On a hot afternoon, more than 20 Cambodians are sitting in a café in the Boeung Keng Kang III neighbourhood. Crammed around five chessboards, these men are playing ukh chaktrang, the Cambodian version of chess, moving to make room for another player every time the king is captured.
Throughout the capital and in the countryside, this game is played in cafés, but the majority of the boards come from one particular place: the village of Songvor, in the province of Kandal, about 35 kilometres north of Phnom Penh.
Sitting in front of a lathe in her Songvor home, 68-year-old Hang Yan shapes a piece of hardwood into a piece of ukulele. She uses scissors and a knife to mould the grooves. There are other woodworkers in the village, but Yan is the undisputed authority on the art. She was born into a family that has been making chess pieces for generations.
‘I learned to make them with my mother when I was 14, and I started selling them myself after I got married in the 1970s,’ Yan says.
‘Except for the almost four years that the Khmer Rouge took me away, I have always made chess pieces.’
She has competitors in the village, but buyers say that the quality is not the same among the younger generation.
Hang Yan devotes half a normal working day to making chess pieces using a lathe, and the other half to carving kbach - the decorative ornaments found in most Khmer motifs.
A large part of the process consists of examining each piece for defects and ensuring that each corresponding piece is identical. She knows that a quality piece is recognisable by the sharp sound it makes when struck on the board.
While the young artisans in the community can make up to five or six sets a day, she only makes two. Hers are, however, twice as expensive.
‘Today's young chess set makers focus mainly on quantity rather than quality,’ explains Yan.
‘Someone orders chess pieces from them, and they only make them so they can play with them, ignoring the details and originality.’
She says that her games are so popular that she cannot meet demand, much of which comes from the rich or senior officials. Yan's husband, El Eun, even claims to have seen Prime Minister Hun Sen, an inveterate player, using pieces made by his wife.
At the Russian Market
Back in Phnom Penh, most of the chess pieces on sale at the Russian Market come from Yan's workshop. Prices range from $20 for a set to several hundred, depending on the type of wood.
Souk Bouy, 76, owner of a souvenir shop to the west of the market and a regular buyer from Yan, says that hers are the only ones ‘worthy of being sold’.
‘Her products are popular among top players, and many foreigners buy them as souvenirs, mainly because they are beautiful and easy to handle,’ says Bouy. “But sometimes I get angry with her because she couldn't make them fast enough for me,” he adds.
Pen Perun, a veteran and master, is the founder of the chess club ‘Kru Barang Ouk Club’. He maintains that part of the pleasure of the game lies in the use of high-quality pieces.
‘Ouk is not only part of Cambodian culture, but also an artistic identity. Everything is art: the pieces, the sound they make, the teasing and the mockery,’ he says, referring to the exchanges between the players.
For Perun, however, the traditional shape of the ouk pieces is not essential. Instead, he encourages creativity and improvement.
‘The original form left by our ancestors is great, but it's also very important to be creative and improve it,’ he says.
But Yan is worried that the original forms will be lost when she dies or retires, especially since none of her children will take over.
‘This career hasn't made me rich, but I love it and I love my products,’ she says. “All I can do is hope that the younger generation will learn from my work and continue to make them when I'm gone,” she concludes.
Rinith Taing with our partner The Phnom Penh Post