Tran Hung Dao Street - The beat of the old town

(Baonghean) -There have been several waves of urban construction, road expansion, and houses being pushed deeper into old gardens; but there are still rows of brown tiled streets of one of the most crowded residential areas in Vinh City during the reconstruction period in the late 1970s of the last century. That streetscape creates an impression for Tran Hung Dao Street…

View of Tran Hung Dao street.

Tran Hung Dao Street used to be one of the earliest planned and longest routes in the city, with more than three kilometers stretching from Cua Nam fish pond to Vinh train factory, in Hung Dong commune. Around 1985, the road was divided into two more routes, Truong Chinh and Le Ninh. Now, Tran Hung Dao Street is "fixed" to a length of one kilometer, from Cua Nam fish pond intersection to the intersection with Phan Chu Trinh Street.

I don't know what has held back the two sides of Tran Hung Dao Street from having the usual grand modern architectural excitement of the four sides of Vinh Street. Perhaps, it is because the character of the Northwest region of Yen Truong town was established during the Later Le Dynasty, and really flourished during the Nguyen Dynasty. Except for the East side of the street where the residents were new revolutionaries, the West side has many houses that have been inhabited for dozens of generations. Back in 1884, when the Nguyen Dynasty government moved Yen Truong town from Dung Quyet to Vinh Yen, and built Nghe An citadel initially with earth, they must have opened this road to partly recruit laborers, the children of Vinh Yen farmers, to take the land to build. This side of the citadel wall leading out already has Cua Huu and another Gate, a national relic, which has made the place name the way Vinh people call it until now. Near the military citadel, the houses of the common people were not built large but were crowded together, wall to wall, bustling with trade and the residents were also soon influenced by the market and leisurely lifestyle of the upper class. Therefore, that custom was passed down, firmly rooted and lasting in community life, creating a unique cultural identity that is difficult to change!

Also during the period when Vinh citadel was built, Vinh Yen in the East of Vinh (later separated into a part of Doi Cung ward along Tran Hung Dao street) had a class of residents who were not mandarins, not rich landlords, but from interacting with people in the city, doing small business, they became a more progressive class that would later become the Vinh petty bourgeoisie. The ups and downs of history, the struggle against each other caused some people to leave the country, others to return to the life of carrying on labor; on the outside, they were gentle and naive, but on the inside, they vented their anger in the teachings of their children and grandchildren to "cover their ears and keep their heads down" and know the place of the underlings "to work hard and eat well"; gradually, it became an inferiority complex that was difficult to recognize. That habit, left behind in a part of the city's residents, was due to their lack of absorption of the way of doing business and the trend of living outside the center of the big city. They work hard, live a closed life but are stubborn, easily react negatively when faced with annoying things... And until now, could that characteristic be the reason why the streets are slow to change into new urban forms (?!)

I talked to an architect, a journalist and a photographer living on this street. The architect showed me that behind the old houses on the street were newly built high-rise residential buildings, shyly showing off Western and Chinese architecture, but they were sparse and somehow out of place! The photographer was upset about having lived here since 1982, built a concrete house on the street, then got caught up in some kind of road expansion plan, so after 32 years it still hasn't been painted, the steel waiting for the concrete reinforcement, which was originally as big as a big toe, has now rusted like a chopstick. The journalist was born and raised on the street; his grandfather had a diploma in Western studies, later became a revolutionary civil servant but still kept the habit of fragrant tea, admiring rockery, bonsai, the family was hungry but still wore white shirts, collars, ties, felt hats, and smoked fragrant cigarettes... The children of some went far away, but those who stayed all built families, and moved out, also living right in that garden. But the "bitter" thing is that the old man's house had a spacious street frontage, so because he despised the hustle and bustle, he gradually retreated to alley 3, and now his descendants have really hurt him! Squeezed into a densely populated residential community where houses almost had no gardens on the west side of the street, there were a few residents, whose main occupations were construction workers and cyclo drivers, but they naturally set up shrines to cultivate themselves at home, or wrote poems and published them in books... also stirring up a bit of the old, hard-working lifestyle in the neighborhood.

The street frontage of Tran Hung Dao Street has not changed much. This street has been quite important for trade since the war and subsidy period because it is the gateway to the southwest of the city leading to Vinh bus station and Vinh railway station. Until the second urban traffic planning of the city, the road was designed to be widened to 32 meters, including the sidewalk running along Truong Chinh and Le Ninh. But the Tran Hung Dao section alone is still struggling with land clearance, so it has become a "cork" section that preserves the old street appearance. Ten years ago, besides small mechanical shops and motorbike repair shops, the street was mainly for food stalls with grilled vermicelli with grilled pork, eel porridge, wet rice cakes, and later on, there were coffee shops, beer shops, etc. But if it were opened on a larger scale, almost no one could maintain the brand for long; it would just pop up, attract customers for a while and then leave. Perhaps it was also because of the somewhat "conservative" and old-fashioned way of thinking. Now, on the east side of the street, there are only the traditional eel porridge shop by Cua Nam lake and the banh muot dem shop next to Cua Huu entrance owned by an old veteran woman that are still bustling with customers. The remaining dog meat, draft beer, congee shops... almost change their signs and sometimes even change their owners seasonally, mainly serving the working class residents and retired civil servants in the street. The mechanical and vehicle repair shops are still mainly the same old shops, with old customers. Other modern services such as offices, fashion and beauty shops, information technology... are not opening much and if they do, they are only on a small scale, so the street does not have the usual splendor that follows the new development pace of a first-class urban area, but they evoke trust and convenience for customers who need them when coming here. Recently, the street has gradually become dense with shops selling picture frames, mirrors, and fresh flowers, and banners for funerals and weddings, a sign that the street may become a "specialized" city for these items.

I also tried to be a visitor on a moonlit night in this street to feel more clearly the beat of the old street. “Moss, fallen leaves, tiled houses/The moonlight still rises, casting a round shadow” (Returning to the Old Street - poem by Do Thi Bich Thuy). At night, Tran Hung Dao Street seems to repay the day for the dull, hot and cramped endurance with a strange emptiness; almost only the moonlight remains, flowing over the familiar banyan trees, spreading down to the streets in a deep sleep in the faint glimpses of the dark brown tiled roofs of the street. Even the light in the old veteran woman’s wet cake shop at night, shimmering with customers, at first glance, seems like the light hundreds of years ago at the gate guard post to control people entering and exiting Vinh ancient citadel!...

Sam Temple