Every morning at the crack of dawn, before the cafés opened their shutters and before the tourists set out in straw hats and linen pants, Ông Lâm would unlock the warped doors of his shop on Nguyen Thai Hoc Street. The old wood-scented room was half-studio, half-memory. Dust motes danced like lazy spirits in the streaks of golden morning light, and beneath them, he sharpened his chisel by hand, dragging it slowly across an oilstone that once belonged to his father.
His hands were knotted, brown, and steady—the kind of hands that remembered the line of a dragon’s spine, the swell of a lion dog’s haunches, and the soft roundness of a Bodhisattva’s cheeks. Once, his work adorned imperial temples in Hue and ancestral altars from Da Nang to Can Tho. Now, he carved small pieces mostly—amulets, spirit animals, tiny wooden water buffalo—sold to foreigners who’d never know their deeper meaning. His most treasured carving—a three-panel screen etched with scenes from Truyen Kieu, the Vietnamese epic poem—stood in the back. Few tourists noticed it. Fewer still could read the ancient chữ Nôm characters that twined along its frame. But he didn’t mind. That piece wasn’t for sale. It was for the daughter he’d lost to illness decades ago, before the tailors and resorts, before the lanterns were branded “heritage.”
“A blade remembers the hand that shaped it. Same as the wood.”