Folk Arts - From a Hmong Village to America: Needlework Survives in a New World

An interview with Chia Thao by Ann Tippit

 

Chia Thao arrived in Seattle from Thailand on January 13,1980. On January 25, in spite of culture shock, jet lag, and the snow that she was so unfamiliar with, she and her sister-in-law set themselves up at the Seattle Center to sell pieces of needlework. She remembers the dates immediately, as people do that dates which have deep significance in their lives.

 

Needlework has been part of her life, and the life of her mother and grandmother and back, from a time beyond memory. Unlike the women before her though, the events of Chia's life, including the war in Indochina, have landed her half a world away from her birthplace.

 

Throughout her journey, Chia's needlework has been constant, taking on different role as needed: from the traditional clothing that announced to the village so much about who she was, to a commodity which helped support her family in Thailand, to a craft that though sold in the Pike Place Market, still conveys proudly who she is.

 

Chia learned to sew when she was six. For the next five years, her life outside of school revolved around sewing. Along with friends and relatives, “We would sit down together, talk together: ‘This is a mistake! You have to change this! You have to take it out and do it again!’ So, that's what we learned from. This is the needlework that we were making because, you know, the New Year was coming. If I had beautiful clothing, they'd say, ‘Oh, that girl! It's because her mother's teaching her and then she's listening to her mother. That's why she has beautiful clothes.’”

 

“But for those who don't have beautiful clothes to wear in the New Year, they say ‘That girl never listens to what the parents say. She just doesn't learn anything from the family! So that's what all the girls had to listen to the mom and the mom had to teach the girls to make it.”

 

As a young girl, was sewing a chore or was it a joy? Chia answered, “I really enjoyed sewing because my mother and friends, they were teaching me to sew: ‘Oh, you'd better do it! It's fun to do it!’” Chia laughs. “So I say ‘OK, let me try do it.’ And then I just try. I'd say, ‘Oh, it's fun!’ Because, you know, we had no TV to watch. We had nothing to do. All you do is just bring friends and stay together and it's raining like today, you know. You bring friends, and you sit down together, teaching together so it's really fun. I love it.”

 

When she was about 10, Chia didn't have as much time to sew because her father needed help with selling animals at the market. Then the war overtook their lives. They moved to another village and then again closer to Vientiane, the capitol of Laos. Chia sold fabric and later sold traditional Hmong pieces to Thai people in Vientiane, who would in turn sell the pieces to Westerners in Thailand.

 

Three months before Chia and her family escaped from Laos across the Mekong River to Thailand, she married. She received her dowry from her extended family.

“It's Hmong tradition, when you marry, right? All your cousins, aunties, your mother, they have to give all the needlework to you and you have to keep that for your life. So that is really important for the Hmong people, that you make needlework and you have to give it to your daughters, you have to give to your sons, you have to give it to somebody else related to you. I got a lot!”

 

The night they left for Thailand, they were fearful that the authorities were watching them. “I just [left] everything, I didn't bring any piece, except me!” Chia laughs. “Yeah, I didn't bring anything, you know. Since that night we went from the house, we just were out completely, just the person. Nothing to carry out. Otherwise, they'd know that we were going to escape so... Everything there is lost. Everything.”

 

Danger, fear, and sorrow have imprinted details of the family's escape vividly and permanently on Chia's memory. Penniless from having paid a Thai farmer for help on their way, Chia embroidered not Hmong but Lao-style skirts to make money in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp.

 

Later, a Thai woman paid for Chia to sew designs on clothing to be resold to Americans. The woman told Chia what colors and styles to use on the pieces.

“She told us the colors, and she said, ‘This is the American style.’ We don't do the bright colors, we need the combination of dark colors like the American style. You know, you have to use brown, grey together or you had to use brown and dark red together. It's not our color anymore!”

 

“It's really difficult because our needlework, we do really neat, you know. I mean it's good needlework, but you know that style is big, that cutting's big, the needlework's big. I don't really like it but she liked it so what can you do? You just make it for money, so you say, ‘well, I'd better do it.’” Chia laughs in her good-natured way.

 

Since 1980, Chia has been selling needlework in Seattle. Presently, she is the owner of Hmong Needlecraft. She and her family now design their own pieces. She designs work that will appeal to the American sensibility-the colors are muted and coordinated to go with furniture. But she also designs pieces that display the bright colors of traditional Hmong work.

 

When asked what meaning the pieces that she sells now have for her, Chia said, “Well see, what I sell everyday now, I just think, ‘If you don't keep your traditions, you don't keep your work, that means your work’s going to be lost. So, what don't I just keep it?’ I have a lot of [distractions], I have a lot of things to do to live, to get money, you know. But, I say ‘I'd better not change. If I change, that means I've lost my work. And then my children won't know anything about the needlework So why don't I keep making it until...’ I just continue to make it, make it. The survival of Hmong needlework, like the survival of anything in a rapidly changing world, depends on a delicate blending of integrity and adaptation, a balance between what to keep and what to let go. Chia and her family clearly seek this balance between the world of their traditions and the sweep of contemporary American life.

 

Will those in Chia's family born in America continue the tradition? “And my daughter, Alice? She tries to do it. I say, ‘Oh you're too young!’ And then right now, I don't have time. But she'd really like to do it. She says, ‘Mom, can you teach me? How do you do it?’ I say, ‘Well, you grow up a little bit, then I will teach you.’”

 

^ - next article: Hmong Dance: Traditions Continue through Hmong Youth by Joan Rabinowitz