It''s a rare celebration time at Thuan Dien village as villagers celebrate the success of their ''wonder'' mat weaving machine.

A contraption that removes druggery and pain, and delivers economic freedom for the villagers of Ben Tre’s Chau Thanh District; owe their happiness to a neighbour, Nguyen Van Long.

All it took was sheer ingenuity, hard work and singular devotion to create a machine that would make mats in shortest time frame and reduce manual labor.

But Long followed a like named path on his way to success before his machine churned out its first woven mat in mid April, this year.

His penniless days, labouring with another labourer to produce just four mats for export sold at about VND15,000, was what Long’s family sustained on.

At times, mats were refused for export due to lack of high-quality demanded by foreign markets. Then, domestic market had to be explored for cheap.

Question that was dogged him for quite sometime was how to replace manual effort with machine.

Here came his former job as motorcycle repairer on hand, added by indefinite hours of observing workers on the looms, analysing the weaving process.

Money was problem but with his wife, Tran Thi Na around, they created a budget that would allow them to gradually save up money.

Sharing her husband’s passion, Na readily agreed to be thrifty with the daily meals and cut down on personal expenses.

"I had to stop drinking coffee and smoking," Long says.
"Sometimes we wanted meat for our meals, but couldn’t afford it."

In face of adverity, a determined Long said, "I knew my project would be successful."

With money borrowed from his friends, and his first daughter – a worker in Binh Duong, Long collected VND2 million after four years, enough to buy the necessary parts for a model of his machine.

However, his problems were far from over because when he finished assembling the machine and it refused to operate properly. It took him another year to dismantle the parts, clean and smooth them and begin reassembling.

His efforts finally paid off when his machine, which needed only one labourer, produced the first mat.

It was when the officials from the provincial Department for Science and Technology came knocking to his house to evaluate his project that they agreed his invention was worth every effort that went in.

The department invested VND15 million in Long’s project to produce a bigger machine. A difficult undertaking, Long was forced to create some parts of the machine by hand.

"I trembled with excitement the moment when I flipped the switch to turn on my machine," he recalls fondly.

April 11 was a momentous day in his and his family''s life as they joined by fellow villagers sat spellbound watching the first, then the second mat being produced by the wonder machine.

The new machine helps each labourer produce 15 mats a day.

Through perfection, with the weaving process becoming faster and the products turning out nicer, Long was encouraged to invest more time in perfecting the machine.
Due to the vast number of corporate orders for the machines, Long isn’t thinking about mass-producing the appliance for the domestic market, yet.

Orders began streaming in from numerous domestic and foreign firms, including A Glimpse of Viet Nam in HCM City, Sunflower Co Ltd in HCM City and Kim Trung Dung Textile Co Ltd in Taiwan.

An enterprise from the northern province of Thai Binh, another home of traditional mat-weaving villages, has told Long they will buy as many machines as he can produce.

Director of the provincial Department for Science and Technology, Truong Minh Nhat, says the department will offer him financial support if he develops a plan for trade after the machine’s trial runs.

"Our tests show his machine is operating correctly," says Nhat.

The department has also helped him prepare the legal documents to register a patent for his machine with the Intellectual Property Department.

As for Long, he plans to focus on training young mechanics.

For Long now, it was change and challenge overcome in face of tremondous odds and that goes to speak of his spirits and deligence that brought forth his wonder machine to revolutionise the world around him and possibly beyond.