Bat Trang Pottery Village

This guide to Bat Trang Pottery Village outside Hanoi follows Vu Duc Thang, who returned home in 1980 refusing to join the village's identical-ware production line. Over nearly fifty years he mastered every decorative technique in ceramics, carving and glazing pieces sold abroad under the name Soul of Vietnam. Concerned that visitors, and even the village's own children, overlooked what surrounded them, he opened a wooden house as Bat Trang's first licensed private museum in 2016. Listen for the stories behind individual pieces as you walk the collection.