Overview:
As many Hmongs migrated to the United States, paj ntaub largely was forgotten as the migrants and their families prioritized adapting to American life.
Dozens of Fresno Unified students will start the new academic year with fresh skills in an ancient, nearly forgotten Hmong art.
During their final week of the district’s 2024 Summer Enrichment Program, students gathered at the Rivendell Community Center to finish up and display their works of Paj Ntaub (pronounced pahn-dao), meaning “flower cloth.”
On this day near the end of the summer program, half of the 40 students sat quietly around tables, intently focused on creating intricate embroidery patterns they’d envisioned in their heads. The concentration is broken by the voice of one student asking for help to thread a needle. Nearby at the edge of the room’s stage, another group of students is lined up waiting to practice their cat walks for a fashion show that will culminate the class and showcase their work for an audience of parents and grandparents.
The art of paj ntaub is more than a textile craft. It long was an essential form of communicating historical knowledge because the Hmong people, until recently, did not have a written form of their language. Prior to the 1950s, when a written language was developed, cloth and threads were used to record events and stories and prevent the culture from fading.
As many Hmongs migrated to the United States, paj ntaub largely was forgotten as the migrants and their families prioritized adapting to American life.
When asked why they joined the class, many of the Fresno students said that, although they were pressed to do so by their parents, they found they enjoyed learning the craft and showing off their work to their families.
Word of the students’ enthusiasm spread among extended family members and, even as the class began to wrap up in July, new students were eager to enroll after hearing about the class from their cousins.
Originally from China, a population of the Hmongs began migrating south out of the country in the late 1700s and settled in the provinces of Laos. Without a written language, they relied on oral story-telling to remember their traditions and histories
It is believed that in the early practices of paj ntaub, the Hmongs used designs to hide scripts recording their stories in their hand-made clothing, according to a study by the Hmong Embroidery Project.
Shapes and patterns sewn and embroidered into the clothing came to symbolize each group’s home province or designate their particular dialect. Over time, the tradition was passed down primarily through the women, from grandmothers and mothers to their daughters and granddaughters.
Instructor Kia Cha, who was born in the United States and grew up in Porterville, recalls learning paj ntaub as a young girl with the elder women of her family.
“Back in the old days, they would just sit in groups, sewed paj ntaub and just chit chat for hours,” she said. “I would just sit there and go around from one person to another to look at their design, the colors, and basically watch them make progress.”
She began learning the art when she was 5 and, by the time she was 8, she made her first set of traditional clothing all by herself. She now has shared the tradition with her daughter and has established a local Hmong fashion business, Kiamono LLC.
“It takes a long time to learn. I’m still learning every day with every outfit that I make,” Cha said. “It’s not something that can be learned in a three-week camp.”
Fresno Unified School District partnered with local organizations and businesses to offer over 90 summer camp programs for K-12th grade students. The offerings included four programs to teach youth about the Hmong heritage. The paj ntaub class, “Hmong Clothing and Fashion Through Time,” proved popular, reaching its capacity of 40 students in its third week.
Cha’s business, Kiamono, teamed up with the school district to provide embroidery and cross-stitching lessons. She and her daughter, Kala Heu, worked closely together all summer to prepare the class lessons.
“I’ve always enjoyed working with kids and teaching, and my mom likes the sewing and designing aspect of it,” Heu said. “We pitched this program with the mindsets to not only teach children about fashion, but also for them to experience the dedication put behind each person’s unique cultural wear.”
At the summer enrichment camp, students learned how to cross-stitch Hmong patterns. They were also introduced to a total of five different dialect designs: Hmong Txaij (stripe), Hmong Dub (black), Hmong Dawb (white), and Hmong Leeg and Hmong Ntsuab (both green).
In Laos, the Hmongs dress in different attire to indicate their home provinces. At cultural gatherings, such as the popular Hmong New Year celebrations, the traditional clothing helps people identify and determine the linguistic practices of others.
“It depends on the dialect that you speak, but where you live also determines how you dress,” Cha said. “Even though they may speak Hmoob Dawb (white), they dress differently from the Hmoob Dawb (white) in another particular region.”
Over time, standards have relaxed around the need to stick to certain designs, Cha said.
“When you go to the Hmong New Year now, you will still see people dress traditionally and point to an individual, ‘That’s a Hmong Xieng Khouang outfit!’,” said Cha. “That doesn’t necessarily mean the person is Hmong Xieng Khouang or that’s where their family is from. It could just mean that the person likes the way it looks.”
But there remains one cultural event where people are expected to wear the clothing of their ancestral lineage: weddings. Cha said the designs worn by wedding guests must reflect “the type of Hmong that their family are. They have to represent it.”
Excitement about learning paj ntaub is felt not only by the students, but by their elders who are pleased to see that Hmong culture is being kept alive in the new generations, Cha said.
Cha recalled one woman, Nao Lee, who saw five grandchildren take part in the summer enrichment program.
“When I told them to show their work to their grandma, she was impressed and she was so happy that we’re teaching this class,” Cha said. “It made my heart melt when she thanked us.”
Lee, speaking in Hmong during a phone interview, said the art form is important to the culture.
“Our paj ntaub is so beautiful and unique and it is what makes a Hmong person feel most beautiful,” she said.
Lee recalled that, when she arrived in the United States in 1976, she did not have time to teach her children the traditional embroidery.
“There was not a program like this one to teach my children how to sew and embroider back then,” Lee said. “I hope that programs like this will continue to teach my great grandchildren, so that they can learn to appreciate their culture and understand that they are Hmong.”
Keeping the Hmong culture alive has not been easy for refugees who fled their homeland following the Vietnam War, when many had joined the U.S. effort to fight communists. When they fled to refugee settlements in Thailand in 1975, children were taught to speak and write in the Thai language. For those that reached the United States, they were taught English.
Fresno Unified, which has one of the largest populations of Hmong students in the country, has included Hmong lessons in its dual-immersion programs to keep the Hmong culture from fading. The chance to learn how to create the designs that record their traditions is part of that effort.
Said Cha, “If our children do not learn this, the only thing we will know is buying the outfits.”
