Sun Xinsheng: Travel Notes of Vietnam (3) Old Town of Hanoi

You can kill two birds with one stone by choosing a place to live south of the Red River adjacent to Daluocheng. It can be powerful or defensive. However, the greater intention is to learn from the south. Li Dynasty was the beginning of Vietnam's prosperity after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and its ethnic policies were inherited by later generations, such as Chen, after li and Xishan. Beizheng, which is opposite to Nanruan, has always placed its ruling center in Hanoi. Although Ruan Dynasty made Hue its capital, it always gave Hanoi a special status.

Hanoi is now a big city with a population of more than 6.6 million, with 9 counties (districts) and 20 counties, covering an area of more than 3,300 square kilometers. However, the urban area is less than 200 square kilometers. In 2065, it was only 182 square kilometers and 438+02. At present, it is in the early stage of rapid expansion of urban construction.

We live in Xie Xian Street, which is called 36 Square in the old city. The street is narrow, five or six meters wide, with two or three-story single buildings with narrow gables on both sides. Now it is mostly shops, mainly hotels, restaurants, grocery stores, fruit shops, handicraft shops, dental clinics and various small intermediaries. The street is full of stalls of various colors, selling along the street. Even in broad daylight, the crowd is still flowing, while motorcycles, taxis and even minivans actually walk through the cracks, but they just file in, which is quite orderly and rarely collides. Not far away, you will see many courtyards. The house inside is like a villa, and it is also like a guild hall in Guangdong and Fujian in the south of China. Many books on both sides of the frontispiece have Chinese characters, such as so-and-so merchants, so-and-so warehouses, or so-and-so ancestral halls and so-and-so temples. What impressed me deeply was the Zhoujia ancestral hall, which read the hall number of Qishan Hall. It was very authentic and made clear the origin and location of Zhoujia at once. The low-rise buildings on the street are relatively old, estimated to have a history of more than 100 years, and some have been newly renovated. My hotel was built in recent years. On a high hill at the corner of the street, the gable is only three or five meters, but it is quite spacious inside. There are 300 to 400 square meters on each floor, and there are six floors in total. The building is in the shape of a sky. Incredibly, there is a two or three-meter-wide passage under the facade, which leads directly to the underground of the building. It turns out that the hotel parking lot was built here, with two floors, and each floor can park seven or eight cars. It can be said that the snail shell is a Dojo. In the later journey, I became more and more aware of the Vietnamese's ability in this respect.

Not far away is the famous White Horse Temple. Unlike the Buddhist scriptures carried by the White Horse Temple in Luoyang, China to commemorate a white horse from the west, the White Horse Temple in Hanoi is related to Li Taizu. This temple was built in 1 1 century, and it is said to be the oldest temple in this city. At that time, Le Tai T turned to White Horse to help him choose the address of the Great Wall, and White Horse brought him here. A temple was built here in memory of this horse. The temple in front of us is small in scale and ordinary in appearance, but the incense is very prosperous. At present, most structures can only be traced back to19th century. For example, the Confucius Temple inside was built in 1839. This architectural form, which combines offering sacrifices to local gods (white horses) and commemorating saints (Confucius), is actually a change of faith in Vietnam, a country with a cultural circle of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.

Xiao Qin, an overseas student from China at Hanoi National University, said that Square 36 is a historical name. Actually, it is not just Square Street 36, but refers to the traditional civic and commercial areas in the old city. It is full of exotic customs and is the ancient heart and soul of Hanoi. It took me a whole morning to get out of this busy market. Tourists and vendors loitered in the street with baskets full of cheap snacks. You can find rice noodle stands, beer bars and cold drinks shops on every street corner, which are full of noise and laughter. Modern style blends with medieval feeling. Walking in the square, enjoying the scenery, sounds and tastes around you, deepened the understanding of this nation.

The main city of Hanoi is developed on the basis of the old city. Letai T built a city in the west of the great bend where the Red River turned to the south, that is, on the other side of the Red River, near the border of the old city and Longbian. Legend has it that he went to the city wall by boat and saw a pterosaur flying in the air, so he renamed Rhoda City as Shenglong City. It not only means calling this place the land of dragons and tigers, but also means becoming a real dragon emperor. Shenglongcheng District is an irregular besieged city, with an extension circumference of about 25 kilometers. It is located in the vast area south of West Lake and west of Jianhu Lake, and the imperial city is in the urban area and east. There are thirty-six workshops in the east of the inner city to accommodate all kinds of manual workshops and all kinds of businesses, such as gold and silver jewelry, copper and iron making, silk, tea and medicinal materials. China people occupy an important position among the 36 parties. The largest firm in Chinese Herbal Medicine Street is Fujia, which moved from Fujian to Xing 'an in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and then re-entered Hanoi after gaining a firm foothold. At that time, street names were often named after the names of goods transported centrally, such as Mian Street, Paper Street, Fan Street, Street, Street, Sugar Street, etc. Many street names are still in use today. According to historical records, there were 36 streets in Hanoi in 1875, which were not only rich in goods, but also considerable in quantity. Xie Xian Street, where I live, used to be a Netrope Street, which was named to commemorate the first line.

Commercial streets are connected with residential areas, and the scope of commercial areas has expanded rapidly, forming the downtown area of Hanoi. Most residential buildings in urban areas are self-built, with different forms and colors. There are ancient buildings with roofs resting, and some small buildings modeled after western Europe or Nanyang style. But the main part is a slender single building, and there is no gap between it and the building. It is built near the street, and there is almost no gap between the sidewalks. The face is narrow, ranging from two or three meters to seven or eight meters, and the length is generally more than ten meters. Generally, three floors are built, and a few have seven or eight floors or even a dozen floors. Without exception, the first floor is changed to commercial use, and the accommodation above the second floor is used for other purposes. The light in the street is good, but it is dark and the air is not circulating. There are many telephone poles in the street, and all kinds of wires are scattered in the air. Although the city has begun to organize, such as bundling, it is still unsightly and there is a potential fire danger.

After lunch, we walked to the northwest. It didn't take long to enter the new area built during the colonial period. The road is much wider, with four lanes, tall and dense trees, and French buildings on both sides, such as Shamian in Guangzhou and Jianghan Road in Hankou, but it seems that the area of this "westernized area" is much larger. This may be a by-product of the French Empire's colonization of Vietnam for nearly a hundred years, and the establishment of the Governor's Office in Hanoi to rule the three countries of India and zhina. It takes about 2 kilometers to reach the imperial city of Shenglong.

Hanoi Imperial City is listed in the World Historical and Cultural Heritage List by UNESCO. But at the front, I have mixed feelings.

Tickets are purchased into the park, and on the right side of the road is the Imperial City Exhibition Hall, which mainly introduces the evolution and history of the Imperial City in the form of pictures and words. It is a pity that there are only Vietnamese, English and French, but no Chinese. As a country that has used Chinese as its official language and written language for two thousand years, Chinese vocabulary accounts for more than 70% of Vietnamese vocabulary, but there is no Chinese explanation, which is really incredible.

On the left side of the road is Huangcheng District. What we are facing is an open square with green grass, which is as big as two or three football fields. Walking along the tunnel in the ground, the imperial city management stands in front of you. The masonry structure of the city wall, painted yellow, is about six or seven meters high. Unlike the Imperial Doors in China, most of them are cinerary caskets with complicated overlapping. The gate of Shenglong Imperial City is relatively simple and a little thin. Chengmen Mansion is a tower arch with only three bays. Later, during the trip, I found that the gatehouses of major buildings such as walls and temples in Vietnam basically used this method. The gate is Chinese-style, with three parallel doors in the middle. The middle door is usually closed for the royal family to enter and exit, and a door is opened every twenty or thirty meters from left to right for officials to enter and exit, which is connected with the city wall. There is an auxiliary door on the left and right outside the gatehouse for daily personnel to enter and exit.

Enter through the main entrance of the city gate. It turned out to be a French-style building with two floors, a rectangular outsole, a red roof and beige walls. There are two small buildings, one like a villa and the other like a dormitory. There are two groups of college students in bachelor's uniforms taking pictures of graduation photo in the yard. They were all excited, cheering and throwing their hats into the sky. Going forward, it looks empty, only a few big trees, surrounded by walls. In the northwest of the city gate, there is a large area of archaeological land, which is excavated layer by layer to reveal the foundations of royal buildings in different periods.

The vast imperial capital has experienced many vicissitudes, and there are countless natural disasters. It has long been in ruins. How can it not be surprising and regrettable? During the French colonial period, Japan, India and the Three Kingdoms became the artillery headquarters of the Governor's Office. Several French-style buildings were built at the end of 19. There are also some abandoned barracks and incomplete artillery positions, and several ancient western cannons are rusty and scattered all over the place. During the Anti-American War, the Vietnamese army built underground fortifications here, and the famous General Wu Yuanjia commanded operations here, redefining the value and significance of this imperial city.

About one kilometer to the southeast is the Vietnam Military Museum. There is a high platform opposite the exhibition hall, on which stands a tower. The east, south and west directions of the building are written with the words Xuhui, Zhennan and Yingxi respectively, but the north side is covered with lime, which was originally identified as "Zhenbei". We climbed more than ten meters from the tower gate and boarded the turret. You can see the imperial gate from a distance, and there are intermittent walls nearby. This tower was originally the Imperial City Tower, which played the role of vault. During the colonial period, a large piece of royal land between the castle and the city gate was turned into a new town in Hanoi. There are no traces of Vietnamese architecture, all of which are western-style buildings. Government agencies, dignitaries' houses, rich apartments and new commercial streets are connected together, and then adjacent to the old city in the east and south directions, forming the basic framework of the main urban area of Hanoi after 19 century.