A Woman's Work is Never Done -- (Ta Giang Phinh Village - Northwest Vietnam).

Trekking in the hills of Sa Pa, I often encountered women at work. The Red Dzao women are quite beautiful, but work terribly hard. Whereas, the men, in this noticeably male-dominated community, appear to do very little.

River's Rumination: The origins of the Red Dzao (Yao or Dao) tribe are not definitive, but can be dated back as far as 2000 years ago. And since this time, the role of women has subsisted as the dominant force in manual labor. Still today, in addition to maintaining the household chores, the Red Dzao women of Vietnam herd the buffalo, till, plant, and harvest crops by hand, especially rice and corn, and among many other menial duties, feed and water the domestic animals, e.g., hogs, chickens, goats, and cows, etc.

Quite incredibly, while hiking in the hills of Sa Pa, I encountered women castrating a dog with a butcher’s knife. The dog’s hind legs were pulled through an opening in his wooden pen and held by a woman on either side while the woman in the center slit his scrotal sac, and squeezed out his testicles. Once exposed, she proceeded to cut the cord to remove the testicles as the dog cried-out, nonstop yelping, from excruciating pain… it was an absolute horror, a bloody mess, yet ironically, it was not an act of cruelty, but a desexing norm.

Though cultural differences can be extraordinary, the human body has its limits. I was told that by the age of 30, the women are physically broken from years of bending over in rice fields and carrying heavy loads e.g., up to 50 kg of rice or corn on their backs. Additionally, though somewhat immaterial, I also noticed their exceptionally rough, long since, callous-proof hands donned with permanently, dirt-stained fingernails. Though relatively unremarkable for the Red Dzao women, it was quite shocking to the obsessively well-groomed American.

Red Dzao Woman