Hang Buom Culture House

Past the gate at 22 Hàng Buồm, an old house opens up. Exhibition lights spill from the inner courtyard, and the smell of aged wood fills the air. The sounds of the street are still there, motorbikes and vendors' calls, but they have softened, as if filtered by the thick walls and the four wings around the square of sky in the middle.

Today this is the Culture and Arts Center at 22 Hàng Buồm. The name is new, but the building is very old.

According to the Hanoi Institute of Economics and Society, the building was founded as an assembly hall in 1803, the second year of Emperor Gia Long, the founder of the Nguyễn dynasty. Its builders were ethnic Chinese from Guangdong, merchants who had lived and traded for centuries on four streets of the old quarter. Two of them were Hàng Ngang and Hàng Buồm. The others were Hàng Bồ and Lãn Ông. The full name is the Guangdong Assembly Hall. Depending on the period, it was also called the Việt Đông Assembly Hall or the Việt Thương Assembly Hall. For the Chinese community, an assembly hall was a meeting place for people far from home. It was also a place of worship, and a way to keep their identity.

The building was restored several times over the years. The institute says the first major restoration came in 1820, under Emperor Minh Mệnh, and the second in 1844, under Emperor Thiệu Trị. Under Emperor Thành Thái, the hall was repaired on a large scale, and that work gave it the basic look that remains today.

On the architecture, the newspaper Nhân Dân reports that the building covers 1,670 square meters. Four wings surround a central courtyard, in the traditional shape of the character Khẩu. Khẩu is the Chinese character for mouth, written as a closed square. A light well in the middle brings in daylight and lets the air move. French-style windows are paired with ceramic reliefs carved with scenes from Journey to the West and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. They mark three cultures, Vietnamese, Chinese and French, that lived side by side in the old quarter for centuries.

At the end of 2018, a full restoration began. According to the newspaper Hànộimới, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism approved restoring the front hall, the main hall, the rear house and the temple of Thiên Hậu. Thiên Hậu is a Chinese goddess of the sea. The approval also covered six side gates, and the surrounding walls that face Hàng Buồm and Nguyễn Siêu streets. The work was finished at the end of 2021.

Since then, the building has been a space for exhibitions, displays of heritage, and cultural events about the old quarter. The Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports says that at the end of 2021 the center welcomed the Hanoi Creative Source Week, with exhibitions on the memory of the streets and on traditional crafts.

In the past, Hàng Buồm was where Chinese people traded in sails, sold cloth and ran maritime business. The Guangdong Assembly Hall was once the spiritual center of that community. Today, the same building tells the story of the old quarter to the people of Hanoi and to visitors passing along the street. The traces are still there, in the smell of old wood, in the ceramic reliefs on the walls, and in the light well that pours daylight down into the courtyard.