Nowaday, when visiting Đà Lạt, in addition to the landscape or famous architectural works of Đà Lạt, tourists also have the opportunity to visit the traditional crafts villages. Not only do crafts villages contain valuable precious cultural values but they also create particular features for the city on the legendary Langbian Plateau.
Silver ring-making profession
Ma Đanh commune, in Tu Tra village, Lạc Dương district still preserves the jewelry craft with silver material. Coming here, tourists will hear the stories of the srí, sra Rings, one of the Churu impressive silver casting. To get a pair of wedding rings, the artisan must perform multiple tasks, with multiple meticulous stages that very few people can do. With the guidance of craftsman Ya Tuất, tourists will learn the steps to finish a pair of rings from mold – making to shapes, and ring casting.
First, the artisan melts high-class beewax – the main raw material to produce mold, then dips the wooden stick into the mold, and let it cool down, to have a round wax tube like rolls. Depending on the size of the finger, the artisan will cut the stick into small, or large circular rings to make molds, then creates patterns on the ring … Each mold will always be used to cast two rings at a time, a female ring and a male ring. After shaping is complete, the artisan soaks the wax into a solution of buffalo dung mixed with soil, and dries it under the sun. Then the wax mold will be burned over the charcoal fire, the wax will melt inside, part of the dung solution will form a negative mold, and the molten silver is poured into the negative mold. As the mold cools down, a pair of blackish silver rings appears. But when the pair of rings is embedded into a boiling honey locust to boil for a few minutes, then, immediately the pair of rings becomes shiny. With one’s own eye following up the process of the Churu’s silver ring making, this moment would surely leave in the tourists the unforgettable experiences when visiting here. Finally, tourists can buy pairs of srí, sră silver rings of sacred significance as jewelry or as gifts for friends and relatives.
Ethnic “Can” wine – making of the ethnic minority people in Lạc Dương district
Located at the foot of the legendary LangBian mountain, the small Lach tribe still preserves the craft of making ethnic “Can” wine. Tourists when coming to this tribe will have interesting experiences to be introduced to the different phases of making wine and make the jar of sweet-smelling ethnic “Can” wine themselves. The different stages of making a jar of ethnic ”Can” wine are very sophisticated, the main raw material is corn (maize), different types of rice, the most delicious rice is the brown rice; all are cooked, cooled down and mixed with yeast and rice husk then put into the jar (container), tightly capped, and kept in the house … there secret Langbian ethnic “can” wine has its own recipe to create a special sweet-scented flavor, that is, the rice planted upland and forest yeast (leaves, bark and roots of the Dòng plant). The type of wine following this recipe is very fragrant, pure, delicious. The longer it is kept, the more precious it becomes. LangBian ethnic “Can”wine with mature techniques and handed-down recipes make tourists still remember when they leave.
Pottery of Pró village
K-răng-gọ (meaning: pot village) is a long-standing, famous pottery Churu village, belonging to Pró commune, Đơn Dương district, about 20 km from the center of Đà Lạt. Tourists coming here will be introduced to the pottery production process including clay acquisition, drying, pounding, sifting, mixing, rustic pottery making, drying and calcination. Raw materials for pottery making is a kind of clay taken from Trồm Ụ trench in KLơl mountain (about 1.5km from the commune) by skilled artisans who know the type of high quality clay. The clay should be dried for about 2 to 3 days under the sun and placed in a mortar to be ground to powder. Then mixed with water and use hand finely kneaded with bare hand, until the gleaming black as lead is shown and squeezed into different products such as pot, jar, cup, bowl,… of all sizes…
Churu people do not use turntables, instead, they go around the product to shape. When the product is shaped, people use bamboo string to wrap around the product and depending on the thinness or thickness of the product , they scrape on the inside to fit and use the piece of wood to slightly tap on the outside, then dry and calcinate the product. For products to be glossy, the villagers of Krăng-gọ use a special fruit called dabai (pơlai canh – forest fruit) of a climbing plant taken from the forest to polish. When tourists complete their trip experience, they can buy any pottery products that you like the best as a souvenir after their visit to the traditional crafts villages.