The Bamboo and Coconut-Leaf Huts of Cẩm Thanh

GEOGRAPHY & ORIGINEarly 20th century

A Commune Almost Afloat on Water

Cẩm Thanh sits at the lower reach of the Thu BồnPLACE · RIVERThe Thu Bồn RiverSince the plain existed · to nowAbout 20 km³ of water reaches the sea down the Thu Bồn each year, more than any other river in central Vietnam, and 80 to 90 per cent of it arrives between September and December. The old town of Hội An stands on a sand ridge that the same river built. River, just before it meets the sea at Cửa Đại. A 2019 government yearbook put the commune at 970.42 hectares, 348.69 hectares of it open water, divided into six hamlets with 9,261 residents. Brackish water rises and falls with the tide every day, and on that ground nipa palm grows as forest rather than scattered along a bank the way it does on most other rivers. The nipa-palm forest here sits inside the buffer zone of the Cù Lao ChàmPLACE · ISLANDSCù Lao ChàmInhabited from ~3,100 BP · biosphere reserve 2009Eight islands stand off Cửa Đại, screening the trading port of Hội An for centuries. Twenty kilometres out to sea, a fifteenth-century cargo ship lay undisturbed until fishermen's nets began pulling up plates still glazed whole. biosphere reserve.

A still creek mirroring dense nipa palm along both banks, a basket boat moored near shore, two more anchored further out. — a creek in the Cẩm Thanh nipa-palm forest — the ground and water that give the craft its raw material

The heritage dossier compiled by the Hội An Centre for Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation ventures only a guess: the craft of building houses from bamboo and coconut leaf in Cẩm Thanh took shape no later than the early twentieth century. No firmer date survives. Nobody wrote down the day a craft began, only the day it finally got a name.

The forest supplied the material. The tide gave people a reason to build on higher ground. The craft began there, and nowhere else.

MATERIALS & TECHNIQUEThe process, still kept today

A Standing Frame, a Woven Roof

A bamboo-and-coconut house goes up in two distinct stages. The frame comes first: columns, rafters, purlins and ridge beams, all split from bamboo and raised into a structure that stands on its own before any roofing goes on. The covering comes after, roof and wall panels and doors, all woven or fitted from dried coconut leaf. The two stages meet with rattan cord, later replaced by nylon, and nowhere in the house is there a nail or a drop of glue.

A worker crouches tying cord onto a woven bamboo-strip panel laid on a concrete yard, split-bamboo bundles piled around him, two more workers bent over their own panels further back in the same yard. — a worker ties cord onto a bamboo-strip panel, nylon cord in place of rattan, and not a single nail anywhere in the house

Coconut leaf for roofing has to be cut in season, twice a year in the first and sixth lunar months, old enough not to rot quickly once it is in place. A roof built the right way lasts fifteen to twenty years before it needs replacing.

A person seated in a small basket boat reaches into dense nipa-palm fronds growing at the waterline to cut them, the water below mirroring the green canopy above. — cutting nipa-palm leaves right off the creek — timed to season, so the leaf is old enough not to rot quickly once it is on a roof

The layering method is called "lợp nợm": a worker sets two dried coconut-leaf panels face to face, one above the other and running the same way, lashes them to a purlin, then moves to the next pair right beside it, working panel by panel across the whole roof. The heritage dossier records the method in detail. A second technique from the same period, called "dừa chà", has died out completely, and no craftsman left can demonstrate it, nor does any page anywhere record how it was done.

Overhead view of a person in a flat cap kneeling among rows of coconut-leaf panels laid on the ground, one row already browned and dry, another still green, both hands holding a leaf just set in place. — fitting coconut-leaf panels in the "lợp nợm" way — one laid over the next, lashed to the purlin

The craft grew its own material economy around it. A community survey by the Heritage Centre counted more than 24 kinds of building product: coconut-leaf panels, bamboo ceiling lining, bamboo screens, roofing thatch, bamboo guttering, windows, fold-down shutters, wall panels. It counted more than 40 kinds of tool besides, most of them ordered from blacksmiths in Cẩm Châu and Sơn Phong, while simpler pieces such as thatch hooks and levelling blocks the craftsmen made themselves.

No nails, no glue. A craft that keeps itself supplied.

PASSED DOWNThree generations, one family

Learning the Craft at Twelve

The bamboo-and-coconut craft of Cẩm Thanh has no patron figure and no guild that ever put its name to it. It passes inside the family, from father to son. The heritage dossier records one case in detail: Trần Bừa learned the craft from his father, Trần Ruộng, at the age of twelve, and before Trần Ruộng it was his own father, Trần Văn Huynh. Three generations, one craft.

Portrait of an older worker, greying hair, smiling broadly, both hands holding a small knife as he splits a long bamboo pole, whole bamboo culms piled in the yard behind him. — a bamboo-and-coconut craftsman of Cẩm Thanh — not named in the record, but the same knife, the same work

The craft has lived not because of one founding master, but because, generation after generation, a father agreed to teach his son the year he was finally strong enough to hold a bill hook.

BEFORE 1975Before 1975

When the Whole Coast Lived Under Bamboo and Coconut

The elders of the commune put it at about sixty years ago: Cẩm Thanh then had dozens of households working full-time as bamboo-and-coconut builders. Many more people could raise a house for their own family besides. Before 1975 the craft was the norm across the whole coastal strip around Hội An, from Cẩm Thanh and Cẩm Châu to Thanh Hà, Cẩm Kim and Cẩm Nam. Residents there had, in practice, no other material to build a house with.

At the same time, the Bảy Mẫu coconut forest carried a second, separate role. Through the resistance wars against French and American forces, the forest served as a revolutionary base for the Quảng Nam Provincial Party Committee and the Hội An Municipal Party Committee. That is a layer of the forest's history that stands beside the craft's story, not folded into it.

Black-and-white photograph of around ten men in soft field caps, one with a rifle slung over his shoulder, standing and crouching among nipa-palm fronds taller than head height, one man at the centre holding a sheet of paper the others are looking at. — fighters sheltering in the Bảy Mẫu nipa-palm forest — dense fronds for cover, not a roof to live under

One forest, two different jobs: cover for soldiers inside enemy-held territory, and a roof for a family.

DECLINE & REVIVAL1990s to today

A Craft Nearly Killed by Cheap Houses

By the 1990s the craft looked finished. Industrial building materials arrived, cheaper and more durable than bamboo and coconut leaf, just as rural incomes were rising and demand for leaf-roofed houses kept falling. Longtime craftsmen left the trade to make a living elsewhere, and only a handful stayed.

The craft came back for a reason that had nothing to do with why it began: tourism. The nipa-palm forest, once valued only for its leaf, became a place visitors paid to be rowed through. The forest itself had shrunk to 84.69 hectares by 2010 before growing back to 106.01 hectares by 2024. In 2021 the craft counted 35 households and more than 125 workers, with revenue that had reached 16 billion đồng in 2018 before the Covid-19 pandemic cut it to 4.5 billion đồng in 2021.

A yard in Cẩm Thanh with several workers weaving bamboo panels at once on the concrete floor, whole bamboo poles and split strips piled around the yard, a motorbike parked behind them. — several workers in one yard — the craft survives today because enough people still stay with it

What once emptied the craft out was people no longer needing a bamboo house to live in. Now it is people wanting one to look at.

NATIONAL HERITAGE2003 to 2024

Twenty Years for One Dossier

In 2003 the Hội An Centre for Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation began compiling a dossier and formal record for the bamboo-and-coconut craft of Cẩm Thanh. That dossier took more than twenty years to reach its destination. On 21 February 2024 the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism issued Decision No. 380/QĐ-BVHTTDL, recognising the Cẩm Thanh bamboo-and-coconut house-building craft as a National Intangible Cultural Heritage, the seventh such heritage recognised in Hội An City.

The heritage record runs 37 pages, alongside a 27-minute documentary tracing how the craft took shape and grew. Paperwork cannot rebuild a house that has already collapsed, but it does keep a name, a technique, a material on record for later.

From a record opened in 2003 to a decision signed in 2024, the dossier moved slower than the craft itself, but it got there.

TODAYToday

From a Roof to a Souvenir

Few bamboo-and-coconut houses go up to be lived in today. Most now serve as restaurants, cafés and guesthouses along the edge of the coconut forest. Alongside that shift, some workshops have moved the same skill in a different direction: tables, chairs, cabinets, beds, cups and trays woven from bamboo. At first craftsmen made these only for use inside the house. Once tourists started asking for them, workshops turned the same items into goods for sale. A Heritage Centre survey counted around 40 kinds of this handicraft product, a very different number from the 24 kinds of building material the craft started with.

Inside a coconut-leaf-roofed space, woven bamboo lamps and fish shapes hanging from the ceiling, a craftsman holding out a small bamboo item for a foreign visitor to look at, another visitor watching beside them. — woven bamboo souvenirs inside a space built in the old bamboo-and-coconut style — the craft changed hands, the roofline stayed

The craft is travelling the opposite road from the one it started on. Bamboo and coconut leaf once went up to make a roof over people's heads. Now they are woven into something to carry home.

FOLLOW THE THREAD

SITS AT THE LOWER REACH OF · the river mouthThe Thu Bồn RiverPLACE · RIVERAbout 20 km³ of water reaches the sea down the Thu Bồn each year, more than any other river in central Vietnam, and 80 to 90 per cent of it arrives between September and December. The old town of Hội An stands on a sand ridge that the same river built.BIOSPHERE BUFFER ZONE · the Bảy Mẫu coconut forestCù Lao ChàmPLACE · ISLANDSEight islands stand off Cửa Đại, screening the trading port of Hội An for centuries. Twenty kilometres out to sea, a fifteenth-century cargo ship lay undisturbed until fishermen's nets began pulling up plates still glazed whole.

SOURCES

IMAGE CREDITS

Điểm đặc trưng, độc đáo của nghề làm nhà tre dừa Cẩm Thanh — Lê Thị Ngọc Hương, Trung tâm Quản lý Bảo tồn Di sản Văn hóa Hội An, chưa rõ, dùng có ghi công