on the kitchen side of the house. After all the walking, food and whiskey everyone falls asleep quickly and I'm only woken a few times in the night by the sounds of lowing water buffalo and crying children.
Below the tree is a pond filled with ducks and lillies, around which are a couple of houses and a pig pen filled with piglets. There is a vine covered arbour growing small pumpkins and a system of bamboo waterworks carrying water from the stream, past the house (with an off shute for washing and drinking water) and into the pond. The house is built in a lower case 'n' shape with the front door in the curve of the 'n', so outside there is a covered porch area overlooking the pond, rice paddies and the mountains across the valley.
I ask Mu if she thinks where she lives is beautiful and she replies "No, sometimes, when tourists tell me it is. I have only been here and to Sapa, and twice to Lao Cai, so I don't know". I assure her that it definitely is beautiful. She says we are lucky because the afternoon sun has burnt away the mist and we can see the mountains - as if it wouldn't be beautiful otherwise.
She unstraps Chan, sits him on the floor and introduces us to her other two children, a two year old girl also called Tsu, and Che, aged six, who begins to peel hard green peaches (which taste bitter but nice) with a very big and sharp knife. I can't watch. He later 'entertains' us by catching a dragon fly, pulling its wings off and throwing it in the air. I can't watch that either. Tsu is very shy and seems to like putting things on her head, her leggings, wellies, rocks, her wellies full of rocks and, at one point, a puppy, upside down.
In the evening her husband arrives on a motorbike with bottled water and, when Tsu returns with her husband we sit down for dinner. We have the same as what we had for lunch, as well as pork and spring rolls and boiled potatoes covered in butter and grilled pepper and pumpkin. The children eat their food on the floor whilst the ten of us; me, Charlotte, the Americans Adam and Caroline, Mu, Tsu, their sister in law (Mu's husband's brother's wife, the pregnant girl whose name I don't know) and their husbands squish around a low table below a single naked light bulb.
Halftime way through the meal the men produce a bottle of rice whiskey or "happy water". They teach us the word for 'cheers ' - 'Jun-Kha' - and for 'drink until you're finished - 'Hamazu'. This is said a lot and there is a lot of laughing at our inability to remember the words. They ask about our nose rings and tell us that they saw a girl in Sapa with a piercing through the middle of her nose. They said to her "Are you a water buffalo? Come with me and you can plough my rice paddy!".
Through out the evening we find out a lot about village life. Husbands normally look after the children while the women sell and go to the market, except when farming, when the whole family is in the fields. All children go to a Government funded school until the age of thirteen, where they mostly learn English. At home girls are taught to weave and sew. Mu tells me that if her daughter cannot sew then no one will marry her. Women over the age of twenty five- ish are considered too old to get married, although some will marry outsiders - Vietnamese, Westerners, other Asians - or marry into other tribes, such as the Red Dao. The h'mong are friendly with other tribes, they do not speak the same language but Mu tells me that they will say hello to each other at the market.
By the time we have finished eating and the bottle of rice whiskey is empty it is 23:00 The H'mong wake up at about 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning in order to make the most of the light and to walk to Sapa, so this is a late night. Tsu and her husband walk home and Mu's husband makes up beds for us on raised wooden platforms topped with mattresses, pillows, blankets and a mosquito net. The family sleep on similar bedding on the kitchen side of the house. After all the walking, food and whiskey everyone falls asleep quickly and I'm only woken a few times in the night by the sounds of lowing water buffalo and crying children.
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