Hang Giay Street

Early in the morning on Hàng Giấy Street, before the motorbikes pour down from the Hàng Mã intersection, the air still holds a little coolness. Long ago the same hour had a different sound. In place of engines came the creak of hauling, as bundles of fresh bản paper arrived from the river landing.

A Hanoi website on historic and cultural sites says that Hàng Giấy Street is about 208 meters long. It lies in Đồng Xuân ward, in the Hoàn Kiếm area, about a kilometer north of Hoan Kiem Lake. The name of the street says plainly what was sold here. Paper. Not factory paper, but handmade paper.

Local sources describe the kinds. There was bản paper for writing in Nôm. Nôm is an old character script for writing Vietnamese. There was lệnh paper and sắc paper for court documents, and layered paper for making altar objects, lanterns and votive paper.

The people who made this paper were craftsmen from two villages west of the old capital. One was Yên Thái, also called Kẻ Bưởi. The other was Cót village. Both lay on the banks of the Tô Lịch River.

The Hanoi Moi newspaper records that the craft of dó paper in Yên Thái goes back many centuries. In those days, the Mật Hương paper of the region was a prized product. The craftsmen of Yên Thái worked entirely by hand. They stripped the bark of the dó tree, cooked it to a pulp, and pounded it smooth. They lifted each sheet on a mesh frame, then pressed it and dried it in the sun or over heat. Every step demanded clean water, skill and patience.

The finished paper traveled to Hàng Giấy Street by river and by road. Here the shops stacked bundles higher than a person's head, from smooth white paper for scholars to colored paper and yellow paper for rituals. Travelers from the provinces in every direction came to Thăng Long. Thăng Long is the city now called Hanoi. All of them made their way here to choose paper, the way people today head for a book street.

Hàng Giấy Street and Hàng Mã Street lie side by side and form one cluster of the Old Quarter. Hàng Giấy was the source of materials: bản paper, colored paper, paper with gold powder. Hàng Mã was where the finished goods came out: votive paper, lanterns, and altar objects of layered paper. For centuries the two streets fed each other, and each kept one part of the craft.

The French called the street Rue du Papier. Word for word, that means Paper Street. In 1945, the city government restored the old name, Hàng Giấy. The French name is gone, but it left a small trace. A foreigner reading Rue du Papier understands at once what this street once sold.

Little by little, the paper trade on the street withdrew. Against modern paper mills, handmade bản paper could no longer compete on price. The street turned to sundry goods and other trades. Even so, in the ritual-paper corner there are still some shops selling paper money, colored paper and altar goods. They are a faint trace of the old trade, left over in the life of the street today.

Stand at the intersection of Hàng Mã and Hàng Giấy and look in two directions, and you see two halves of one craft. One half made paper. The other shaped things out of paper. Both have been tied to the spiritual and literary life of the people of Hanoi for hundreds of years. On a winter morning, when fine drizzle falls and vapor rises from stacks of votive paper piled on the porches, perhaps a little of the old street's breath can still be felt, lingering in every thin sheet.