Martín Rama, the Uruguayan economist who won the Bui Xuan Phai Prize for Love of Hanoi in 2014, has once again expressed his affection for the Vietnamese capital with a second book entitled “For the love of Hanoi”. Through The Hanoi Times, he wants to send a few words to his beloved city and how to preserve “her” identity in this period of rapid change.
As a Latin American, I had grown up, become an adult, and joined the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. I was moved by the sacrifice, the courage and the suffering of the Vietnamese people. And I had images of Indochina, the mixture, the fusion of French and Asian culture. So, it was no coincidence that when someone offered me to work in Vietnam, I agreed.
And maybe what happened is like in love stories, when you fall in love at first sight. I arrived in a beautiful Hanoi. I expected a city in ruins. But I found the villas, the lakes, the temples, the trees, which made me think: “Oh, this city is wonderful!” And when a chance came to move to Hanoi, I seized it and I have eight years living happily in Hanoi.
Hanoi has changed a lot since then. I first came to Hanoi in 1998. Half the traffic was still on bicycles. It was a quiet city, very romantic, with bicycles going down Trang Thi Street, where I used to walk to get to the office. Now look at it: there are cars, there is pollution, there are skyscrapers.
Some changes are, of course, for the better. Countries need to develop. The fact that you now have metro, you have modern apartments, you have convenience in terms of shopping and options. All of that is great!
Other sides are a bit more annoying, of course. You have noise, you have pollution… Many of my friends say: “I can’t take it anymore”, “I’m moving to Hoi An”, “I’m moving to Hue”. So it is a difficult transition because there are good things and bad things.
But I am impressed by how many good things still exist in Hanoi. The core of Hanoi still has the old atmosphere, and for me, that is embodied in three things. One is the architecture: a very nice mix of traditional, French, Soviet and modern architecture. Then the nature, the lakes, the trees. There are even more trees now than when I arrived. And then the social life. One of the most fascinating things about Hanoi is that everything happens on the sidewalks. People eat, people meet, people trade, people go on dates, people raise their children and so on. Everything happens on the sidewalks, and it makes for an extraordinarily vibrant city.
I think it is no coincidence that Hanoi still retains its character. I think the authorities have been enlightened over the years. There was a time when international aid agencies proposed a plan that would have turned downtown Hanoi into a high rise. Because that was the downtown: “Let’s make a modern downtown!” It was the Vietnamese authorities who opposed that. They said: “If we do that the pressure on the land will be so great that there will be no way to protect the character of old Hanoi.” So, the decision was made to develop towards West Lake, towards My Dinh in the south, to take the pressure off the city center, which worked very well.
There were also decisions to plant trees. At one point, there was almost a wrong decision to cut down the trees. And then we saw that people loved the trees, so now there are a lot more of them.
I think a very important step was that Hanoi recognized its French character as an asset. Of course, one is against colonialism. But that does not mean that one is against the culture of the colonizer. And the French culture is very rich in architecture, in design, in art, and so on. That recognition was extremely important for Hanoi.
And so, looking forward, I hope Hanoi will have the same kind of strategic clarity, the clarity that makes it so different from other Southeast Asian cities that you go to. I will not name the cities, but you go to other places in Southeast Asia, and these are bland cities without character, like shopping malls and highways. Hanoi is not like that, or it is not only like that.
And I hope that the authorities will be clear about this. They will be clear, for instance, that when someone builds something that is not by the rules (like, too high), or demolishes something are valuable, there should be no fines. They should be forced to demolish what they built that was wrong, and rebuild what they demolished that was right.
I think that looking forward, perhaps the most important strategic decision for Hanoi to preserve its character will be about the Red River. We saw it with the floods. We saw how the Red River protects Hanoi because that is where the water expands. And the river has its own culture, its own vegetation.
The temptation to build on the Red River, such a huge area of “golden land”, will be very great. So we need to be clear on how to preserve that enormous asset of greenery, of better air for the city, and also culture. Think of the Long Bien bridge connecting the old town to the Gia Lam railway factory! These are areas where, again, let us hope that the urban authorities will have the strategic clarity to continue making Hanoi a great city.
And “She” is a great city!
