Hàng Bạc is 280 meters from Hàng Mắm to the intersection of Hàng Ngang and Hàng Đào. It is one of the oldest streets in Vietnam dating from at least the 13th century.
The Red River delta had resources of bronze, iron, gold and silver, but later European and Mexican silver had to be imported in exchange for gold. The Vietnamese in the Hà Nội area were using metallurgical techniques as early as 3,000 years ago during the Đông Sơn Bronze Age. Before people used paper money, bronze and zinc coin pieces and silver ingots were used for large exchanges. When merchants needed a large amount of money it was difficult to use heavy metal coins and bars so one would have to arrange an exchange on Hàng Bạc. Later, the word for paper money (even today) is the word Bạc, to imply paper “silver”.
Besides the original inhabitants of the area the people of the three villages: Trâu Khê, Định Công and Đồng Sâm also lived there.
The silversmiths and silver smelters from Trâu Khê village, Bình Giang district, Hải Dương province were the most important crafters on Hàng Bạc. During the reign of Lê Thánh Tông (1460-1497) Lưu Xuân Tín came from this village to become Minister of Interior. He secured Imperial permission to set up a silver ingot factory. Then he brought along crafters from his village to the capital. Trâu Khê village had five subdivisions; some people from each subdivision came to the capital to make silver ingots at their factory at No58. They cast the first silver bars (ingots used as money) and coins in Hà Nội using a method adopted from China . The crafters had to keep their methods secret to prevent counterfeiting. They brought their spiritual support along with them to the capital, so the Trâu Khê villagers set up temples to the founders of their craft. There is no temple dedicated to Lưu Xuân Tín but one to Hiên Viên, a legendary figure, also known as the founder of the Hundred crafts.
By the end of the 19th century the original silversmith settlers from Trâu Khê village at Hàng Bạc had increased so much in number that the original communal house there became inadequate for all the workers. So they bought the Nội (Internal) Temple of Hài Tượng village and turned it into a temple where the Silver-Money Exchange agents met and prayed. This Đông Các guild was formerly composed of two small villages: Đông Thọ (at the head of the eastern area) and Dũng Hãn (the western part) of Hữu Túc canton. In the mid 19th century these two villages merged into one village: Dũng Thọ. The name took one word from each of the two villages.
Since originally the Đông Các guild was made up of crafters from two villages or guild subdivisions. There are communal house in two villages. They are:
1. Trên or upper communal house at No50-58, called Dũng Hãn. At communal house Dũng Hãn there is a stele erected in 1783 telling about a mandarin who illegally took over the communal house and how the local people took him to court and won. Then Dũng Hãn was a subdivision of the Đông Các guild. The Dũng Hãn Communal house honors the spirit of the West: Linh Lang It contained a silversmith apprentice training school and was the workshop of the guild.
2. The Lower communal house (Kim Ngân) at No42-48 was the foundry where the silver was molten and poured into molds. At the communal houses molds were prepared into a form to be handed over to the mandarin in charge.
At the turn of the 18th century under the Lê Dynasty the street took on more varied functions. In addition to people from Trâu Khê who cast silver ingots, the street attracted jewelry makers and money exchangers. The jewelers came from Định Công Thượng (Upper Định Công) village a southern suburb of Hà Nội.
There were three brothers of this village who learned their techniques in China around the 6th century (around the time of Lý Nam Đế), butr who are considered to be the patron saints of the Vietnamese jewelry making profession:
Trần Điền
Trần Hòa
Trần Điện
A temple dedicated to these three founding brothers was built at the start of Hàng Bồ Street .
The guild members brought back the ancestral tablets to their Định Công Thượng communal house in the south of Hà Nội.
Hàng Bạc also had different types of jewelers 1. Nghề Chạm. Engraving designs, such as flowers, on gold or silver 2. Nghề Đậu gold melted to liquid and turned into gold leaf that sticks onto metal jewelry. 3. Nghề Trơn unengraved items polished flat and smooth.
People from Đồng Sâm village, Kiến Xương district, Thái Bình province also smelt, engraved and polished large silver works, for example, betel boxes, bowls and trays, incense burners, bowls, teacups, platters. Định Công Thượng village (a suburb of Hà Nội) crafters made smaller items, little lime paste boxes and jewelry.
The ingot casting trade terminated at the beginning of the 19th century when Emperor Gia Long ordered the transfer of the smelters and the silver ingot processing factory to the new capital in Huế. Money changing continued until the French occupation (late 19th century) and thus the French administration called this Money-changer Street .
In the eastern part of the street, the Dũng Thọ village temple at No24 in the corner of Hàng Bạc, now private residences, honored Taoist spirits. In the French time it was called Trưởng Ca, after the oldest son of the temple keeper who served a hearty but inexpensive soup made from broth of beef bones at night to cycle drivers, cart pullers, and night club dancing girls. Perhaps the soup maker purchased the bones from the Butcher’s guild at No8 Hàng Buồm or perhaps the ingredients were obtained on Cửa Đông Street from leftovers from meals of the French soldiers in the citadel.
Miss Bé Tí lived on this street. Although she was a fat woman who ran a brokerage for the French and important officials, she was called affectionately “little girl of Hàng Bạc”. She displayed strange animals, like four-legged chickens, a pig with two mouths, a dwarf couple. People came from outside Hà Nội to visit her “zoo”. Crosbie Garstin in Dragon and the Lotus wrote of his visit to this salon in 1928: “Something stirred in the gloom; that something began to creep across the floor. What on earth was coming now? A cobra or what? A one-legged chicken hopped out followed by the most horrible elderly dwarf, swinging himself on his hands, his shrunken legs coiled up underneath him like withered vine tendrils”.
Hàng Bạc was the location of one the scene of Mẹo Lừa, a short story in the collection Essays Written in the Rain, which describes old Hà Nội, by writer Phạm Đình Hổ (1768-1839). In this story set in the 18th century, the Đông Các guild was busy exchanging silver.
The Golden Bell Theater, the Chuông Vàng (Kim Chung) at No72-74 was built in 1920 by a Chinese merchant for performances of Cải Lương troupes from the south. In 1930s, he sold the theater to the Lê Hoàn family and later the theater’s director Lê Thiết changed the name to Tố Như. In front of this theater during the war against the French on the January 14, 1937 the “Hà Nội gủads”, a unit of the anti-French army swore to fight to their death. Their headquarters was at No86 Hàng Bạc in the house of Mr. Chân Hưng, the owner of the largest goldsmith shop on the street in the 1930s. Like all the great goldsmiths on the street, such as, Đức Bảo, Nghĩa Lợi, Lợi Thái, Quảng Tường, Chân Hưng had inherited his trade from his Trâu Khê ancestors. After 1945 it was called the Red House because in August 1945, the father turned his fortune over to the Party to help built up the newly founded country. Chân Hưng’s son-in-law was Phạm Huy Thông, a pioneering poet, linguist, and professor of history who studied in France and who was a member of the Social Sciences Commission and head of the Archeology Institute. In Paris , he drafted some of Hồ Chí Minh’s speeches. The building is now transformed into an apartment house but the ancestral altar of the Chân Hưng family is on the second floor.
Other well-known people living on Hàng Bạc were the writer, Vũ Trọng Phụng, the poet, Vũ Đình Liên and Đoàn Trần Nghiệp, a member of Việt Nam ’s Koumingtang at No36.
Across the street front the communal houses at No41 is a building that retains the pre-colonial style and sits close to the street. It was a private Ngô family worship house.
The French called the street Rue des Changeurs, or Exchange Street .
Source: vietnamnow.org
