Tran Hung Dao Street - The Beat of the Old Quarter

(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 roads in the city, with a length of 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 due to the character of the Northwest region of Yen Truong Town, which was established during the Later Le Dynasty, and really flourished during the Nguyen Dynasty. Except for the East side of the street, which is inhabited by new revolutionaries, on the West side, many houses have been inhabited for dozens of generations. Back in 1884, when the Nguyen Dynasty government moved the Yen Truong Town from Dung Quyet to Vinh Yen, and built Nghe An Citadel, initially with earth, this road must have been opened 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 Chot, a national relic, which has made the place name in 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, this 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 humbly return to the life of carrying on labor; on the outside, they were gentle and ignorant, but on the inside, they vented their anger in teaching their children and grandchildren to "cover their ears and keep their heads down" and know their place as inferiors "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 business practices and lifestyle trends outside the center of the big city. They work hard, live a closed life but are stubborn, and easily react negatively when faced with annoying things... And until now, could that characteristic have caused the streets to be somewhat 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 houses, shyly showing off both Western and Chinese architecture, but they were sparse and somehow out of place! The photographer was upset about having lived here since 1982, building a concrete house on the street, then being 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 chopsticks. The journalist was born and raised on the street; his grandfather had a Western diploma, later became a revolutionary civil servant but still kept the habit of tea, admiring the 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 behind all built families, and moved out, also living right in that garden. But the "bitter" thing is that the old man's house originally had a spacious street frontage, but because he despised the hustle and bustle, he gradually retreated to the third lane, and now his descendants have really hurt him! Squeezed into a densely populated residential community where the 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 printed them into books... also making a bit of the old, hard-working lifestyle in the neighborhood bustling.

The street frontage of Tran Hung Dao Street has not changed much. This street has had a rather important commercial significance since the war and subsidy period because it is the hub of the city's southwestern gateway 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 was still struggling with land clearance, so it became a "cork" section that preserved the old street's appearance. Ten years ago, in addition to 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 stalls, etc. But if it were opened on a larger scale, almost no one could maintain a lasting brand; 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 still traditional eel porridge stalls by Cua Nam Lake and a banh muot stall at night near the entrance to Cua Huu owned by an old veteran woman that are still bustling with customers. The remaining dog meat, draft beer, congee stalls... 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 stalls selling picture frames, mirrors, and fresh flowers, and banners for funerals and weddings, a sign that the street may become a "specialized" street 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, houses with tiled roofs/The moonlight still rises and casts 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 hard, 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 on 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 guarding the checkpoint for people entering and exiting Vinh ancient citadel!...

Sam Temple