Lan Ong Street

At the turn from Hàng Đường into Lãn Ông Street, warm cinnamon, strong star anise, mild sweet licorice and dried ginseng blend together along the street front. A knife clicks on a wooden board as herbs are sliced. Yellow lamplight falls on polished brown cabinets with hundreds of small copper drawers.

Lãn Ông Street is about 180 meters long. It lies in the Old Quarter of Hoàn Kiếm. It starts at the junction of Hàng Đường and Hàng Ngang. Along the way it crosses Chả Cá and Hàng Cân, and it ends at Thuốc Bắc Street. This one street holds almost 90 percent of the traditional medicine businesses in the whole Hoàn Kiếm area.

The name of the street today is not its first. Under French rule it was called Rue de Fou-Kien, which means Phúc Kiến Street. The name came from the Chinese community from Fujian province, who came here to build their livelihood and trade in medicinal herbs. In 1949 the street was renamed Lãn Ông, in memory of the great Vietnamese physician Hải Thượng Lãn Ông.

His real name was Lê Hữu Trác, and he came from the village of Liêu Xá. He lived from 1720 to 1791. He carried on an idea first put forward by the Zen master Tuệ Tĩnh, that Vietnamese people should be treated with Vietnamese medicinal plants. In 2023 and 2024, UNESCO honored him as a cultural figure.

In the middle of the street, at number 40, stands a quiet building. It is the Phúc Kiến Assembly Hall. The Department of Cultural Heritage says it was built by Fujian merchants in 1817. That was the sixteenth year of the reign of Emperor Gia Long, the founder of the Nguyễn dynasty. At first the hall was a place to worship the goddess Thiên Hậu, who watches over people who trade by sea. It was also a gathering place for the Chinese community.

On August 27, 2007, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism ranked the hall as a National Architectural and Artistic Monument. Today it stands beside Hồng Hà Primary School. In the middle of the Old Quarter, it is a lasting sign of the cultural exchange between the Chinese and the Vietnamese.

The herbal street keeps its own rhythm today. According to Vietnamplus, the trade here is often passed from father to son through many generations. A worker sits behind a wooden cabinet of 100 drawers, weighing herbs and wrapping each dose in traditional paper. In many of the rooms where medicine is made up, a portrait of Hải Thượng Lãn Ông hangs in the most honored place, a reminder of the code of the trade.

Lãn Ông Street is a living trade street, where each small copper drawer holds one ingredient, and each generation that takes over holds 100 years of knowledge. On an afternoon in Hanoi, with cinnamon and star anise in the air, this street of only 180 meters carries the name of a great physician who lives on in history.