Hang Muoi Street

No kitchen in Vietnam can do without salt, and one short street in Hanoi is named for it. That street is Hàng Muối.

Salt is no luxury. There is no household that does not need it. In the days when rivers were the main roads of trade, the cities beside big rivers were the places where salt changed hands most. Thăng Long is the city now called Hanoi. It lies beside the Red River. Hàng Muối Street sits right against the riverbank, in the southeast of the Old Quarter.

The street is about 190 meters long. It runs from Hàng Mắm Street to Trần Nhật Duật Street. Today it belongs to Lý Thái Tổ ward, in Hoàn Kiếm. It was laid out on old land called Trừng Thanh, part of what was then Thọ Xương district.

The position was no accident. The area from Hàng Mắm to Hàng Bè once lay close to the Red River, with its ferry landings and boat docks. Salt came in by river from the coastal provinces. It was unloaded at the docks and handed out on the spot. Wholesale salt went to merchants from distant provinces, and retail salt to townspeople and people passing the market. It was a simple good, yet it fed a whole row of streets for many generations.

One valuable piece of evidence shows how old this street is. In 1876, the writer and scholar Trương Vĩnh Ký made a trip to Bắc Kỳ, the name then used for northern Vietnam. He kept a diary of the journey. In it he listed 21 streets of Hanoi that he walked through or observed, and Hàng Muối is among them. So the street existed before the French took control of Hanoi. The name and the salt trade took shape here under the old monarchy, not in the colonial era.

After the French took control, the street was renamed Rue du Sel, which in French also means Salt Street. Many other streets were named for French figures or events. Hàng Muối kept its original Vietnamese meaning inside its French name. In 1945, Hanoi took back Vietnamese names for its streets. Hàng Muối returned to its old name and has kept it to this day.

In the same area are Hàng Mắm and Hàng Bè. Mắm is fish fermented with salt. These three streets reflect a layer of history tied to the water. Mắm, salt and rafts were all products or vehicles of an economy built on waterways. When roads took over from the river, this area lost its original setting. The street names still hold the memory.

Today Hàng Muối no longer trades in salt in its original sense. The street is short and has no big sight to see. It lies on the eastern edge of the Old Quarter, close to Trần Nhật Duật Street, which runs along the widened riverbank.

Still, it is an interesting street to walk if you want to understand how old Thăng Long built its kitchens and its trade out of the simplest things. Salt, fermented fish, rice: what feeds people is what people chose to name streets after. Not the names of heroes, and not the names of buildings. The name of what people need every day.

That is one way of understanding the Old Quarter of Hanoi, and no tourist map ever mentions it.