New Year in Taphin (Tamay's village near to Sapa in north Vietnam) is the most celebrated moment in the annual calendar, full of feasting and parties. This week, families across the mountainside in Taphin and beyond are preparing for the weekend when they will celebrate the beginning of the year of the dragon. It is very important welcome in the new year. What is particular for Tamay's community is to start the New Year with new, handmade clothes. Tamay is Mien*. All Mien Women will have spent the whole previous year preparing their new clothes for the New Year’s parties and to then wear for the year to come. On the eve of New Year everyone will have a...
Introduction, it's a series, not sure how long for ... It's a difficult time for all of us right now, some people in particular, my heart goes to those who are struggling. For everyone, it is a time of change, for the moment and perhaps for a while? I am going to put some ideas out there for you to stay sane and well and even try to make it feel positive, if just for a moment. This series is all inspired by Tamay, our Mien half of Tamay & Me. She is a hero, she has always made her own clothes covered in tiny embroidery, she has always grown her own food and she has had it pretty hard...
So for all these years I have been describing Tamay's cultural identity as Dzao because that is what she said she was, but it's time to use the true name which is Mien.
It was magical – the complexity of what Tamay & Me symbolised for both of us had been shared. What we had both been dreaming of became a reality. And there was an enormous sense of lightness that we had achieved something big.
hannah asked me to write about growing. the calendar that i have been born into tells me it is ‘spring equinox’ today. my fingers - raw cracked and remembering tell me that last week i was planting beans, broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce. i suppose with some sort of faith that they would grow. and, also, knowing that this was not inevitable. learning, in fact, that it was not inevitable those fingers who planted them would be the fingers who ate them. and so – with things being put in the soil my mind turns to ground. to earth. to bedrock. from the south west of these celtic isles, i wonder about the land we find ourselves on and discover...
