Hang Buom Street

Hà Khẩu means river mouth. It was the name of a ward of the capital under the Lê dynasty. That capital was Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. The ward lay right where the Tô Lịch River met the Red River. At that river mouth, boats pulled in, goods were hauled ashore, and people called out to one another. On the land of this river-mouth ward was a short street whose name was bound up with boats. That is Hàng Buồm Street.

In the old days, Hanoi faced the river. The river was its great road, crowded with boats. Bulky goods such as timber and bamboo were unloaded right on the riverbank. Other goods traveled up the Tô Lịch, all the way to the markets inside the city. The boats of that time ran on the wind. And a boat that sails by the wind needs sails. Torn sails must be patched, and old sails must be replaced. So on this street near the landing, people sold sails and mended them for the boats that called in.

Buồm means sail, and the name Hàng Buồm points to the very goods once sold together here. Said aloud, it still carries a breath of river wind.

Phạm Đình Hổ was a Confucian scholar who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He wrote about the markets of the capital in his book Vũ trung tùy bút. He described the market of Bạch Mã ward, the land of Hàng Buồm, as a very noisy place of trade. At crowded markets like that, thieves would sometimes shout that an elephant had broken loose or a horse had bolted. The shoppers would panic and rush off in a crush. Then, in the confusion, the thieves made off with their goods. That shows how crowded the market was then.

Near the river mouth, near the market, near the landing, merchants came. From the time of the Restored Lê dynasty, Chinese people were already living in Hàng Buồm. Their numbers grew day by day, and most of them were traders. They had trading ties with merchants of southern China and Southeast Asia, so before long they became well off. Many of these families had their roots in Guangdong.

In 1803, the Chinese community of Hàng Buồm pooled their money and built a large, spacious assembly hall at the head of the street. That was the second year of the reign of Emperor Gia Long, the founder of the Nguyễn dynasty. The hall stands at what is now number 22. It is the Guangdong Assembly Hall, where people from the same homeland gathered and worshipped, far from home. Inside are an altar to Quan Công and an altar to Thiên Hậu Thánh Mẫu. Quan Công was a general of ancient China, later worshipped as a god of war. Thiên Hậu Thánh Mẫu is a Chinese goddess of the sea. The hall also keeps a board saying that trade must rest on fairness. So it is thought that merchants also sat down together here to settle their business disputes.

Later, for about 40 years, the old building served as a kindergarten. Its restoration was finished at the end of 2021. It then became the Center for Culture and Arts at 22 Hàng Buồm.

Across from the hall, there was once a primary school for the children of the Chinese community. It had two rows of buildings, each two stories high, around a wide courtyard. That place is now the headquarters of the Hanoi Union of Literature and Arts Associations, at number 19. At the head of the street in those days, the houses were low, with an upper floor, but roomy inside. There were few shops. Most were homes, warehouses, or offices of firms that shipped goods to Hong Kong and Shanghai.

The middle stretch was quite different. It was packed with eating houses large and small, called cao lâu. These were Chinese restaurants that cooked their own special dishes, and they stayed open all day until late at night. The stretch next to Hàng Ngang Street had many shops selling ingredients for traditional medicine. One street, yet each stretch had its own rhythm of life.

In the middle of all this, at number 76, stands Bạch Mã Temple. It is one of the four guardian temples of Thăng Long. Each of the four honors a god who guarded one direction of the capital. Bạch Mã Temple guards the east. It honors the god Long Đỗ, and it has the longest history of the four.

An old tale tells that when Emperor Lý Thái Tổ moved the capital to Thăng Long, the walls kept collapsing as fast as they were built. The emperor sent men to the temple to pray to the god Long Đỗ. Suddenly a white horse walked out of the temple. The builders raised the walls along its hoofprints, and at last the walls stood firm. The emperor named the god the guardian spirit of the capital. From then on, the temple was called Bạch Mã, which means white horse.

The temple is more than a thousand years old. It has been restored many times, and today it shows the architectural style of the Nguyễn dynasty. It still keeps stone steles, royal decrees, a bronze bell and palanquins for processions. In 2022, Bạch Mã Temple and the other three guardian temples were ranked as Special National Monuments. Each year, on the 12th and 13th days of the second lunar month, the temple holds its festival. Folk belief blends there with the rituals of the royal court.

Then times changed. Under French rule, steamships slowly took the place of sailboats. A boat that no longer needed the wind no longer needed sails. Later, river transport faded away, giving way to roads and railways, and Hanoi slowly turned its back on the Red River. Hàng Buồm stopped selling sails. The old trade slipped quietly away. Only the name remains, a trace of the time when the city faced the river.

But the street has never stopped being lively. For some years, every weekend evening, Hàng Buồm became a walking street, and thousands of visitors poured in. Street vendors laid out old-time snacks once more: puffed rice, stir-fried corn, pulled taffy and malt candy.

Today, in the middle of Hàng Buồm Street, no one hears sails swelling in the wind anymore. There are only voices, laughter and footsteps, as loud and lively as the old market of Bạch Mã ward. But stand still a moment and look toward the Red River. In the name of the street, you may hear a wind from very far away. It is flapping, flapping, in the sails of the boats that once pulled in at this river mouth.