Kim Bong Carpentry village
Riverside carving hamlet where family workshops still shape timber into temple beams and boat hulls by hand.
This guide to Kim Bong Carpentry Village in Hoi An traces a craft that nearly emptied out. It goes back to the Nguyen dynasty, when local artisans were summoned to carve the palaces and royal tombs of Hue, then forward to the nineteen nineties, when tourist money and rising land prices pulled apprentices away from the bench. You'll meet Huynh Ri, named the village's sole master carpenter in nineteen eighty-four, and hear about the UNESCO-funded training he started for teenagers outside his own family, breaking a rule his household had kept for generations. His son Huynh Suong carried the workshops in a new direction of his own. Stand near the riverbank workshops to hear the chisels still running today.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.