Spooling tradition

Silk production and weaving has been practised in Cambodia for almost 2,000 years with the craft passed down from mother to daughter over the generations, but time could be running out for the tradition.
Chhout embodies this living heritage as she sits at her loom on what is often dubbed “Silk Island” in the Mekong River, 15 kilometres north of Phnom Penh, weaving the finest blue silk. But this ancient craft is in trouble as the rising cost of imported raw silk collides with the falling price of finished silk fabric.
Unlike the Cambodian capital, life passes slowly on the island. Amid clay-coloured earth, wooden houses built on stilts and sprawling fields, only the occasional moped disturbs the rural tranquillity. Women like Chhout have been making silk here for generations, but today it is almost impossible to make a living from the industry that once sustained her parents and grandparents.
“It used to be easier to make money,” says the 28-year-old who does not know if her children will one day take over her business. The competition comes from neighbouring countries, where silk yarn is produced by machine and is often of higher quality. A kilogram of imported yarn currently costs between US$40 and $60 (Bt1,280 and Bt1,920), or even more, depending on quality.
That is more than double the price at the end of the 1990s, according to the craft cooperative CCC. However, the weavers are unable to increase the prices of their work, which means their profit margins are being squeezed. If they try to raise prices, customers simply stop buying.
“People will continue buying petrol or bread because they are necessities, but silk is a luxury product, not essential. If there is any doubt, people will abstain from buying it,” says Kalyan, an Agriculture Ministry advisor who wants to reinvigorate the craft.
Chhout and the approximately 20,000 other weavers in the country can barely make a living from silk. With many cross-subsidising their income with other jobs, Cambodia’s millenniums-old tradition is hanging by a thread, so to speak.
“We have to make the business profitable once again so people are able to live from it,” says Kalyan. “This has nothing to do with nostalgia, it is about incomes. The women have to be able to live in dignity.”
Cambodia’s silk-weaving tradition dates back to the first century and silk is firmly anchored in the country's culture and society to this day. However, like all other crafts, it died out during the Khmer Rouge dictatorship between 1975 and 1979.
In their insane quest to create a Maoist farmers’ state, the communists forced much of the population to work as virtual slaves in the fields. Up to 2 million people died as a result of famine, forced labour, torture and murder. The sector is only recovering slowly now.
Chhout runs a small shop selling silk together with her 28-year-old husband Vet Va. Metres of carefully folded silk fabric are laid out on a table, together with scarves, sarongs and traditionally designed tablecloths in various colours.
“I can’t sell the products for much more than this, because the market won’t tolerate it,” says Vet Va.
He gets around $10 for a metre of silk at the markets in Phnom Penh and approximately $12 for material with a design. Prices have not increased in a decade.
The family lives together with their eight-month-old son, Vet Va’s parents, his siblings and their families in one house.
“Previously you could hear the clatter of weaving looms across the island,” says Vet Va. However, now, many of these machines are only used as shelves.
“Sometimes tourists ask why they rarely see any weavers at work, in contrast to what is written in the tour guides.”
Until recently, 10,000 women still worked in the industry in the province of Takeo on the border of Vietnam, but over the last year a third of these women have taken up employment in textile factories, according to the CCC.
Today, nearly 99 per cent of all yarn used in Cambodia is imported from Vietnam and China with demand currently standing at around 400 tonnes per year. “We are dependent on international prices. That is our greatest weakness and it is here where we have to take action,” says Kalyan.
To make matters even worse, domestic silk production is also threatened by a sickness that has killed half of all silkworms.
Despite the challenges facing the industry there is confidence about the future.
“The silk tradition has survived our tragedy-filled history. It won’t disappear.”