Hanoi Old Quarter

Hanoi, city of 36 streets and guilds. The saying is so familiar that every small child knows it by heart. And yet, anyone who walked the Old Quarter counting its streets one by one would never end up with exactly 36.

That is because 36 is only a conventional figure, a round number that is easy to remember. The real number of streets has always been higher, and it has changed from era to era. The phrase was already part of the old folk verse of Hanoi. Then in 1943, a book of essays by the writer Thạch Lam came out under the same title, and the phrase became even better known.

The story begins in the 11th century, when Emperor Lý Thái Tổ built his capital at Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi. The Old Quarter took shape along with the capital. East and northeast of the citadel lay the land of trade. Craftsmen came in from the craft villages around the capital. They made goods for the royal court and for the people of the city.

People from the same village and the same trade lived together in one place. They formed a guild, and each guild specialized in one kind of goods. Whatever the guild made, its street sold. That is how the streets got their names. Many of those names begin with the word Hàng.

Hàng Đào Street sold silk and cloth dyed bright red: đào is an old Vietnamese word for red. Hàng Đường Street sold sugar and molasses. Hàng Mắm sold fermented fish. Hàng Buồm sold sails for boats. Hàng Mã sold paper votive goods. Read in one go, the street names sound like a shopping list from old Thăng Long.

Hàng Bạc Street has a story of its own. Silversmiths from the village of Trâu Khê, in Hải Dương, gathered here. The emperor gave them the work of casting silver ingots for the royal court. On that street, one can almost still hear the small hammers of the old silversmiths tapping on silver.

Today, some of the Hàng streets still sell the same goods as long ago, or nearly so. Hàng Bạc is still a street of gold and silver. Hàng Mã still displays paper offerings and lanterns. Hàng Thiếc still sells tinware. But Hàng Buồm stopped selling sails long ago. Hàng Khoai no longer sells sweet potatoes either.

The streets changed their trades, but they never fell asleep. The Old Quarter has never been an open-air museum. People still live here, breathing in step with the city.

In 2004, the Ministry of Culture and Information listed the Old Quarter as a national historic site. Among its tightly packed rows of houses stand as many as 121 historic monuments. They are communal houses, temples, pagodas, assembly halls and shrines, set among the homes.

The walk can begin at number 48 Hàng Ngang Street. That house looks like so many others on the street. Yet in the summer of 1945, after coming back to Hanoi from the Việt Bắc base area, President Hồ Chí Minh drafted the Declaration of Independence inside this very house. On September 2 that year, the Declaration was read out at Ba Đình Square. It proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The house is now a national historic site.

Not far beyond is the old house at number 87 Mã Mây. Built in the late 19th century, it is one of the most intact traditional tube houses left in Hanoi. From the sidewalk, its front is only 5 meters wide. But once inside, the house goes on and on, 28 meters deep. Its floor area is 157.6 square meters.

There is a reason the house is so narrow and so deep. In the old days, land tax was charged by the width of the street front. So people kept their fronts very narrow, then stretched their houses far back to have room to live.

Walking from front to back means passing through a whole way of family life. First comes the shop room right on the street, then a small courtyard, then the altar room, which also served as the room for guests. Next comes a large courtyard open to the sky, where light falls straight down into the heart of the house. Last comes the kitchen, and the bedrooms are upstairs, on the second floor. The main frame is wood, and the brick walls are laid with lime mortar in the old way.

In 1999, the French city of Toulouse helped Hanoi restore this house as a model for conservation. On February 16, 2004, the house was listed as a national heritage site, the same year as the whole Old Quarter.

A turn onto Hàng Buồm Street leads to Bạch Mã Temple. It is one of the four guardian temples that watched over Thăng Long, and it guarded the east. The temple honors the god Long Đỗ, the guardian spirit of old Hanoi. Outside the gate, the street is crowded and busy. Inside, there is a very old stillness.

The Old Quarter is also home to Đồng Xuân Market, built around 1889, during French rule. In 1994, a great fire swept through the market. From 1995 the market was rebuilt, and in time the sound of buying and selling rang out under its roof again.

The walk ends at Ô Quan Chưởng. It is the last of the old city gates of Hanoi still standing from the Lê and Nguyễn eras. The gate was built in 1749, under a Lê emperor whose reign was called Cảnh Hưng. It was restored in 1817, under the Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam's last royal dynasty. Other gates, such as Ô Cầu Giấy and Ô Đống Mác, were all torn down to open streets in the Western style. Ô Chợ Dừa met the same end. Only Ô Quan Chưởng stayed.

Old stories link the gate's name to a military officer who held the rank of chưởng cơ. As the story goes, when French troops attacked the citadel of Hanoi in 1873, he led his soldiers in a last stand at this very gate, and he fell here. The people grieved for him. They called the gate Ô Quan Chưởng, after the officer's title, to remember him.

Anyone who counts the street signs of the Old Quarter will find the count never stops at 36. And Ô Quan Chưởng still stands there in the roaring stream of motorbikes, quiet and steady, while all around it the thousand-year-old streets light up one by one.