Village de la Soie (Silk Village)

This guide to the Silk Village outside Hanoi opens around the ninth century, when a woman named A La Thi Nuong arrived at a threadbare hamlet, spotted wild mulberry along the riverbank, and taught the farmers there to raise silkworms and weave. You'll hear how the grateful villagers renamed their home Van Phuc in her honor and built her a temple that still holds an ancient loom, and how the village's silk later reached Nguyen dynasty courts and a 1931 trade fair in Marseille. It follows the weavers still bent over wooden looms today, working against machine-made imitations.