How to preserve the Old Quarter

Illustration photo

Hội An is a relatively small town whose economy is based on tourism; Hà Nội is a major metropolitan area with a diverse economy and an extensive infrastructure.

The problem for planners is how to preserve the health of the city, especially the Old Quarter with its unique historical value, without killing the organism.

The Old Quarter represents the historical and cultural heritage of the capital city. Various agencies of the city and the national government have been trying to work out effective methods for the development of Hà Nội’s Old Quarter.

Clearly, those making decisions regarding the future of the Old Quarter bear a heavy weight of responsibility – both to history and to the future.

The streets in the Quarter are woven together in an organic fashion. Unlike the layout of the French Quarter, which is based on Western ideas of rational planning, the pattern of streets and alleys in the Old Quarter is the result of patterns of population growth, economic activities, and government control over the course of centuries. A house in the quarter can serve as both a handicraft workshop or a shop and the living place for a family, an arrangement that gives the quarter both its charm and its occasionally chaotic mix of workmen, shoppers, tourists and traffic.

The elegance of Hà Nội streets

Many streets specialize in one particular kind of goods, but the names of the streets have not kept up with economic and historical change – the word “Hàng” put at the beginning of each name refers to the item or product traditionally sold on that street, and most of the streets in the quarter begin with this prefix, though there are some interesting exceptions such as Lãn Ông and Lò Rèn. In the old days, Hàng Đường, which means “sugar,” sold sugar; today it sells mostly ready-to-wear clothing. Hàng Bạc (Silver Street), still has a lot of jewelry shops and at its eastern terminus there is a concentration of headstone carvers, but it is now well-known for its concentration of backpacker’s café, CD shops and mini hotels. Hàng Bồ once specialized in baskets; these days it has a concentration of haberdashers. Hàng Hòm used to sell wooden chests; now it specializes in glue, paint, and varnish.

A few streets have maintained their ancient specialties, adapting them to modern times. Hàng Mã traditionally sold votive paper objects, “ghost money” and the like; in fact, it still sells such items, along with masks for the mid – Autumn festival and, more recently, Christmas decorations – a development that must trouble the spirits of old Buddhists who still seem to permeate the place. Hàng Thiếc still sells an astonishing variety of tin goods, from soup ladles and mailboxes to 500-liter water tanks. And Lãn Ông, named after a famous practitioner of traditional medicine, is still lined with shops selling all the materials associated with both the northern (Chinese) and southern (Vietnamese) branches of this ancient practice.

A city is like a living organism in that it is always changing; its growth and state of health are never the same from one day to the next. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the architecture of the Old Quarter, which shows the progression from the traditional merchant’s “tube house,” a narrow series of rooms one behind the other, through the changes wrought first by French colonial architecture and, finally, by modern additions and modifications that are quickly changing the character of the Old Quarter’s architecture.

Tube houses in Hà Nội

The problem for planners is how to preserve the health of the city, especially the Old Quarter with its unique historical value, without killing the organism. The architecture of the quarter, the relation interior to exterior space, and traffic patterns must all be taken into consideration. The quarter cannot and should not be “preserved” in the sense of halting change – if tourists want recreations or re-enactments, let them go to Colonial Williamsburg in the United States or to any number of other ersatz “historical attractions” in other countries. Like the Medina in ancient Fez, Morocco, the Old Quarter has never died, so it does not need to be revived – it is a living place. Hà Nội’s ancient district will continue to change and grow along with the rest of the city; the answers to the complex problems that must be addressed in the coming years must take into consideration both the history and the future of the Old Quarter and the people who live and make their livings there.

A number of regulations have already been adopted concerning the Old Quarter and several different plans are currently being considered for controlling the increasing heavy traffic in the quarter, all of which include a reduction in the number of four-wheeled vehicles allowed in the quarter, especially during rush hours. This will be an excellent first step, along with plans to prevent the wholesale destruction of old buildings and facades. And such measures may be enough. In this writer’s opinion, making the quarter too neat, or too comfortable for tourists, is likely to have a negative effect in the long run. The goal, after all, is not a sanitized tourist Disneyland, but a living and functioning series of interconnected neighborhoods that maintain their Vietnamese character. The Old Quarter belongs, first, to the people who live there, and only after that to the rest of us./.

By Lê Thị Huyền Minh