Hang Ma Street

Hàng Mã Street keeps a secret just beneath the road. Every day people come and go here, choosing lanterns, paper and offerings, squeezing past shopfronts crammed with goods. Yet few of them look down and think that, long ago, this street was split in two. What divided it has long since vanished. What joined it back together is under their feet each day.

The street begins at the crossroads with Hàng Đường Street and runs to Phùng Hưng Street. The whole street is only 339 meters long. It is short, but it has long been famous for being bright and lively all year round.

The name says plainly what the street sells. Mã means votive paper, the paper goods used in worship. For generations, the street has kept to that trade. Shop after shop sets out things for worship, votive paper and other paper goods, lanterns, and decorations for festivals and holidays.

Most houses on the street are tube houses, long and narrow. The front room opens onto the road as a shop. Behind it are the place for worship, the workspace and the family's living quarters. In between stand houses with sloping, curved roofs and a mezzanine above the main floor. The old house at number 28 still keeps its worn balcony, its front faded by the years. It is a trace of the Old Quarter as it was many decades ago.

But Hàng Mã only truly lights up under the moon of the eighth lunar month. At the Mid-Autumn Festival, that stretch of more than 300 meters is covered in the colors of thousands of kinds of toys. Star lanterns, marching-soldier lanterns and carp lanterns hang across every shopfront. Masks of pasted paper, lion-dance heads and rattle drums spill out in front of the shops. Paper doctoral laureates sit carefully wrapped, waiting for their day on the festival tray. Doctoral laureates were scholars who passed the royal examinations. Each paper figure carries a wish that the children will study well and have a bright future.

Parents and grandparents lead the children by the hand to choose each toy. One small child stands for a long time in front of a shop, entranced by a rattle drum. The street also has a small stall run by the artisan Đặng Văn Hậu. He comes from the village of Xuân La, in the Phú Xuyên area, and he molds tò he. Tò he are little figures made of rice dough. He molds the Moon Lady, a nghê and a lion-dance head. The nghê is a mythical guardian animal of Vietnamese temples, pagodas and communal houses. The colors of the tò he come from very familiar things: red from gấc fruit, yellow from turmeric, green from leaves and black from pot soot.

Each toy here hides a small surprise. The traditional star lantern is made of bamboo and cellophane, and it has five points. People of old explained that the five points stand for the five elements: metal, wood, water, fire and earth. They were a wish for harmony and balance. The marching-soldier lantern hides a whole little army inside. When the candle is lit, the heat turns a vane. The vane pulls the figures around in a circle, and their shadows fall on the paper wrapped around the lantern.

The Earth God mask is made from torn scraps of paper, pasted on layer by layer until it is thick and firm. As for the carp lantern, an old tale says it began with a carp that turned into a demon. On the advice of a monk, the villagers covered a bamboo frame with cloth and made it into the shape of a great carp.

Traditional lanterns like these are still made by hand in craft villages outside the city. One of them is Hậu Ái, in the Hoài Đức area on the outskirts of Hanoi. There, a woman named Nguyễn Thị Tuyến has spent nearly 50 years making lanterns. She makes around 20 to 30 lanterns a day. Each year her family sells more than 1,000 toys, from star lanterns to marching-soldier lanterns and carp lanterns. Lantern making is hard work. The makers' hands are often covered in scars where the bamboo frames have cut them.

For the spinning lantern, every step is done by hand: splitting the bamboo, whittling the strips, gluing on the cellophane and painting the patterns. A traditional lantern made with such care can last three or four years. In the old days, a family that owned one was well off. Other families had to save up before they could afford one.

The thing that once split the street in two was a river. Long ago, the Tô Lịch River flowed through here and divided the street, with each side belonging to a different hamlet. Later, the river was filled in. The two hamlets joined into one. The road people walk from end to end today was once split in two by a stream of water.

Once you know this, Hàng Mã looks different. Beneath every footstep on this street, the two old riverbanks were joined. The lantern sellers and paper sellers of today still trade on land where water once flowed.

When the Mid-Autumn Festival is over, the street does not rest for long. Hàng Mã comes alive again in the days before Tết, the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. So do the traditional flower markets of Hanoi. Red floods the street, with lanterns, carp, strings of paper firecrackers and couplets. Offerings for the Kitchen Gods are considered the street's own specialty. Some people also look for the đơm and the đó, two kinds of fish trap, and for conical hats. These familiar things from village life become homemade Tết decorations.

Then, when the festive season has passed, the street returns to its year-round goods: things for worship, votive paper and paper goods.

On a Mid-Autumn evening, seen from the Hàng Đường crossroads, the street is a long band of light stretching toward Phùng Hưng. Long ago, a river of water divided two hamlets here. Now a river of lanterns joins the two ends of the street. The rattle drums start up again, and that river still flows.