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The rapid economic growth and industrialisation of Vietnam is changing the landscape of rural Vietnam and the livelihoods of villagers.
The big push
As usual after enjoying time off with her family during Tet, 45-year-old Nguyen Luong Yen, a farmer from Lai Xa village in Hoai Duc district, Ha Tay province, is planting rice as a new season begins. But come springtime next year Yen is hard pressed to guess what she will be doing. All of her family’s land for cultivating rice has been earmarked by the State as the location for Lai Xa industrial park. Soon the conical hats amongst the paddies will be replaced by hard hats on a construction site. By 2010 these sleepy farmlands will be long gone. As Yen fishes for shrimp in the water the sounds of trucks and bulldozers in the distance are a constant reminder of what is to come. Everyday industrialisation edges closer. “No more rice plots, no more catching shrimp,” says Yen with a helpless shrug of her shoulders. “I’m really not sure what I’ll do.” The transferral of land also means local families have to go about the grim business of disinterring their loved ones from tombs scattered around the fields. Families often buried their loved ones on their own plots of land so that the tombs would not be lost. “Our happiness depends on how we take care of the tombs,” explains 60-year-old Nguyen Van Thang, a farmer from the village. “Now we must move them to the village’s cemetery.” Rapid transformation According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), 10,000 hectares of agricultural land are earmarked for the development of roads and industrial parks each year. The Red River Delta has the highest rate of withdrawn land with 4.4 per cent of agricultural land transferred for redevelopment. Each hectare of land withdrawn can on average influence the livelihoods of 13 rural labourers. Over the past six years, some 4.7 million farmers have been affected by the transferral of more than 366,000ha of agricultural land, which would account for 3.89 per cent of the total agricultural land area in use nationwide.
In Kim Chung commune, where Lai Xa village is found, over half of the commune’s rice fields have made way for the construction of houses, roads and Thanh Do technology college and an industrial park. Lai Xa village is home to more than 6,000 residents of whom more than 1,000 are students and migrant workers. “You cannot imagine how quickly the village has been transformed!” says 62-year-old Nguyen Xuan Diu, a village farmer. “Ever since I was small it has been a custom for girls who married someone outside the village to place bricks on the village’s roads. These brick-paved roads are part of our collective memory but now this custom has been buried in concrete,” says Diu.
A young man, 27-year-old Dinh Tien Dung shows me pictures he has taken of the area. “This is the place where we used to fly kites and tend oxen and this is my family’s plot.” Now a road runs through his family’s land and houses are shooting up where he used to play. “These days kids around here either hang out in internet cafes or play on the road,” he says.
Since the establishment of the industrial park and Thanh Do technology college some years ago, the village has seen a boom in internet services and the construction of boarding houses to support the migrant student population. “The boarding houses started going up three years ago. There are 76 households which double as boarding houses which is handy earner,” says Thang.This isn’t the only new trend in villager’s livelihoods. People have set up motorbike repair shops, offer motorbike-washing services and opened photocopy shops or internet cafes. Others make a quick buck working as xe om drivers. The urbanisation squeeze has also led to land disputes as land is considerably more valuable now.
“As a result, recently the local authorities have for the first time planned to give land-use certificates to villagers,” says Thang. “This is crucial as otherwise villagers can’t sell the land.” What does the future hold?Aided by a compensation package provided by the State, the villagers inevitably look to the future. It seems parents realise the importance of education as all children in the village attend school. Nguyen Xuan Diu proudly says that despite the dramatic changes the village has witnessed traditional values remain strong. He, for one, is pleased that on the first and 15th of each lunar month, a throng of villagers still descends on the local temples and pagodas.
“There is a traditional pageant that takes place on the 15th day of the second lunar month every year. On this day villagers who have travelled far and wide will return to the village,” says Diu. A middle aged villager Dinh Van Khai says that despite the explosion in property development he is quite happy with his century-old house.“It will remind my children of their ancestors’ labour,” Khai says. “Next to us there’s a newly-built house. Here the old and the new will mix.”
As Vietnam’s bustling economy requires further industrialisation, the situation facing Lai Xa is certainly not an uncommon one. But this shift is one that profoundly affects the identity of Vietnam and its people.
The start of the 21st century will no doubt be seen as a hinge in history, a time when the door of a predominantly agricultural culture started to close and another opened ushering in the information age and the modern world.
This is the subject of a large scale exhibition of photography entitled From Villages to Urban Areas currently showing at Hanoi’s Museum of Ethnology. Nguyen Van Huy, a senior curator at the museum, suggests the exhibition will help the public learn how the urbanisation process impacts rural areas and how people adapt to that process.
The rapid economic growth and industrialisation of Vietnam is changing the landscape of rural Vietnam and the livelihoods of villagers.
The big push
As usual after enjoying time off with her family during Tet, 45-year-old Nguyen Luong Yen, a farmer from Lai Xa village in Hoai Duc district, Ha Tay province, is planting rice as a new season begins. But come springtime next year Yen is hard pressed to guess what she will be doing. All of her family’s land for cultivating rice has been earmarked by the State as the location for Lai Xa industrial park. Soon the conical hats amongst the paddies will be replaced by hard hats on a construction site. By 2010 these sleepy farmlands will be long gone. As Yen fishes for shrimp in the water the sounds of trucks and bulldozers in the distance are a constant reminder of what is to come. Everyday industrialisation edges closer. “No more rice plots, no more catching shrimp,” says Yen with a helpless shrug of her shoulders. “I’m really not sure what I’ll do.” The transferral of land also means local families have to go about the grim business of disinterring their loved ones from tombs scattered around the fields. Families often buried their loved ones on their own plots of land so that the tombs would not be lost. “Our happiness depends on how we take care of the tombs,” explains 60-year-old Nguyen Van Thang, a farmer from the village. “Now we must move them to the village’s cemetery.” Rapid transformation According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), 10,000 hectares of agricultural land are earmarked for the development of roads and industrial parks each year. The Red River Delta has the highest rate of withdrawn land with 4.4 per cent of agricultural land transferred for redevelopment. Each hectare of land withdrawn can on average influence the livelihoods of 13 rural labourers. Over the past six years, some 4.7 million farmers have been affected by the transferral of more than 366,000ha of agricultural land, which would account for 3.89 per cent of the total agricultural land area in use nationwide.
In Kim Chung commune, where Lai Xa village is found, over half of the commune’s rice fields have made way for the construction of houses, roads and Thanh Do technology college and an industrial park. Lai Xa village is home to more than 6,000 residents of whom more than 1,000 are students and migrant workers. “You cannot imagine how quickly the village has been transformed!” says 62-year-old Nguyen Xuan Diu, a village farmer. “Ever since I was small it has been a custom for girls who married someone outside the village to place bricks on the village’s roads. These brick-paved roads are part of our collective memory but now this custom has been buried in concrete,” says Diu.
A young man, 27-year-old Dinh Tien Dung shows me pictures he has taken of the area. “This is the place where we used to fly kites and tend oxen and this is my family’s plot.” Now a road runs through his family’s land and houses are shooting up where he used to play. “These days kids around here either hang out in internet cafes or play on the road,” he says.
Since the establishment of the industrial park and Thanh Do technology college some years ago, the village has seen a boom in internet services and the construction of boarding houses to support the migrant student population. “The boarding houses started going up three years ago. There are 76 households which double as boarding houses which is handy earner,” says Thang.This isn’t the only new trend in villager’s livelihoods. People have set up motorbike repair shops, offer motorbike-washing services and opened photocopy shops or internet cafes. Others make a quick buck working as xe om drivers. The urbanisation squeeze has also led to land disputes as land is considerably more valuable now.
“As a result, recently the local authorities have for the first time planned to give land-use certificates to villagers,” says Thang. “This is crucial as otherwise villagers can’t sell the land.” What does the future hold?Aided by a compensation package provided by the State, the villagers inevitably look to the future. It seems parents realise the importance of education as all children in the village attend school. Nguyen Xuan Diu proudly says that despite the dramatic changes the village has witnessed traditional values remain strong. He, for one, is pleased that on the first and 15th of each lunar month, a throng of villagers still descends on the local temples and pagodas.
“There is a traditional pageant that takes place on the 15th day of the second lunar month every year. On this day villagers who have travelled far and wide will return to the village,” says Diu. A middle aged villager Dinh Van Khai says that despite the explosion in property development he is quite happy with his century-old house.“It will remind my children of their ancestors’ labour,” Khai says. “Next to us there’s a newly-built house. Here the old and the new will mix.”
As Vietnam’s bustling economy requires further industrialisation, the situation facing Lai Xa is certainly not an uncommon one. But this shift is one that profoundly affects the identity of Vietnam and its people.
The start of the 21st century will no doubt be seen as a hinge in history, a time when the door of a predominantly agricultural culture started to close and another opened ushering in the information age and the modern world.
This is the subject of a large scale exhibition of photography entitled From Villages to Urban Areas currently showing at Hanoi’s Museum of Ethnology. Nguyen Van Huy, a senior curator at the museum, suggests the exhibition will help the public learn how the urbanisation process impacts rural areas and how people adapt to that process.
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