One of the places Paul took me to is the Bo Sang umbrella village where the lovely paper umbrellas are still made by hand. It was so refreshing for me to see these women (who obviously enjoyed and took pride in their work) labor so intensively over the creation of these umbrellas. Watching them I kept thinking, "Oh my god, how tedious! Don't they know a factory could whip these things out in like 20 seconds?" But that was the whole point -- some things are still made the real way. By hand, from scratch from start to finish.
The bark is cut off the tree, soaked, mulched, layered on to screens, put in the sun to dry and then cut to fit the umbrella. The wood for the frame is hand-cut from the tree and shaped into a million intricate little pieces and then strung together to support the paper. The umbrellas are then painted free-hand with beautiful colors and designs. In fact, you can have them paint one of these designs on anything -- wallet, cellphone, shirt -- whatever.
I hope the winds of change never find this village.
That is so pretty...hard to believe it's made by hand! Beautiful!
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