Do and Don't in Hanoi #1

Today I have an idea: why don't I make a list that help you know something should and should not do if you come to my city - Hanoi. I'm aware that there's plenty of guide books already, but  advice from a resident like me could be more updated and helpful for you.These suggestion from what I want to do everyday: Where to eat, how to order, how to avoid some crisis or conflict... in a quite chaotic city like Hanoi.

The first thing is traffic. I think most travelers are scared of traffic in Hanoi. So it comes naturally to the  #1 in my Do & Don't list.

DO:

- Cross the street where has traffic light and crosswalk. Sometime it's not useful, because some naughty vehicles still go under red light! However, you have not any better choice.

- Cross the street where has bridge for pedestrian. There few crosswalk bridges in Hanoi.

- If you see any Vietnamese prepares to cross the street, catch up and follow them immediately. Everyone in Hanoi is congenitally genius in crossing the street!

- If you don't see any sign that the vehicles are about to slow down to allow you go across, you simply wait for another chance. If the traffic is too crowded, it means they have to go slowly and it's become the chance for you!

- Go further to find the way to cross the street.

- Get a taxi. The price for a very short distance is cheap. Of course you must watch if driver cheat you to get much more money than real cost.

- Catch a motorcycle driver ("xe ôm"). If the distance under 2km, the price is around 20,000VND (~1USD). Almost drivers are friendly and enthusiasm.

DON'T:

- Stop in the middle of the street suddenly. I know you will be very, very frightened by traffic, but normally the traffic will slow down and give priority for pedestrians to cross the street. You feel the traffic could hit you at any time, but they will avoid you if you walk fast and confidently.

- Move without steady speed. You shouldn't run suddenly. Drivers may lose their speed control.

- Feel so scary or angry. Vietnamese are usually friendly with foreigners.

- Hesitate to ask Vietnamese people. Not so many Vietnamese speak well English but they know body language enough to show you the way. Except some women carry the burden in Old Quarter or around Hoan Kiem Lake. They are cheaters! (They will give you to try carry the burden, take photos and ask you money without your agreeing).

- Forget a map. If you have a map, you can show your wanted place and ask people which way to get there. And you will be sure it's hard to lose your way unless you go to the place out of the map :-).

Have a good walk!

Trinh Cong Son & Bob Dylan: 2 difference planets

Here's a new book about Trinh Cong Son who is a famous songwriter of Vietnam, but in a kind of comparison with Bob Dylan who is the man-you-know-who. The book includes original essay name Is Trinh Cong Son's Bob Dylan of Vietnam? by Prof. John C. Schafer (retired, Univ. Humboldt, California, USA), now translated into Vietnamese by his wife - Mrs. Cao Thi Nhu Quynh.

Mr. Schafer taught Comparative Literature in Humboldt, and he has been in Hue, Vietnam where he taught English in 1960s. He has written a number of thesis, essays and articles about Vietnamese culture and Trinh Cong Son. But this book is the first one in Vietnam.

From a very  popular statement: "Trinh Cong Son is Bob Dylan of Vietnam" since late 1960s, and when Bob Dylan have a tour around the world "The Never Ending Tour" which came to Vietnam in only night last year with a message from organizer that "to tribute to Trinh Cong Son," Schafer have willing to discovery whether 2 composers are likely each other.



According to Schafer, we have so many myths but not true. Firstly, that statement is not from Joan Baez, one of muses of Dylan when he's young, after she came back from Vietnam where she share the under bombing condition of North Vietnamese in Hanoi in December 1972. She never went to South Vietnam, where Trinh Cong Son lived at that time.

Secondly, Trinh and Dylan write some songs call for peace, but when Trinh has a lot of anti-war songs in whole Vietnam war time, Dylan write a few protest songs in his debuting time. And Dylan didn't like joining any movement which Joan Baez often encouraged him.

Lastly and most important, Trinh wrote under light inspiration of Buddhism, while Dylan is a Evangelicalism and even composed many religious songs. Two this differences religious let them go to two difference directions. While Trinh Cong Son has a soft philosophy full of forgiveness and love on the themes of broken heart loves, Bob Dylan many times criticized women who get in affairs with him though he betrayed them.

The book also includes the introduction of Prof. Cao Huy Thuan (Univ. of Picardie, Paris, France) and close with a short epilogue which he read in a Trinh Cong Son-remembering concert of singer Khanh Ly who is the legendary voice of Trinh's songs. 

Shopping at the street markets

Nowadays, shopping at street markets still plays an important role in lifestyle of Vietnamese people. The way which they do shopping at street markets expresses how they live in their normal life. In fact, street markets are the face of popular trading in Vietnam.

Vietnamese people find that shopping at street markets has many advantages. Many people go shopping by motorbike, so it is very easy for them to stop at any stall or kiosk without parking their motorbikes. On the other hand, many street markets are next to residential areas, and people feel very convenient to go shopping on foot within a very short distance. They can choose their suitable meat, vegetables or something like that, negotiate the cost and then decide to buy or not. The time people manage their shopping there is very short, because salesmen and customers do not need a receipt for very daily things such as food. Furthermore, the food which is sold in street markets is fresher and cheaper than in supermarkets. If you are a tourist, you will see a colorful picture of Vietnamese life and will learn about its culture when you go through a street market. Shopping at street markets is very flexible, so in a dynamic and developing economy of Vietnam, it is the best choice.

However, shopping at street markets also has some disadvantages. Some street markets invade the pavement and even the traffic lanes. In rush hours, many people come home from work, they go shopping at street markets and contribute to traffic jams. The street markets are dirtier than supermarkets and the salesmen rarely care about keeping their stalls clean. Especially, the food is not always inspected with regard to hygiene. There a lot of pickpockets and cheaters in street markets but the victims cannot complain to anyone. The goods which are sold at street markets don’t have very high quality. Many fake goods are sold there but salesmen never admit that. Worse, some salesmen have very bad behaviors when customers do not want to buy after checking or complaining. Although there are many bad points, Vietnamese people still bear them.

In conclusion, I’d like to say that shopping at street markets in Vietnam has a long tradition in a rural country. People still go shopping like they did many centuries ago. If you learn about Vietnamese style of shopping, especially shopping at street markets, you will know about Vietnamese lifestyle really, really well.

Xe máy tiếu ngạo - Joking rider

It's such a long time to come back to you here.

This month I have a new book which names "Xe máy tiếu ngạo" - in English means "Anecdotes about riding motorcycles" or just simply, "Joking rider". In fact, its name is a kind of parody of a very famous Hong Kong wuxi novel of Jin Yong (Kim Dung). Jin Yong novel's name in Vietnamese is "Tiếu ngạo giang hồ". The Chinese title of the novel, Xiao Ao Jiang Hu, literally means to live a carefree life in a mundane world of strife. Alternate English translations of the title include State of Divinity and Laughing in the Wind.

Of course, my book includes almost funny proses to express the state of "smiling". Half of the book contains proses about motorcycles, about the lifetime of some motorcycles I used to ride. I still choose the way or writing which is lightly humorous so bring the readers a fresh angle on some very familiar topic like motorcycles, city lifestyle, street food, and ridiculous matrix of Hanoi streets and alleys.

Underneath those funny lines is my quest for explaining the transform the behavior of urban people under the impact of traffic and living environment. I also bring to the readers a survey to depict during near 100 years since motorcycles appeared in Vietnam, how they has made effect to Vietnamese society, and whether their destiny will end soon or not. We are just the weird culprit of a reluctantly speedy life!

Number of pages: 176.
Size: 13cm x 20cm.
Publisher: Tre Publishing House.
Price: 45,000VND.

When the tenth month comes

When the tenth month comes (a.k.a The love doesn’t come back, Vietnamese title: Bao giờ cho đến tháng Mười) is probably one of the most remarkable films in Vietnam after American war. It was made in 1984 and was directed by Dang Nhat Minh. Le Van, who used to be Dang’s muse, starred in this film as well as in his other one over ten year later.

It is set in a village in North Vietnam in the years after the reunification of Vietnam where the traditional values still influence people. It is about a rural woman, Duyen, whose husband joined the army a few years ago but his family haven’t received his news since war ended. Finally, Duyen knows that her husband died already but no other one knows this awful truth except a village’s teacher who loves her secretly. She decides to keep the bad news in secret by herself to avoid shocking her ill father-in-law and little son who is desperately waiting for him. She asks the teacher to write some fake letters of her husband and send to her family. This activity helps her father-in-law get well but brings to her many misunderstandings from the conservative community. The teacher writes to her a poem and it makes trouble so that he has to go away from the village. The son, who still thinks his father is still alive, leaves home to find him. On the way, he meets a captain and asks him if the man knows his father. The captain leads the boy back home and then meets his grandfather, who is getting sick again. In his nearly unconscious state, he thinks the captain is his son.

Although the film is black and white, it still portrays many poetic and colorful scenes of Vietnam, which introduces a human and sensitive face of a country which has much loss not only in life, but also in spirit.

Recently, both Dang Nhat Minh and Le Van has published their memoir/autobiography in which said little about this movie and the cooperation between them. According to them, the second film that Dang invited Le Van to star in was not good as their expecting. Nostalgia for countryside [Thương nhớ đồng quê, 1995, based on a well-known story of writer Nguyễn Huy Thiệp] was still a success, but the last one by Dang Nhat Minh which Le Van starred. After that movie, Le Van appeared in another one - The Promise [Lời thề, 1996] - and it was also her last movie. She has never back to silver screen since then. In 2006, her autobiography (Lê Vân: Yêu và Sống [Le Van: Loving and Living, Le Van and Bui Mai Hanh]) became the best-seller book in Vietnam and created a large debate in Vietnamese media. Till now, she is still regarded as one of the most famous movie actresses in Vietnam. Other movies which she plays you should see: Chị Dậu [Mrs. Dau, 1981], Đêm hội Long Trì [Festival night at Long Tri palace, 1990], Kiếp phù du [Evanescent life, 1991].

You can buy English-subtitled DVDs in store. You also can see some parts of Bao giờ cho đến tháng Mười in You Tube with English subtitle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hNLC_FIapA.

Beneath the shadow of Orpheus

These days, if one were to ask Hanoians, “Which of the city’s architectural works do you most admire?”, nine out of ten would probably respond, “The Opera House.”  Since its inauguration nearly 100 years ago, this building has stood by to witness  every one of the city’s historical events, afforded “front row seats” thanks to its prime central location. One out of ten respondents, however, would be hesitant to recognize the Opera House because of the following issue: the Opera House was built during the colonial period, following the French Classical style of 19th century, a structure forced upon a city under the imperial bootheel.

But until it is joined in the near future by the Thang Long Theater, designed by one of the most renowned contemporary architects, the older, smaller Opera House will retain its striking prominence in the Hanoian’s inner urban map. If you’re getting married, you’ll take glamour shots in front of the Opera House. You can sit beneath the stars in the courtyard of the Opera House, drinking a cup of Highlands Coffee. If you want to drop a lot of bills, go for a bite at Nineteen11 restaurant in the Opera House’s lower level, named for its opening year. Musical rallies and public celebrations are staged in front of the Opera House. At the edge of nearby Hoan Kiem Lake, one can find the intersection of a wide boulevard leading to the Opera House. This stretch of cityscape may be one of Hanoi’s most thoroughly transformed in terms of architectural heritage, as it was once almost entirely devoted to traditional temples of worship. Originally, the land was recognized as a commons between a number of small villages, whose residents would gather there to stage cultural festivities: a role quite appropriately adopted by the Opera House within the cultural life of modern Hanoi. To take in a performance at the Opera House, one usually observes the formalities of such an occasion in the Western style, donning a tuxedo and stuffing oneself into a velvet seat, just as the “woman who went to hear the singers of Đặng village,” from Nguyễn Bính’s poem [1], was similarly dressed to the nines back in that earlier day, well aware that such an event was a rare and special episode in her life.

The Hanoi Opera House on postcard in early 20th century.

It is the architecture of the Opera House itself, however, that exerts its greatest cultural influence. Like the other major building works of the French period, the Opera House exudes majesty and grandeur. In a city devastated by civil war and deprived of its former capital status, whose golden age had since passed, like the “old castle fallen into the shadow of dusk,” [2] the ‘Big Theater’ was a beacon of splendor in those colonial times, legitimating the prestige of the French overlord, but its beauty has remained even after the fall of the regime that built it. The Vietnamese people who first beheld it were exposed to the power of its stately new aesthetics, a counterpoint to the palaces and temples of an indigenous monarchy that had long since waned to the point of only nominal relevance. Of course, the aesthetic principles followed by the Opera House derive from Greco-Roman times, refined and elaborated over the centuries according to the golden ratio, but carrying with them also the ancients’ confidence in their right to conquer any other people they came across. The adornments and embellishments of the Opera House’s roof rise into the sky, its pediments supported by towering Ionic columns that extend from imposing stone feet, and its marble steps open out onto a wide plaza which seems to the suggest that one is approaching a cathedral. The endless reproductions of the Opera House’s image suggest that the structure has indeed conquered the aesthetic sensibility of the population, even if the vast majority of them have never stepped inside of it to hear a performance.

Look back the past time, Vietnamese used to make a cover which has same style as communal houses or pagodas while the interior was very flexible and quite not orderly. And so, for the Vietnamese people today, who have not yet been won over by the modern forms of architecture emerging in Hanoi, the Opera House remains the exemplar of “civilized” style.

Trang Tien Street with the Opera House at the end in 1950s before the fall of French in Dien Bien Phu battle.

But architectural preeminence is just one part of the issue. Buildings such as the Presidential Palace or the halls of diplomatic reception rely upon a flashy sort of splendor, representing a form of power that is still too far from the psychology of the masses and thus from their aspirations as well. And yet, as a cultural landmark, the Opera House still exerts an aesthetic appeal as a proper place for “civilized” activities. Despite its terms having been imposed from outside, the course of cultural progress has seen the Opera House grow on us all the same, peacefully easing itself into the distinctive scenery of Hanoi and the imagination of its public. In those early years after achieving national independence, the first sessions of the National Assembly took place within the Opera House, which went on to weather all the travails of a city at war. After renovations in 1997 to host the Francophone Summit, the Opera House became the city’s most expensive place to hold artistic performances, an unwritten standard against which more modern venues were compared.

Nevertheless, the Opera House is steeped in an outmoded neo-classicism, ignoring the creative innovations of the present, a product of French urban planning, a structure that presses upon the psychological scars of the people of Hanoi. That’s the flipside of the pretty postcards, the ones with sepia photographs of colonial Hanoi complete with old-fashioned buildings and the 36 streets of the Old Quarter.  It can be said that beyond the Opera House, Hanoi is still searching for an iconic structure to call its own, one that is both ennobling and familiar. It’s important to note, however, that people are always lauding the structural perfection of the Opera House, its balance of form and function. The operatic musical genre emerged in the 16th century, when its patronage signified membership in Europe’s aristocratic class. Internally, opera houses were designed to project natural acoustic resonance, but their architectural style always reflected a classical polish befitting the lifestyle, clothing, and social rhythms of the feudal gentry, affectations later acquired and cultivated by the bourgeois class. The performance venues, and culture in general, of Hanoi have not been privy to such luck, since the “dynamic” impulses of modern architectural and social trends seem always to contradict all that has come before. The Opera House will alway be mired in its bygone values, like the beautiful close of a strange, fading season in a country where few material structures can endure for long.

A concert was hold in Hanoi Opera House. As you can see, the auditorium is quite small. It was modeled on the Palais Garnier, the opera house of Paris.

Amid the fever of urbanization, every street in the city is crowded with people, all pressing for a bit of open space. The Opera House has become just such a space for many of the city’s residents, an increasingly popular destination. It’s not just operatic divas who perform at the Opera House; there are also comedy shows and “golden oldies” concerts, such as a recent seven-night engagement by Tuấn Vũ. The Opera House can deliver other sounds as well. There was once a time, during the war, when a loudspeaker installed on the roof of the Opera House would broadcast instructions during air raids. Inside of the Opera House hangs a great lyre of Orpheus, plated in gold during the restorations of 1997. Meanwhile, on the steps outside, one can find droves of young people who gather there every night to chat and hang out beneath the shadow of the winged statues on the roof (also the symbol of the Opera House), gazing out at the lovely scene of the plaza below. This is something that, one hundred years ago, none of us could have possibly imagined.

Nguyễn Trương Quý

(Source in Vietnamese: Phu Nu (Women) of HCMC newspapers, 2010).
Translated by Jacob O. Gold

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1. Nguyễn Bính (1918-1966), a famous poet born in northern Việt Nam’s Nam Định province, a committed participant in the revolutionary movement but also well-known for his romantic works. In the poem mentioned by the author, a girl travels to Đặng village to hear the folk-opera singer she has fallen in love with. She wears her prettiest clothing, but is dismayed to find that the man is absent from the performance. 

2. A quote from the poem “Thăng Long thành hoài cổ” (“Thăng Long has become nostalgic” using the old imperial name for Hà Nội-), composed in 1802 by celebrated female poet Bà Huyện Thanh Quan when the restored Nguyễn dynasty shifted the imperial capital to centrally-located Huế.

THE REPLACEMENT FOR A TASTE OF HANOI

Nguyen Truong Quy

This essay would like to find a connection between the urban environment and the cultural environment of Hanoi. Hanoi today has been developed on the structure of an old city during many centuries, mainly 20^th century. Its cultural definitions, which go tightly with economic-social development, are in the battle of old and new parts.

People usually consider Hanoi as a subject has a specific aesthetic school. So that school, the ‘taste’ of Hanoians, how changing in the biggest urbanization and enlargement in Hanoi history?

This essay is extracted from my latest book Hanoi is Hanoi, Tre Publishing House, 2010.

PRELUDE OF A MODERN CITY

… “Today morning, I got cold at the street at 6 am! The sky was bright and pale, the city got up cheerfully while a plenty of trees seemed waved by the exciting voice of thousand birds. Wrapping my body by a warm coat, I thought I still was in Paris… in a sunny morning.” The short lines look like picked up from a French romantic novel which full of happiness and longing for the discovery. That lovely city is Hanoi in a November day of 1928, under the eyes of Jean Tardieu, the son of the first head principal of Indochina College of Fine Arts (Hanoi Letter, send Jacques Heurgon). Of course, when cite here, we beware that he is a position of colonial class to write those nice words. But we have to admit that since a very long time, we don’t have a Hanoi where birds are singing in a bright sky like before.

A Hanoi girl, oil painting by Victor Tardieu (1870-1937)

Painting of Victor Tardieu in University of Indochina, now is Hanoi National University

Continue reading the words of that “colonial man” – a bachelor in French literature – we find Hanoi as a heavenly resort in this world, with streets have shady green tree lines, colorful regional quartier, the cheerful noise of clogs that girls wear make when they walk on the stone pavement as a symphony in ascending ré and descending sol. In this charming landscape, the Red River – the main river in Hanoi and the North of Vietnam – opens a wide horizon like a backdrop, just few sailings of some boats surf over it or the Long Bien Bridge, the only bridge at that time.

Hanoi was gentle or charming, perhaps due to a clean atmosphere like above description. Hanoi became the dreamland to come and love as the suddenly thought of below poet:

…Go, go, I’ll take you to the pub

There has a bit Paris to make me be a poet

Or Hanoi midnight

I am a crazy guy

Holding you in my arms but remember you the next days…

(Serenade, Thanh Tâm Tuyền)

West Lake, the largest lake in Hanoi, circa 1954, from Life magazine.

Hanoi was competed with Paris; Hanoi had a midnight to remember when the poet was sad. But that is Hanoi of last century, Hanoi in the mind of expats and exodus ones. In 1954, when French has lost the Dien Bien Phu Battle and had to retreat from Indochina, Hanoi has only 530,000 people on an area of 123km². Hanoi now has a population of 6.5 mil., including an old province – Ha Tay, large 27 times the area in 1954, become the most crowded ever in its history. On one hand, this event proves the advance of urbanization in a developing country which pours invested capital in a top head center. On the other hand, it strongly shows the attraction of a historical city.

The change of Hanoi, if say big words, means the rising; but with someone, it contains the disorderly, messy and inconsistent problems. There is a hot atmosphere in mind of community: How is tomorrow of Hanoi? Historical heritage of this city has a power let people usually look back. They are afraid of Hanoi will become any ugly city, so in the way they love Hanoi nowadays has an extreme of “Hanoi-style thinking”. But does that extreme is enough to keep Hanoi will beautiful like some previous period when at least has the fact to count, not the in an amorphous future? What still exist from poetry years that mentioned above, gradually become some quite surfaces of Hanoi’s lakes and play the role that turn down any fury. Could they turn off the fury that is affecting Hanoi’s mind this early 21^st century?

A SUPER EXPENSIVE MATERIAL PLATFORM

If we see back the urban plan for the capital since 1990s, we will see many big plans were made, but the most difficult and also weren’t done point, is define a CBD (Central Business District) to keep balance with historical center which built by French and sooner. With the ‘big head’ city like Hanoi, building a new big CBD that including many skyscrapers seems acceptable for community, and furthermore, offloading for old center is too narrow and not suitable for radically growing traffic. Building the administrative center is not difficult because it quite separates with life in the downtown; meanwhile CBD requires good transportation system and tight connection to downtown. Lacking of capital and many economic depressions in neighbour area as well as whole world let these ambitious plans collapse. Like Saigon, Hanoi return the method that put trading skyscrapers into old French quartier, where has coherently squared streets, but sequel make traffic jams as well as damage the infrastructure, i.e. cable and drain system.

Planning for traffic system of Hanoi, 1981, with the consulting of USSR experts but was not deployed.

Nowadays, after leaving the idea which use West Lake (the biggest lake in Hanoi, around 5km²) as the core, the new trend is develop the front layout of Hanoi in two directions: along the banks of the Red River and the highway to the West of Hanoi. In fact, building new urban plan in these areas is easier than improving the messy ghettos in some old bad-structure districts. For example, the cost for opening a new road (Xa Dan Street in Dong Da district) is around one billion US dollars may score a Guinness record! The unimaginably expensive result of opening new roads in old areas is one of reasons made investor, in this case is state, be so afraid and move the target into other ways. We can see the evidence through the cost system that the state declared is always lower than the cost in free market. So it means much more attractive when choosing not so far places which are cheap, easy to deploy new infrastructure. But as every new urban area in developing countries, there are majority high apartment buildings that have neither different nor interesting.

Xa Dan street – costs one billion US dollars, includes small narrow houses like the matchboxes.

We can go to a point seems very absurd: the value of living environment in Hanoi is very expensive for lame traffic system and backward infrastructure. But this environment still feed a massive population in a quite risky condition. Although the forecasters are afraid of the corruption in the future, no one could promise a really good plan.

See what we did with nature environment in Hanoi. Before 1954, Hanoi had no industrial zone except some single factories located in the boundary of old city. In process of industrialization in Soviet and China subsidy and heavy industrial models in 1960s, the industrial zones were built into ring. However, surrounding ring of Hanoi includes farm lands, handicraft villages as well as water system (rivers and lakes). The obvious result came: these heavy industrial areas with backward technology and wrong economic ideas polluted the large areas when let the waste water come directly to rivers and make many lakes dry.

We don’t know if the investing money during many decades and the benefit could pay well for the price need to clean these rivers. At the present, they are dying. Everyday, two main rivers in the West of Hanoi receive over 800,000 m3 of waste water, mainly from 150,000 factories. A project by Ministry of Resource & Environment says need amount of 3,335 billion VND (250 million USD) to rescue these two rivers.

In 2005, the research showed that Hanoi had 4 times of the legal level of dust in some serious traffic roads in the entrance into the center. For year later, the number is 11 times in these roads and 2-5 times in almost city. Dust comes from industrial activities as well as constructing, cars, motorbikes and garbage which are rapidly growth. In 2007, Hanoi has 270,000 cars and increase 2,000 cars per months, while the number of 2.5 million motorbikes will increase more and more.

With the huge quantity of gas that vehicles spend and the area of street surface is only 2m² for one car, Hanoi streets soon become a bad environment for people – where fossil fuel is used only for moving very slowly in a short distance and people are stuck on stressful condition of overpopulation.

SOUND OF CLOGS, SOUND OF HORN

In Hanoi Letter, Jean Tardieu wrote about a sound enjoying: He enter a shop of clogs in old native quartier, knock 40 pairs of clogs on the pavement to hear the different sounds. The Western man and Vietnamese people laugh, the native children and old grandmothers are happy when saw the excitement of a white ‘colonial’ man about the sound came from the knocking between wood and brick. The sound of clogs became symbol of peaceful, slow pace of life. It last nearly 30 years, when this sound acted like a memory of a refuge composer. He wrote: ‘how cheerful the peaceful sound of clogs’ (Longing for Hanoi – Hoang Duong, 1954).

Dong Xuan market, the biggest old market of Hanoi, in 1960s. The rhythm of architecture silhouette of the market place built in late 19^th century is the landmark of Hanoi urban trade.

Early 21^st century, the air of Hanoi sinks in the sound of cars and motorbikes horn and the noise of concrete-made machines in construction site. So people won’t feel strange when some sound artists use the noise as a source. For example, they make ‘noise music’ base on the noise above. This work art is a reflection of a sound life; include level of pollution, habit and the way of communication of modern urban residents. The level of noise in Hanoi streets is approximate 90-100dB, is ironically the level could make you deaf if hear for a long time.

One part of motorbike is the horn which becomes a product sell independently. There is a short street in Hanoi sell horns specifically. If someone wants to add an alarm horn into his motorbike, he can buy very easily! The sound of motorbike and car horns, the noise of engines, ringtones of mobile, nowadays is normal sounds of a ‘peaceful’ life. The loud sound of horns has change the behavior of residents when replace for voices.

In the recipe build the colonial, Indochina became a model of colorful Union and Hanoi became a beautiful experiment to re-create a Paris. When we see the planning map of architect Ernest Hébrard in 1924 and Louis Pigneau in 1943, we will find from the East to the West of city there are chains of boulevard which join to each others by ‘etoile-style’ squares, parallel avenues go together in pairs fairly.

One map of planning for the uptown of Hanoi by E. Hébrard, 1924

Map of urban planning 1943 by Louis Pigneau

Photo: Đỗ Huân. This photo captures a landscape of Hoan Kiem Lake, the heart and symbol of Hanoi.

The nice postcard has two sides about old Hanoi, one side is old native quartier and relics, and other side is the French quartier, framed and is framing an aesthetic school or taste of Hanoians. The break of these images is also the break of that aesthetic school. The sound of clogs is replaced by the noise of horns, the brick tile street houses is replaced by steel and glass block houses, French style villas by kiosque, bicycles by motorbikes… as well as the old images in paintings of Bui Xuan Phai who is the most famous painter about Hanoi become history; these changes are material disappearances. From that material changes, a new spirit was born.

Bibliography

Jean Tardieu.

Hanoi Letter, Phu Nu Publishing House, Hanoi 2006.

Pierre Clément and Nathalie Lancret (chef in editor)

Hanoi – Cycle du Changement, Translators: Mac Thu Huong, Truong Quoc Toan, Khoa hoc and Ky thuat Publishing House, Hanoi, 2003

Nguyen Truong Quy.

Hanoi is Hanoi, prose, Tre Publishing House, 2010.

Vietnam Student, newspaper.

Hanoians breathe the dust 4 times of legal level, 9.2005.

Family and Social, newspaper.

Ring roads of Hanoi have dust at over 11 times of standard level, 18.1.2010.

Vietnamnet.

River Nhue, river Day at the brink of the death, 25.4.2007. (recite http://www.khoahoc.com.vn/doisong/moi-truong/tham-hoa/14505_Song-Nhue-song-Day-co-nguy-co-bi-khai-tu.aspx)

Capital Security, newspaper.

River Nhue, river Day have strong polluted, 25.7.2008.

Planning Capital Hanoi: The lessons from the past, 19.8.2010

Sport & Culture, newspaper.

Review Planning of Hanoi over 100 years ago, 17.8.2010