Hang Bac Street

A silversmith on Hàng Bạc Street works in a room whose front is often only about 2 meters wide. The house is narrow and runs deep, and its tiled roof slopes toward the street. He bends over a small anvil with a little hammer in his hand. Beat by beat, he taps the silver with a light ringing sound.

Outside, the street has changed a great deal. Gold and silver shops line its whole length, about half a kilometer, and most jewelry is now made by machine. Few still carve silver by hand like him. Of the 36 streets of old Hanoi, Hàng Bạc is one of the few that still keeps the very craft that gave it its name, for bạc means silver. Each time the little hammer rings out, the story of the street seems to go on. It is a story that began more than 500 years ago, in a village far from the capital.

In the second half of the 15th century, in the reign of Emperor Lê Thánh Tông, there was an official from the village of Châu Khê. It lay in the old land of Hải Dương. His name was Lưu Xuân Tín, and he served as Minister of Personnel. The Lê court gave him the task of setting up a workshop to cast silver ingots right in the capital. That capital was Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. He brought the jewelers of his own village with him.

Picture one young craftsman in that group. He left the bamboo hedges of his village, bringing hands long used to fire and metal. In the capital, he went to work at the foundry, where silver was melted and cast into ingots. That foundry stood where house number 58 stands on the street today. The finished silver was carried to the communal house. There the guild received its raw metal and handed over its finished work to an official of the court.

Then smiths from other villages came too. Some came from Định Công, a village that is now part of Hanoi. Others came from Đồng Xâm, in the old land of Thái Bình. They settled beside the smiths from Châu Khê. The smiths from Định Công gathered at the western end of the street. They made gold earrings, silver chatelaines, bangles and bracelets. They also made small, pretty silver pendants and silver bangles for children to wear.

So the street came to have three trades side by side. Casting silver ingots. Making jewelry. And changing money. In 1886, a Frenchman passing through described the money changers sitting cross-legged on wooden platforms inside their shops. They were the silver casters as well. Under French rule, the street was called Rue des Changeurs, which means the street of the money changers.

But early in the 19th century, the court's ingot workshop moved to the capital at Hue. By then the country was ruled by the Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam's last royal dynasty. Most of the smiths from Châu Khê did not go. They stayed in Thăng Long, held on to their craft, and formed a jewelers' guild right on Hàng Bạc Street. Ingot casting is gone from the street now. But the jewelry trade has been handed down from parent to child, generation after generation.

The place these craftsmen held dear is the Kim Ngân communal house, at number 42 Hàng Bạc. It was built in the Later Lê period, around the late 15th or early 16th century, by people from Châu Khê who had come to the capital. Kim means gold, and Ngân means silver. The building follows the shape of the Chinese character công, with a main hall of three bays and a rear sanctuary of three bays. Inside, it still keeps some old columns of ironwood. That is rare, since many communal houses in the Old Quarter have new columns.

Here the silversmiths worship Hiên Viên, whom people of old honored as the founding ancestor of the hundred crafts. Hiên Viên is a figure of East Asian legend, and generations of craftsmen have reverently burned incense to him. Under this roof, the guild gathered, held rites for the founder of their craft, and taught the ways of the trade to young apprentices.

The communal house has lived through many lifetimes. In the time of Emperor Gia Long, the founder of the Nguyễn dynasty, the people of the guild bought more land to enlarge it. For some years, it was also a classroom where people learned to read and write quốc ngữ. It is the Vietnamese script written in Latin letters. After 1954, many families came to shelter within its walls. The space for worship shrank, and the building fell into serious disrepair.

In 2004 and 2005, experts from Vietnam and France surveyed the building together, looking for a way to save it. In 2009, the families were moved elsewhere and the communal house was restored. Its grounds were widened to about 575 square meters. It is one of the largest communal houses in the Old Quarter. On the morning of March 26, 2011, the Kim Ngân communal house reopened to everyone. In October 2012, it was recognized as a national heritage site.

Now, back to the silversmith's little anvil. The pieces on this street come in two kinds. Plain pieces leave the silver smooth, with no pattern. Carved pieces are covered in sunken and raised lines. The most familiar theme is the Tứ linh, the four sacred creatures: the dragon, the unicorn, the tortoise and the phoenix. Sometimes it is a pair of dragons facing the moon, a design called Lưỡng long chầu nguyệt.

On gold and silver trays and plates, the craftsmen carve the Bát bảo, the eight precious objects. At other times they carve bamboo, plum blossom, orchid and chrysanthemum, four plants that stand for the virtues of a noble person. Every dragon scale and every petal is one more stroke of the little hammer, slow and steady. The beauty of Hàng Bạc silver lies in two things: an artful shape, and carving that is fine and full of life.

As evening falls, Hàng Bạc Street is still busy with passersby. The small houses and old tiled roofs here once found their way into the paintings of the artist Bùi Xuân Phái. On the full moon and the first day of each lunar month, people from the street still come to the communal house to burn incense to their craft's founder. On weekend evenings, the communal house rings with ca trù. It is a form of sung poetry from the north of Vietnam.

The click of the ca trù clappers drifts out through the gate of the communal house. It blends with the steady tap of a little hammer in a narrow room. The silversmith is still bent over his small anvil. More than 500 years after the first smiths from Châu Khê came to the capital, the beat of that hammer has not stopped. Each small ringing note falls onto the silver, as if the street were still telling its own story.