Sticky situation

Every autumn, in September or October, when a cool wind leaves a cold dew across the north of Vietnam, the sticky rice ears will start to bend, and the local farmers will know it is time to make com – a specialty made from young green sticky rice.
But this year, after decades of using his stone mortars to pound the green sticky rice, Nguyen Van Hung doesn’t want to hear about the cool wind, the morning dew or the sticky rice ears starting to bend. He has just sold his stone mortars to an antique collector, while the workshop will be rented out to students or another tradesman. For Hung it is time to move on. In Vong village, where he lives, making com used to be a common trade.
“Now there are just a few families making com,” says Hung after he has packed his mortars into the back of a van. “Our stone mortars have become antiques because now com is made with the help of roasting and pounding machines,” says Hung, before adding that com made by hand is far superior.
Com is a wonderful delicacy, sure, but to make money from producing it you have to make bucket loads, and Hung is sick of working so hard when his neighbours are making more from simply leasing out their property. “I make far more now than I did from making com,” says Hung’s neighbour Nguyen Dieu Hoa, who now leases out her house. “The materials we needed to make com were getting too hard to source and too expensive.”

Advertisement