"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 31"
The Red River Delta stretched out like a green-and-gold patchwork quilt as Su Yao's car bumped along a narrow road, flanked by rice paddies where farmers bent over in conical hats. Up ahead, a cluster of stilted houses with thatched roofs emerged—a Tay ethnic village, where women in indigo áo tứ thân blouses sat on bamboo mats, their fingers flying over wooden looms. Their leader, a woman with a face etched by sun and time named Ba Thi, stood as they approached, her hands resting on a folded khan mó—a brocade scarf covered in intricate patterns of dragons and phoenixes. "You've come for the vải tây," she said, her Tay language laced with Vietnamese, referring to their prized handwoven fabric.
The Tay, one of Vietnam's largest ethnic minorities, had been weaving vải tây for over a millennium, using techniques passed down through matriarchal lines. Each family guarded unique patterns, known as màu gia đình, which told stories of their ancestors, their victories, and their connection to the land. Su Yao's team had traveled here to merge this ancient craft with their seaweed-metal blend, hoping to create a textile that honored the Tay's heritage while introducing it to a global audience. But from the first exchange, it was clear that their understanding of "heritage" and "sharing" was as different as the delta's rivers and the open sea.
Ba Thi's daughter, Lan, a 28-year-old weaver who had won regional awards for her vải tây, spread a length of fabric across a bamboo table. Its indigo threads formed a rồng (dragon) coiled around a phượng (phoenix), their scales and feathers rendered in tiny, precise stitches. "This pattern belongs to the Dương family," she said, tracing the dragon's tail with her finger. "My great-grandmother created it during the French occupation, when our village needed courage. We do not share it with outsiders. It would dilute its power."
Su Yao's team had brought high-resolution cameras and pattern-replicating software, intending to document the màu gia đình patterns for a global exhibition. When Lin showed Ba Thi a digital copy of the Dương family's dragon-phoenix design, the room fell silent. Ba Thi's husband, Ong Minh, a quiet man who carved loom parts from jackfruit wood, slammed his fist on the table. "This is theft," he said, his voice trembling with anger. "Our patterns are our souls. You cannot just copy them like a photograph."
Cultural friction intensified over materials. The Tay wove vải tây using cotton grown in their own fields and dyed with indigofera plants, which they fermented in clay pots for months. The dyeing process was accompanied by rituals—offering sticky rice to the water spirits, chanting during the first dip—to ensure the color stayed fast. They believed that shortcutting these rituals weakened the fabric's spiritual protection. The seaweed-metal blend, with its industrial processing and chemical stabilizers, was viewed as a threat. "Your thread has no ancestors," Ba Thi said, after examining a sample. "It cannot protect us."
A more immediate crisis arose when the seaweed-metal threads reacted with the indigo dye, turning it a murky green and causing the cotton fibers to weaken. "It's like poison," Lan said, holding up a ruined swatch. "Our vải tây is supposed to last for generations. This will fall apart in a year."
Then, disaster struck: a typhoon swept through the delta, flooding the rice paddies and destroying the indigo fields. The clay pots used for fermenting dye were shattered, their contents spilling into the mud. With their primary material source destroyed, the weavers faced a season without income. Ba Thi's grandmother, a 92-year-old woman known as bà ngoại (great-grandmother), who still remembered the old dyeing rituals, blamed the team. "You brought something from the saltwater to our freshwater delta," she said, her voice thin as rice paper. "The spirits are angry."
That night, Su Yao sat with Ba Thi in her stilted house, where a clay stove simmered with canh chua (sour soup). The air smelled of lemongrass and wet earth, and outside, the rain drummed on the thatched roof. "I'm sorry," Su Yao said, picking at a bowl of com (sticky rice). "We came here thinking we could help preserve your traditions, but we've only damaged them."
Ba Thi smiled, ladling soup into a bowl. "The typhoon is not your fault," she said. "The delta has always been at the mercy of wind and water. My grandmother used to say that the land gives us what we need, but we must accept when it takes back." She paused, then added, "But your thread—maybe it's not the enemy. Maybe it's a chance to teach our children that our traditions can grow, not just stay the same."
Su Yao nodded. "What if we start over? We'll use your remaining cotton, and help you regrow the indigo. We'll learn to weave on your looms, by hand. We won't copy your family patterns—we'll create new ones, together, that tell the story of both our worlds. And we'll treat our metal thread with your indigo dye, using your rituals, so it belongs here."
Lan, who had been listening from the doorway, stepped forward. "You'd really learn to ferment indigo the way we do? It takes three months, and if you anger the spirits, it turns black."
"However long it takes," Su Yao said. "And we'll help with the rituals. Whatever the spirits require."
Over the next two months, the team immersed themselves in Tay life. They helped rebuild the indigo fields, their hands blistered from planting cuttings. They learned to ferment indigo in new clay pots, following bà ngoại's instructions to the letter—offering sticky rice at dawn, chanting as they stirred the dye, covering the pots with banana leaves at night. "The spirits like respect," bà ngoại said, watching Su Yao perform the offering. "They don't care where you're from, as long as you speak their language."
They sat on bamboo mats, learning to weave vải tây on wooden looms that creaked like old friends. Lan taught them the basic stitches, her patience endless as she corrected their mistakes. "The dragon's scales must overlap like roof tiles," she said, adjusting Su Yao's thread. "Otherwise, the rain will get in."
To solve the reaction between the metal threads and indigo, Lin experimented with soaking the metal in nước mắm (fish sauce) before dyeing—a technique the Tay used to preserve bamboo. The salt in the sauce created a protective layer, allowing the metal to absorb the indigo without damaging the cotton. "It's like seasoning the thread," she said, showing Ba Thi a swatch where the blue now glowed evenly.
Fiona, inspired by the delta's waterways, suggested adding patterns of lotus flowers—sacred to both the Tay and many coastal cultures—to their collaborative design. "They grow in mud but bloom beautifully," she said, and Lan nodded, saying it would honor the land's resilience.
As the floodwaters receded and new indigo shoots sprouted, the village celebrated with a lễ hội (festival), where they danced to kèn bầu (bamboo flute) music and feasted on grilled fish. They unveiled their first collaboration: a khan mó scarf with a lotus pattern in deep indigo, accented with seaweed-metal threads that shimmered like sunlight on water and tiny beads made from river stones.
Ba Thi draped it around Su Yao's neck during the festival, as the village cheered. "This scarf has two hearts," she said, "one from the delta, one from the sea. But it beats as one."
As the team's car drove away, Lan ran after them, pressing a small package into Su Yao's hand. Inside was a skein of indigo-dyed cotton thread, tied with a piece of seaweed-metal. "To remember us by," read a note written in Vietnamese. "And to remember that even rivers and oceans meet."
Su Yao clutched the package as the delta's green fields stretched to the horizon. She thought of the hours spent stirring indigo pots, of the way the metal thread had finally learned to hold the dye, of bà ngoại's laughter as she taught them the spirit chants. The Tay had taught her that tradition wasn't a prison—it was a living, breathing thing, capable of growing new roots while staying true to its source.
Her phone buzzed with a message from the Gozitan team: photos of Maria wearing their faldetta and seaweed-metal blend, standing on the Maltese cliffs. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added a new pattern—Tay delta and sea, woven as one."
Somewhere in the distance, a kèn bầu played, its melody floating over the rice paddies like a benediction. Su Yao knew their journey was far from over. There were still countless cultures to learn from, countless threads to weave into the tapestry of their work. And as long as they approached each new place with an open heart, willing to listen and learn, the tapestry would only grow more vibrant, more alive, more full of stories.