Flower Hmong
Below is a photo of a Flower Hmong girl taken at Bac Ha’s Sunday Market. Don’t intend to be patronising – these guys have as much right to a cellphone as anyone – but it does look somewhat incongruous next to their centuries-old traditional costumes!
Bac Ha, Flower Hmong girl The ‘Flower Hmong’ or ‘Variegated Hmong’ is one of the numerous subgroups of the Hmong ethnic group who are found widely scattered across Southeast Asia and Southern China (though we did once go to a Hmong cultural festival in Milwaukee, Wisconsin!) There are linguistic divisions between different groups but Hmong sub-groups, or clans, are generally identified by the predominant colour of their traditional costumes.
Flower Hmong are amongst the most colourful and while they do employ just about any colour going, their preference of incorporating flower designs into their embroidery is what determines the group’s colloquial name. They’re mostly concentrated in Ha Giang province in Vietnam’s far north, although many still live over the border in China’s Guangxi Province. Bac Ha with its famous Sunday market, is a very popular meeting point for Flower Hmong as well as being popular with tourists wishing to photograph their spectacular costumes.
Bac Ha market is a great place for locals to catch up on the gossip Southern China is the original Hmong homeland and estimates suggest around 3 million Hmong speakers in China. Vietnam comes 2nd with nearly 800,000, followed by 450,000 in Laos and some 150,000 in Thailand. We’ll be following this post up with some pix and info on other Hmong groups such as the Black, White, Red Hmong and if anyone has any info on the Green and notoriously shy Blue Hmong, we’d be pleased to hear from you!
The women tend to wear their Sunday best to market. (Not least as it shows off their embroidery skills.) Bac Ha market features on our five-day, four-night mini-tour to Sapa. The tour begins with an overnight train ride from Hanoi to Lao Cai and includes a visit to Bac Ha market in addition to a stay in Sapa and a homestay in a minority village. (Note the market is, as mentioned, a Sunday market, so while we try and schedule our Sapa tour in consequence, there are several similar markets in nearby villages on alternative days of the week.)
