Red River Stone Beach

From Âu Cơ Street, a turn into Lane 264 leads a little way along, and then the city simply stops. Ahead lies an open space with low plants, and behind it all runs the silver band of the Red River.

This is the Red River Stone Beach, in the Nhật Tân area of Tây Hồ.

According to a Hanoi newspaper, the area was at first nothing more than a natural bank of sand beside the river. This kind of ground is common along the Red River corridor inside the city, where the water pulls back and leaves a layer of silt and fine sand. Nobody built it, and nobody planned it from the start. Residents nearby slowly planted flowers and set up scenes, until it became a place for taking photographs. Travel communities fondly call it "Hanoi, 12 seasons of flowers." That name is not an official title, but it gets one thing right. The flowers here change with the seasons, and each season has its own color.

In spring and early summer, wildflowers, chrysanthemums and sunflowers compete to bloom. From autumn into winter, the chrysanthemums fade and the reeds rise. That is when the most people come.

The Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports records the reeds along the Red River as a typical sight of early winter in the capital. The silvery white blossoms stand as high as an adult's shoulder and sway in the river wind. Afternoon sun slants through the stands and makes the kind of light that countless people with cameras keep searching for. Far off, depending on where you stand, the Long Biên Bridge or the Nhật Tân Bridge appears as a familiar view that never grows dull.

This is not a sight developed by the state with full facilities. It is a stretch of river bank organized and cared for by the community itself, and that unplanned quality is what gives the place its own character.

The Red River, flowing at the visitor's back, is no painted backdrop. The Nhân Dân newspaper cites planning documents saying that the riverside corridor, about 11,000 hectares in extent, is meant to become the main ecological and cultural landscape axis of the capital. From Nhật Tân down to Long Biên, from silt flats to city parks, the river is being rethought in the plans for Hanoi in the 21st century.

The Stone Beach, as people commonly call it, sits right inside that zone of change. It is a place to visit today, and also part of a longer story about what Hanoi will do with the land on both sides of the largest river that flows through the city.

The beach is most beautiful in the early morning, while the mist has not yet cleared, or at dusk, when the sun begins to turn gold on the reed blossoms. At those hours it looks both bright and still. And however the flowers change color with the seasons, the river behind them stays where it is, flowing at its own pace, as it flowed long before there was a flower beach, and as it will flow long after.