Hang Huong Alley

A small alley turns off just a few steps inside the Old Quarter of Hanoi, on the Phùng Hưng Street side. It runs straight across to Lý Nam Đế Street. It is not long, only 65 meters from end to end, and 6 meters wide. This is Hàng Hương Alley.

According to a Hanoi magazine, the ground under the alley was once a causeway built across the eastern moat of the Thăng Long citadel, in the time of the Nguyễn dynasty. Thăng Long is the city now called Hanoi. The Nguyễn dynasty was Vietnam's last royal dynasty, which reigned from 1802 to 1945. The area lay right beside the old citadel wall, where the land was still thinly settled. People came and went along raised paths across the moat to reach the streets.

In the French colonial period, the alley was called Cite Marechal Joffre, after a French military commander. After the August Revolution of 1945, Hanoi began renaming its streets with Vietnamese names. This alley got its Vietnamese name, Hàng Hương, in 1949.

The new name did not come from nowhere. The magazine says the alley took shape around migrants from the village of Đông Lỗ, who already made incense for a living. The village is in Kim Động, in Hưng Yên province. The migrants settled here and set up small workshops. They made incense sticks from fragrant wood and incense powder. The scent soaked into daily life along the alley, and when people came to name it, the name followed the trade.

Incense making was nothing new to the people of Hanoi. But the magazine mentions one more detail. Hanoi once had another Hàng Hương, which is now Hàng Cháo Street. It specialized in the traditional black incense. So the city's streets once held two incense trades, two place names and two groups of craftsmen. All of them added to the worship traditions of the people of the capital.

In Vietnamese life, incense is not only an offering. An incense stick is a thread between the living and those who have passed, between everyday space and sacred moments. Every early morning in Hanoi homes, smoke rises from the family altar. It is a rhythm repeated across many generations. The craftsmen of Hàng Hương Alley, in the old days, supplied the material for that rhythm.

The alley is still there, still joining Phùng Hưng Street to Lý Nam Đế Street. It still carries the name Hàng Hương. The name is a small note kept about the craftsmen of long ago. In an old quarter where each street is named for a trade, this alley shows that it is not only the big streets that keep traces of history. An alley only 65 meters long is enough to tell a story of human lives.

Walking through this alley, you tread on earth that was once a causeway across the moat of the Thăng Long citadel. Beneath the modern asphalt lies the memory of a fortified quarter. And somewhere in the air, the smell of incense smoke still lingers, from the small houses, and from the hands of the Đông Lỗ craftsmen who made this place their second home.