Hang Luoc Street

Tall bundles of peach branches lean against the walls at the head of Hàng Lược Street, in the last days of the lunar year. The pale pink petals tremble. Under the trees, the smell of ripe kumquat drifts by. Then the sounds arrive: gentle haggling, bicycles squeezing past, and a knife and newspaper at work on the branch someone has just picked out.

Hàng Lược lies in Hoàn Kiếm, in Hanoi. According to the Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports, it is one of the streets in the area known as Hanoi's 36 streets. That number is traditional, not an exact count. The street is not long. It links Hàng Cót and Hàng Mã with Hàng Đồng and Phùng Hưng. Đồng Xuân Market is right beside it. When the Tết flower market opens, the whole northern Old Quarter almost changes its rhythm to follow Hàng Lược. Tết is the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam.

The Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports says Hàng Lược began as a street where people made and sold combs, both horn and bamboo, for the women of the capital to dress their hair. By the early 20th century the comb trade had slowly faded, and the goods on sale had grown more varied. The name stayed, like a label stuck on the memory of a craft.

What makes Hàng Lược famous today is no longer combs. It is the Tết flower market.

The Nhân Dân newspaper and the Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports record that the market took shape in the early 20th century. It is considered the oldest Tết flower market in Hanoi. It meets only once a year, usually from around the 21st or 22nd of the last lunar month until the afternoon of the 30th.

While the market is on, flowers pour out of Hàng Lược into the nearby streets. The Hanoi Moi newspaper describes the crowd and the blooms moving through Hàng Chai and Hàng Rươi. From there they spread to Hàng Mã and Hàng Đồng, turning the area into an open-air garden in the middle of the old streets. On sale are peach blossom, kumquat, gladiolus, dahlias, violets, hải đường, gourd-shaped pomelos, Buddha's hand citrons and white mai.

The Nhân Dân newspaper reports that the flowers and plants come from the traditional flower villages around Hanoi. Peach and kumquat come from Quảng Bá and Nhật Tân. Nghi Tàm supplies them too. Ngọc Hà and Hữu Tiệp send herbaceous flowers and chrysanthemums.

The peach, kumquat and mai here are usually small. Houses in the Old Quarter are not spacious, so people pick slender, compact branches that fit an altar or a narrow front room. Many Hanoians do not say they are going to buy flowers. They say they are going out to enjoy the flower market. They come to look, to listen, to meet acquaintances, and to find a little of the old Tết again.

When the yellow lights come on at the end of the 30th, the buyers thin out. The sellers clear away their last branches, and the street goes back to ordinary Hàng Lược. Once a year the street comes back to life as a flower market, and that is how Hanoi welcomes Tết.