The fastest woman to wrap banh chung in Hai Duong

When wrapping alone, Mrs. Nguyet only needs less than 1 minute to finish wrapping a banh chung.

Therefore, Ms. Nguyet was given the nickname "The fastest woman to wrap banh chung in Hai Duong" by many people.

Over 27 seconds a piece

I knew Ms. Nguyet from the Con Son - Kiep Bac Spring Festival in 2017. At that time, she was one of the members of the artisans' group from Hai Duong City participating in the Banh Chung and Banh Giay wrapping contest held at the stone yard of Con Son Pagoda.

At the competition that year, Mrs. Nguyet’s group of artisans won the prize for wrapping banh chung the fastest. She and all the members of the group were siblings. Mrs. Nguyet was the team leader.

In recent years, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Con Son - Kiep Bac Spring Festival has not been held or if it has been held, all the festival parts have been cut, only a few traditional rituals have been held on a small scale. Therefore, the Banh Chung and Banh Giay wrapping competitions have also been discontinued.

Until the beginning of this year, when the epidemic was under control, the Con Son - Kiep Bac Spring Festival was restored with all the traditional rituals as before. At the Banh Chung and Banh Giay wrapping contest, Ms. Nguyet and her siblings still represented Hai Duong City to participate. Although she is nearly 60 years old, Ms. Nguyet still maintains her usual style and agility. According to the Organizing Committee's regulations, in the Banh Chung wrapping contest, each team will have a maximum of 10 minutes to wrap 10 Banh Chung (5 vegetarian cakes, 5 salty cakes). However, it only took Ms. Nguyet and her siblings 4 minutes and 32 seconds to complete the contest (meaning the time to wrap each cake was only 27.2 seconds), leaving the following teams far behind.

Witnessing Ms. Nguyet and the team members wrapping banh chung quickly, many tourists could not help but admire and marvel. “My eyes were dazzled when watching their performance. Their hands wrapped the banh chung as if they were dancing. I have never seen anyone wrap banh chung so quickly and skillfully. They wrapped it quickly but the cake was still beautiful and very square,” commented Mr. Nguyen Dac Huy from Hanoi.

Ms. Nguyet said that she and her family have participated in the above contest 11 times and every year they have won the prize for wrapping Chung cakes the fastest. Her team has also competed in wrapping Chung cakes twice at Hung Temple (Phu Tho) and also finished first both times, but the rules do not include this content.

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit Mrs. Nguyet's house on Khuc Thua Du street (Hai Duong city), right when she and her husband were preparing to wrap 15 banh chung for guests. Once again, I got to see Mrs. Nguyet's skillful hands "dancing". Waiting for her husband to prepare the rice, filling, dong leaves, and binding strings, she quickly sat down on the chair and started working. Unlike the competition where her brothers and sisters helped, at home Mrs. Nguyet wrapped the cakes alone. However, it only took her 50-55 seconds to finish one cake. What impressed me more was that Mrs. Nguyet only wrapped the cakes in rolls, not in molds, but each cake had sharp, square edges. "At most, it only took me 1 minute to finish one cake," said Mrs. Nguyet.

Completed in a very short time, the banh chung wrapped by Mrs. Nguyet are all square and sharp.

Keep the family profession

Ms. Nguyet modestly said that there is no secret to wrapping banh chung so quickly, it is all about “practice makes perfect”. Her family has a traditional banh chung wrapping profession that has been maintained for several generations. Since she was a child, Ms. Nguyet saw her grandparents wrapping banh chung to sell, then her parents. Her grandparents and parents started teaching her the profession when she was only 5-6 years old.

Ms. Nguyet is the third child in a family of 9 siblings, most of whom make banh chung. When living with her parents, Ms. Nguyet and her siblings each had a job, from buying ingredients to wrapping and delivering the cakes. At that time, her family was a famous large and delicious banh chung making facility in Hai Duong town, supplying thousands of cakes to the market every day, mainly wholesale to small traders. Mrs. Luong's banh chung (Ms. Nguyet's mother) has become a brand, many elderly people in Hai Duong city still remember it.

As the years passed, Mrs. Nguyet and her siblings built their own families. She and her six other siblings continued to maintain the traditional profession that their ancestors had left behind. During the period 1990-1995, Mrs. Nguyet's family mainly wrapped small banh chung, gradually switching to wrapping large banh chung according to market demand. Because the cakes were delicious, her house was always crowded with customers, especially during Tet. A few years ago, every Tet, her family wrapped 6,000 - 8,000 banh chung, and had to hire helpers.

Because of her increasing age, in recent years she has only wrapped banh chung to sell on the 15th and 1st of the lunar month and on Tet, and only does she wrap banh chung for regular customers on weekdays out of respect. “I have devoted my whole life to this profession, so I will wrap banh chung until my health no longer allows it. I also have to wrap banh chung to maintain the feeling, and I also participate in competitions every year for fun,” said Ms. Nguyet.

DAWN