Bo Sang

This guide to Bo Sang in Chiang Mai traces a craft back to a monk, Phra Inthaa, who legend says brought a paper umbrella home from Burma over a century ago and recognized that every material inside it grew around his own village. It follows how families divided the work of splitting bamboo, beating bark into paper and hand-painting each umbrella, building a trade that once employed over a hundred craftspeople shipping tens of thousands of umbrellas a year. Listen for how the arrival of cheap factory umbrellas changed who still picks up the brush today.