Rice Field Hanoi Vietnam

Decades ago, while eating in a local Chinese restaurant in my small hometown of Idaho Falls, Idaho, I looked down at my plate of Chinese food, baffled, realizing that I didn’t know much about how rice was produced. I spent summers working on farms growing potatoes and wheat. When I sat down to dinner and had a piece of bread, ate a potato, or grabbed some fries from a fast-food place, I understood where it came from and how it was grown. This got me to start passively researching rice. I began mulling over the idea of photographing rice farming around the world. Coincidentally, both of my daughters were adopted from Asian countries where rice is considered a dietary staple.

I was in Vietnam, traveling with my daughter, where we researched her birth origins and did some sightseeing. We had planned to go to Sapa, where I could photograph some of the terraced rice fields, but due to a bus issue, we didn’t make it. When we were at the airport on our way back home, we were checking in for our flights and were removed from the flight. We were told it was a COVID documentation issue but later found out they had overbooked the flight. We checked into a hotel and made a new flight arrangement. The next morning, we looked out the window, and my daughter noticed rice fields a short distance away. We decided to explore them later that day. We walked out of the city about a mile and came across a woman unloading her scooter, about to head into the fields to work. I had my daughter ask if she would allow me to photographer he working, and she kindly agreed.

Nguyen Thi Hue has worked in the family rice fields ever since she was a little girl. Her mother taught her the process for preparing the ground, planting, and harvesting rice. Her three small rice fields have been in the family for many generations. The fields are too small to use machinery, so they are all worked by hand. She works in rice fields almost every day. When she is not tending her own fields, she is helping friends with theirs. Nguyen Thi Oanh is a friend who is helping Nguyen Thi Hue with her rice field for the day. Half of the rice that the fields produce feeds her family, and the other half is sold and makes enough money to plant the fields again. The men in the family have jobs in the city that pay the bills, and they seldom make it out to work in the rice fields. Watching these women do this back-breaking work was like watching a ballet with every step perfectly choreographed. It was clear they took great pride in the work they do.