the lotus flower field

At the shores of westlake
Hanoi, Vietnam

At the biggest lake in Hanoi you find several ponds where lotus flowers are grown. These massive flowers are mostly used for wedding celebrations. They are essential for the famous wedding photography, to convince your choosen wife to marry you or to have a tea with your parents in law!
A day for a lotus flower farmer usualy starts at 5am.

The first step is to get on the rawing boat and collect the flowers before the bloom is about to open wide in the morning.

After having finished the collection, the flowers are bundled with care.

while inside the floating house the family works together

 to convert the bloom into salads, teas and many more usefull and tasty thing.

This time of processing the flower is buisy but also time for a little chat

While the family sits together, they buyers have to wait...

until they can purchase their bouquet....

The Hero

 

collecting bottles

Former soldiers of the "Vietnam War", or as it is called in Vietnam: the "American War" are honored as heroes. Everywhere you look advertising indicates their courage and fearlessness.
But in fact, they get very low benefits from the state at present time. Many of them therefore live under simple conditions and try to earn their livelihood with simple activities.
Under the famous Long Bien bridge down in the Red River there lives one of the old vetereans and earns his living by collecting plastic bottles.
"I work every night from 11:00pm to 4am in the morning. My merit it is about 2-3 dollars a night " he told me. With the money he buys rice and batteries for his radio so he can hear the storm warnings.
During the day he is fishing a few fish and crabs in the Red River to get a hot meal per day.
" For collecting bottles at the market, I need a permission from the market guard" he said and "If I could take me a day free, I would like to just walk around, doing nothing! My children live in the province, too far away to see them often. Despite everything, I like my life and am glad to live here, on the river and around the city."

The houseboat, with a living and a bedroom

The old soldier with many time for tea, discussions and ...

...pipes!

at night collecting plastic bottles

in his buisness time is money: "first come, first get" makes him hurry

3 Dollar for 5 hours work

the ending of a "good night"

The Chopstick Story

Processing chopsticks from bamboo forests

Millions of Chopsticks are consumed troughout Viet Nam. From a street eatery untill the 5 star restaurant, everywhere you will get this two little sticks helping you eating delicious food. Sometimes you get used ones, sometime dirty ones and sometimes "one way" sticks. Doesn´t matter what kind of, they all have one common thing: They are made of bamboo...

The Son Ma River in norther Viet Nam is a common playground for chopstick factorys. Here you can find the whole supply chain from the farmer growing bamboo untill the factory which makes the finishing. Transport on floating bamboo rafts or old trucks from former eastern Germany are well seen and everybody here earns his money at least part time from bamboo processing.

There exist a lot of different bamboo species in Viet Nam, only some of them are used for chopstick processing. They mostly grow on the shores of lakes or rivers, often the whole landscape turns from tree into bamboo forest.










The bamboo forest
The farmers do the first step in the processing chain. They grow the bamboo and cut it when it has reached the processing size, which must be at least 30 centimeters in between the intersections. As everywhere in the beginning of a value chain, the farmers earn little and have a hard job, transporting the bamboo from the forest to the next road or river by carrying them on their shoulders. One bamboo plant can easily weight 30 kilogram.

forewarding bamboo

stacking the plants beside the river

counting and controlling is as important....

...as having a break from the hard work. A waterpipe made of bamboo is easily made within five minutes

The transport

The bamboo is bind together to a raft and than shipped througt the river. A lot of people are specialized in these transport buisness and own their own boat which they attach to the raft to navigate through the river.

Bamboo rafts ready to go

floating down the river

The Processing

Once arrived at the factory it´s getting buzzle. The rafts now have to be unloaded and brought to the factory, which is often located at a higher place of the shore. The river itself is becomming the depot. Here there is enough space for storage.

Once arrived at the processing shacks, the bamboo first has to be sawed in pieces of 26 centimeters.

The 26 centimeter pieces will be cut in two halfes and brought to the next station where it will be punched to small sticks. All the material which accumulate during the process will be used for further processing. The bamboo intersection for example will be used as firewood, the brushwood can be used for paper.... and even the old trucks are recycled, driven long time in Germany, they now are used to transport the materials.

Step one:

Getting two halfes of 26 centimeter bamboo sections

sawing the bamboo is probably the most dangerous work

Quality Control is important

just a knife not more is used to cut the bamboo in two halfes

bringing away the unused intersections

Step two:  punching out the chopsticks

punching out the sticks

punching out the sticks

Protection against the punch press: wool and rubber

adding together the finished product

Step three:

making profit of the drop offs

loading the truck with the unused bamboo intersections. This material will be used to make fire.

Most of the trucks used for transportation in this bamboo region are old german ones

the brushwood is used for the paper making industrie

to get more space on the truck the brushwood is beeing pressed and humidified