Ta Hien Street

Yellow lamps come on one house at a time as the afternoon slowly gives way to evening in the old quarter. Brown fish-scale roof tiles stand beside two-story fronts in the French style. The street is short and narrow. Visitors of many nationalities move through Hanoi voices and the calls of street vendors, while bicycles roll softly over the stone paving.

This is Tạ Hiện Street.

According to Hoàn Kiếm 360, the website of the district People's Committee, the street lies in Hàng Buồm Ward and is about 270 meters long. It runs from Hàng Buồm Street to Hàng Bạc Street. On the way it crosses Lương Ngọc Quyến Street. The street sits fully inside the first-level conservation zone of Hanoi's Old Quarter, only a few steps from Hoan Kiem Lake.

The street was not always called Tạ Hiện. The same source says that under French rule it had two names. The first stretch was Quảng Lạc Alley, and the stretch after it was Giê-rô Street. The name Tạ Hiện was given only after the August Revolution, to honor a famous general.

Tạ Quang Hiện was born in 1841. According to most sources, he died in 1893. He was a military officer of the Nguyễn dynasty. It was Vietnam's last royal dynasty. When the court signed a treaty handing land over to the French, he resented it, gave up his post, and became a leader of the movement against French rule known as Cần Vương. Its name means "aid the king". He was active in the Thái Bình and Nam Định area. By naming a street after him, Hanoi put a patriot's name on the city map, on a small street in the old quarter.

The architecture of the street clearly bears the mark of exchange between East and West in the early 20th century. The Nhân Dân newspaper describes the odd-numbered side as French in style, with two floors, plastered fronts, tall windows and iron balconies. The even-numbered side keeps old Vietnamese architecture, with its typical fish-scale tile roofs. This is the French-Indochinese tube house, a narrow house typical of the Old Quarter. The style took shape when the French replanned Hanoi in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Keeping this look took real effort from Hanoi. The Nhân Dân newspaper reports that a stretch 52 meters long was chosen for conserving the street frontage. It runs from Lương Ngọc Quyến Street to Đào Duy Từ Street. The work took more than a year and cost 15 billion dong, funded through a partnership between the city of Hanoi and the French city of Toulouse. This trial stretch was finished at the end of 2011, and it became a model for conserving the frontage of an old street.

By day the street stays quiet, with houses selling food, souvenirs and coffee. Since October 2014, the street has been part of a weekend walking route, together with Mã Mây and Lương Ngọc Quyến. The Hanoi Moi newspaper reports this.

Tạ Hiện is short, but it holds many stories. One name recalls a general of the Cần Vương movement. One row of houses has been kept for more than a century, half French and half Vietnamese, facing each other across a narrow street. One stretch of frontage was restored tile by tile, by Hanoi and Toulouse working together. And in the early evening, when the yellow lamps come on along both rooflines, the small street is alive and breathing, just as it has been for more than 100 years.