With over a thousand craft villages, including around 244 traditional villages, Hanoi is the country’s largest home for craft villages. Son Dong, among the most popular and labeled as the most impressive wood carving village, attracts large numbers of international and domestic travelers every year.

The main products of the village are statues of Buddha, saints, national heroes and sacred animals for worshipping, such as horses and cranes. Each statue is done with intricate details with facial features very much refined. Their skillful hands and the thousand-year-old tradition helped the sculptors master the craft and successfully translate soulful and merciful expressions on the statues faces.

Visiting Son Dong give visitors a chance to shop for unique hand-crafted art and be in direct contact with artisans. They will also be able to participate in the craft itself, giving them a feel how the villages’ products are carefully done. The village is an indispensable destination in the City’s tour for many tourists in the recent years.

A Challenged Tradition, Well-Preserved

The village has been around for over 2,000 years, and the craft started just shortly after the village was born when Buddhism became widespread under the Ly Dynasty. The villagers picked up the craft as a spate of newly built pagodas created a massive demand for Buddha statues and other Buddhist symbols. Since the villagers began the craft, such was embraced, developed and preserved until present.

The tradition came across a huge challenge under the subsidised economy during 1975-1986 as the trade was banned by the State. The craftsmen were forced to take on jobs in the farm with little hope the craft will never be revived.

However in 1986, Vietnam initiated its doi moi economic policy and the government expressed leniency on its stance regarding the prohibition of practicing religion. With that, Vietnam’s religious sites begain to reflourish. Temples, pagodas and churches were reopened started welcoming the local congregation.

The older local craftsmen in the village then decided to revive the craft by seeking loans from relatives to open on-the-spot training courses on wood carving for many of the young locals, who were keen to follow the village’s traditional craft. In 1986 a training course in statue sculturing was made available in Ha Noi College of Fine Arts which was widely participated by the people in the commune. The village now has hundreds of households engaging in the craft and close to 5,000 skillful sculptors.

Since the revival of the craft, the village also sought better ways to improve and develop the trade by investing in modern machines and advanced technology, as well as specialized production. Today, each family involved in the trade earns up to 25 million ($1,282) each month.

Son Dong is recorded in the Vietnam Guinness Book of Records as being the craft village that has made “the largest quantity of statues and worshipping objects for Buddhists”.

Worldwide Recognition

Son Dong products are widely appreciated because of their durability, sophistication, lifelike expressions and reasonable prices.

All worshipping objects in the Xuan Tao communal house come from Son Dong. Their work are seen in most of the pagodas and temples in Ha Noi and the North.

Coming to the village, visitors will also find several showrooms stocked with mini-statues, small souvenirs, lacquered pictures and tourist-friendly items. The impressive display is an attraction in itself giving the tourists a feel of being in a miniature museum.

Crafts are sipped in large quantity to among overseas Vietnamese in the US and UK. Foreign visitors coming all the way from US, Russia and Japan never fail to be impressed. Many of them place orders in bulk.