Hang Thung Street

The knock of a mallet driving a wooden hoop tight once carried along Hàng Thùng Street. Today the street is only 216 meters from end to end, and by morning its shops are crowded with everyday goods of every kind. It is hard to picture that this short stretch once rang with hammering and smelled faintly of lacquer from the bucket workshops.

According to a Hanoi newspaper, the street runs from Trần Nhật Duật Street in the north to Hàng Bè Street in the south. In the middle, it crosses Nguyễn Hữu Huân Street. The position is special, close to Hoan Kiem Lake on the eastern side. This was land that once met the bank of the old Red River. Goods came off the boats here and were sent on to the craft districts inside the city.

The name Hàng Thùng comes from the trade of the carpenters who once lived and worked here. The newspaper says the old street had many households that made and sold wooden buckets, joined from separate pieces and sealed tight with sơn ta. That is natural lacquer, a sap taken from the lacquer tree, which was grown in the midland region. People used these buckets to carry water home from ponds, lakes or wells. They also stored fish sauce in them for the pantry, or used them as washtubs. Before there were plastic jugs or tin pails, a wooden bucket was something no home could do without. That was true of every household in Thăng Long. Thăng Long is the city now called Hanoi.

A bucket maker had to choose wood with a straight grain and cut it into staves that fit together exactly. Then he bent bamboo or wooden hoops to hold each piece fast. The lacquer closed every gap, so the bucket stayed watertight. The work took strength and experience, since a hoop that failed halfway home meant all the water spilled.

Under French rule, the colonial authorities divided the street into two parts, each with its own name. The part from Trần Nhật Duật Street to Nguyễn Hữu Huân Street was called Rue de Rondony. The part from Nguyễn Hữu Huân Street to Hàng Bè Street was called Rue des Seaux, which means Bucket Street. The French simply translated the street's traditional trade. This shows that even in the French period, the wooden bucket trade was still distinctive enough for outsiders to recognize it and name the street after it.

After 1945, the Rondony part was renamed Bình Chuẩn Street for a short time. In 1947, the two parts were joined under one name, Hàng Thùng. According to the Hànộimới newspaper, that name has stayed the same to this day.

The Nhân Dân newspaper reports that no one on the street makes wooden buckets anymore. The old workshops have given way to shops selling all kinds of modern goods. Only the name still keeps a trace of the time when Thăng Long carried its water in wooden buckets.

Among the 36 old streets of Hanoi, some have names of trades that people still practice. Others have names of trades that have become memory. Hàng Thùng belongs to the second kind. Anyone who walks here knowing where those two words came from can almost hear the hammer on the wooden hoops again, from workshops that are long gone. The scent of lacquer seems to drift on the wind, along with the clack of a water carrier's wooden clogs on a street that stood close to the riverbank in those days.