The Huc Bridge

On the shore of Hoan Kiem Lake, along Đinh Tiên Hoàng Street, a particular stillness settles. The water lies flat. Mist still clings to it. A small streak of red reflects on the surface from the Thê Húc Bridge, the most famous red bridge in Hanoi. Its 15 spans lead out to Jade Island.

According to the Hanoi Moi newspaper, the name Thê Húc means a drop of light that has come to rest. The name fits, because the bridge faces east. Each morning the first sunlight rises on that side, falls straight onto the vermilion wood, and spreads across the lake.

In 1865, the Confucian scholar Nguyễn Văn Siêu took charge of a major restoration of Ngọc Sơn Temple. It was no small task. The Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports records that during this work he built the Trấn Ba pavilion and raised the Pen Tower. He set the Inkstone Stand before the gate and laid the bridge from the shore to the island. A whole cultural space took shape in a single round of building.

The bridge has 15 spans. It is 45 meters long and 2.6 meters wide. It has 32 round wooden posts, painted vermilion and set in pairs. At first there was no railing. The design was plain, the red was bold, and the gentle curve was like a rainbow. That alone made the bridge the visual emblem of the whole Hoan Kiem Lake area, as the Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports confirms.

But this small bridge once broke. The Hanoi Moi newspaper records that at Tết in 1952, so many people came to worship at the temple that the bridge collapsed. Tết is the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. No one meant to harm the bridge. Too many people were simply standing on one span of fragile timber.

The architect Nguyễn Ngọc Diệm was then given the task of redesigning it. He kept the gentle curve and the distinctive red. But he replaced the supports with concrete piers sunk deep into the lake bed, to make the bridge last. The bridge of today is a restoration that follows the original.

The bridge does not stand alone. On the shore side lies Hoan Kiem Lake. On the island side stands Ngọc Sơn Temple. The bridge joins the two worlds, the everyday shore and the spiritual island.

It is only 45 meters of wood and red paint, yet the Thê Húc Bridge carries more than 160 years of the city's memory. Each step across it joins the present to the time when Nguyễn Văn Siêu looked out at the lake and decided to raise a cultural space for Thăng Long, the city now called Hanoi.