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| A bowl and a pot of Bun Hue. Photo: Le Dinh Hoang |
Van Cu bun village
The recognition of “Van Cu noodle-making craft” as a National Intangible Cultural Heritage is the first result of the cooperation between Van Cu noodle village craftsmen, Huong Toan commune authorities, Huong Tra town, and the National Institute of Culture and Arts - Hue Division from 2023-2024, to digitize an officially recognized cultural heritage profile. Based on this, the Van Cu noodle craft has the additional foundation to gather social resources for practical preservation and sustainable development.
Culinary heritage is an important key when approaching clan communities’ cultures, especially related to universal noodle-making methods. One can recognize the unique characteristics of Van Cu noodle village in the context of Southeast Asia having abundant rice, while other regions use wheat as the main ingredient for making noodles.
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| Bun product. Photo: VICAS Hue |
Vietnam takes pride in pho in the North, hu tieu in the South, and bun Hue in the Central region. All are made from rice flour, and each has unique features in noodle structure, processing techniques, cooking methods, and ingredients. While noodle-making is common everywhere, Van Cu village (Huong Tra) and O Sa (Quang Dien) retain the clearest traces of traditional noodle-making villages, supplying bun everywhere to create distinctive bun Hue dishes.
Bun Hue culinary culture heritage
From the Rice Mother origins, Vietnamese women have created many unique food products: cooking rice, fermenting rice into wine, or grinding rice into fresh or dry flour to make noodles, cakes, porridge... Van Cu noodle village still preserves many markers confirming Northern roots and appropriate adaptation to the new Southern context, highlighting Hue’s dominant spirit of sophistication, elegance, and codification.
The bun Hue progression can be outlined from raw noodles to various dishes through many stages. Raw noodles are made into bundled bun (multiple strands twisted together), individual bun (separate strands), and ‘leaf’ bun (bunches of strands on leaves). Based on the shapes, bun is eaten directly with other foods, creating many dishes, especially through cooking in soup, mixing or stir-frying, depending on household circumstances and preferences, and notably cooking into the famous Bun Hue soup.
The bun Hue progression is diverse, with many dishes through steps of cooking or eating: (1) noodles with fish sauce, or with fermented fish paste; (2) noodles with fish sauce, or fermented fish paste, and cooked pig’s cheek, ears, tongue; (3) noodles with fish sauce, or fermented fish paste, and fermented pork rolls, pork rolls; (4) noodles with pork broth; (5) noodles with pork soup; (6) noodles with beef and pork soup (adding crab cake, blood pudding...), known as Bun bo. Later due to market diversity needs, there are also (7) Mixed noodles (combining various meats, rolls, and blood pudding) and (8) Seafood noodles (popular in coastal areas, Southern region).
Notably, from the late 19th to early 20th century, when the French introduced beef widely in Vietnam along with many Western foods (coffee, wine, vegetables, fried eggs, butter, milk...), beef gradually spread, becoming an exotic, delicious, and elegant dish in Vietnamese menus, as the Nguyen Dynasty rules strictly prohibited killing water buffalo and cow to protect draft power for agriculture. Cow and water buffalo were only sacrificial animals for clan, village, and court rituals; even for major ceremonies held every three years, or when sick, homeowners had to write petitions and get government approval to kill water buffalo or cow for the rite. Only after rituals could people partake in the meat.
Also from rice flour, besides bun, Hue’s people have banh canh (thick rice noodle soup), similar to noodles but actually in slices, or noodles like northern pho but thicker and coarser. To eat well and economically, Hue’s people consecrate rice/cooked rice when the element of frugality is expressed delicately: cooking just enough, leaving a little with the aspiration of abundance, also for family members or passersby to fill their stomachs late at night. Any remaining rice would be made into cơm hen (rice with mussel), or used for frying rice, cooking porridge, especially mixing into bowls of bun, banh canh...
From the universal noodle-making method, bun carries strong Vietnamese characteristics, following the southward expansion journey, creating many unique dishes with Vietnamese identity (pork noodles), Champa southern influence (noodles with fermented fish paste, fish sauce) and even Western civilization (beef noodles). Hue noodles have sufficient basis to build a national and international intangible cultural heritage profile. Cuisine and handicrafts are fundamental focuses for cultural industries to breathe historical and cultural soul into economic and social development, linked to tourism services, so digitizing and heritagization bun Hue needs attention.