A BEAUTIFUL ACCIDENT

Adapted from an old essay in Vietnamese, originally titled "Một sự nhầm lẫn đẹp đẽ"

Nineteen was a nomadic age. After half a year in Paris, floating around Europe, a Beijing summer strewn with spontaneous trips to other parts of China, I sensed brewing distress at the thought of being in Hanoi. Being stranger and invisible in a foreign city comforted my self-exiled soul. Once I had found solace in running away, I could not bear going back.

Twenty was yet another nomadic age. Feeling stuck in the rural western Massachusetts college town, I quickly grasped the chance at another travel fellowship. Ravished by the architectural and urban landscape, I indulged in the intellectual and photographic adventure around Asia. Yet another escape.

From Nanjing city wall. Photograph by An Hoang.

I eventually found myself in Hanoi.

Still locked into the habits of wandering months, during the first few days back, I took my Canon around the city. “Around Hanoi” is deduced to the few quarters near where I grew up, the Old Quarter and the French Quarter. None of the pictures felt enough. How come the photographic moments of Hanoi kept evading me while just earlier in Shanghai and Tokyo they came to me so easily?

***

September Second two thousand and seventeen was the last day of this brief visit. September Second bears the same meaning to Vietnamese people the way July Fourth means to Americans. Migrant workers left for home, leaving behind a Hanoi so deserted it was calm and peaceful. The weather shifted to autumn. The cool breeze slipped past your neck grazed on your hair and caressed your cheeks. Droplets of sunshine dripped through the leafy canopy fell on your shoulders.

When such airy gentleness filled our quiet streets, a DSRL became too much of an intrusive disruption. I dropped the Canon and went out with a film camera. To do analog photography you have to be slow. You cannot snap carelessly or greedily. You have to pause, contemplate, frame and shoot. I habitually hold my breath right before and during a film shoot. For stabilization, perhaps. Not wanting an inhale to disrupt my hand, maybe. But surely, in the split-second life was on pause, my existence became one with the camera. After all, how do you freeze time?

To find treasure in Hanoi, you need not dig. Look up. Raise your eyes beyond the clutter of storefronts to teleport to the past. What you find, an intricate ironwork balcony or flying temple eaves sweeping into the sky, are architectural gems from a turbulent past - a visual feast for the eyes that seek. Greedily, I took a piece of their soul, carefully stored on the pages of my sketchbook and now inside my camera. In retrospect, my quest for the city’s hidden charm started when the ten-year-old me yelled for grandma from across the street, looking up only to be bewitched by the 1920s façade. Little did I know that was the very moment I fell in love with architecture. A this-is-a-beautiful-house gasp sparked the artistic journey that sailed me thousands of miles away from home only to come back and retrace the footsteps of my past self.

Hanoi facade, typically tangled with electric cables. Photograph by An Hoang.

The photography hunt led my way first to Hoàng Diệu Street, a spacious tree-lined boulevard that is exemplary of the French colonial urban planning legacy. Three rows of mahogany shield travelers from the scorching tropical sun. The pavements are large enough people turn them into ad hoc badminton playgrounds. Passing through the mere one mile of Hoàng Diệu street means traversing through one thousand years of Hanoi history. Here live the ruins of 11th century Thăng Long Imperial Palace, government ministries housed in 19th-century colonial buildings, the Vietnam War monument, and the high profile military figure Võ Nguyên Giáp. Imagine walking the same paths that emperors of past dynasties, presidents, generals, anyone who was anyone in Vietnamese history did. But history and its richness never crossed my mind when I still lived in Hanoi. Hoàng Diệu to me was just a street through which Dad drove me to school every day since kindergarten. Amidst the important military and government buildings live a small commune and the tiny kindergarten I attended. My classmates’ parents and mine are ordinary citizens whose professions ranged from teachers to veggie sellers at local markets, none had any political affiliation. How such insignificant kindergarten exists next to the Prime Minister's residence is still a mystery to me.

Hanoi Old Quarter has a funny concept where an entire street would specialize in selling one single merchandise. You will find twenty different stores selling the exact same clothing, stationery, and jewelry next to one another. Interesting from an economic perspective, but a ten-year-old couldn’t care less about the economy. All I cared about was the toy street next to my aunt’s house. Orange fluorescent lights shone ever so brightly on the pinkness of Barbie houses, glimmered on the plastic cover of stuffed animals and toy sets, reflecting the stars in a kid’s eyes. The toys were displayed in the open air. The distance between me and that dollhouse was a mere thin air of nothingness and the impossibility of a permission from my mother. I grew accustomed to and made peace with not being able to always own the toys and later the things that I desired.

Toy Street led to the heart of Hanoi: Hoàn Kiếm Lake Lake of Returned Sword. Once upon a time, a Mystical Turtle gave a Vietnamese king the magical sword that helped him defeat the Ming and reclaim Viet land. He then returned the sword at this lake. But we Hanoians call it Bờ Hồ the Lake. Out of hundreds of lakes, only Hoàn Kiếm Lake can be The Lake.

If you keep moving past the Lake, you will reach the Museum of National History. A beautiful architectural hybrid dubbed Indochina Style. Traces of Neo-classical pilasters and arches blend seamlessly with native hip-and-gable terra cotta roofs. I did not need to know about architecture to appreciate its brilliance. I used to volunteer here during high school. No one visited except for a few foreign tourists. As a teenager, I felt deeply sad about the non-existence of museum culture in Vietnam. The question of the museum and its content lingered until my architecture graduate thesis. It is astonishing how such an impression could last that long and turn into something meaningful. But of course, I haven’t made any real change. All was on paper.

On the way home, there was a giant grey concrete water tower at the intersection of Hang Dau Street. Ugly but it marks a historical landmark of the city and in Hanoians’ minds. During a trip, Grandma suddenly held onto strangers’ hands asking them đưa tôi về bốt Hàng Đậu take me back to Hang Dau Tower. Her Alzheimer got worse. Yet even when both the presence and the past no longer existed in her mind, a Hanoian never forgot where home is.

The water tower led me back to Hoe Nhai, the street I grew up on. There was a small beautiful temple at the intersection where my mom would go to pray every so often. Over the years, the temple’s head became our family’s confidant. I always think of this unassuming woman as one of the last pure-hearted people left in this city.

With only 36 shots in a roll of film, every moment taken was contemplated: the nonchalance of a half-closed window, the quietude of a tree, the tangle of electric wires, the blossoming of paper flowers. The journey ended as I counted to 36. Hanoi had awoken, the sun started to glare, Hoe Nhai market had already begun to bustle.

***

I couldn’t hold back a gasp as I popped open the camera cover. Laid in front of me in the film chamber was a 24-film roll instead of a 36-roll. I turned the roll twelve times too many, which probably destroyed it. Just as I expected, the last images layered on top of one another. Not as I expected, nothing was destroyed. When none of the single shots felt enough, an artistic accident happened to be enough. Hà Nội in my heart was never one shot. Hà Nội is layered with overlapping everyday moments. Green shutter windows on time-washed yellow ochre walls, a red flag waving amidst electric wire knots above the mayhem of shop signs and strings ladened with colorful clothes. Contrasting yet so harmonious. Chaotic yet so charming. Pieces of memories weave together in a mental collage that was my hà nội.

***

In the Wong Kar Wai’s movies that I adore, there was a haunting image of the legless birds.

there's a kind of bird without legs that can only fly and fly,

and rest in the wind when it is tired.

The bird only lands once in its life... that's when it dies.

Three years ago, I spread my wings and flew away. My truest fear of returning to Hanoi was to discover that I had forever lost Hanoi that I had become a legless bird. That September Second I learned that whenever I got tired I could rest in the wind, any way the wind blows, blow me back to the Red River breeze, blow me back to my childhood, back to my hà nội.

Hanoi on 35mm film, accidental twelvefold exposure. Photograph by An Hoang, 2017.

"... Chồng chéo và hỗn độn như những kí ức và cảm xúc của tôi về Hà Nội. Trong tâm trí tôi Hà Nội là những mảnh cửa chớp xanh thẫm trên nền tường vàng đã ngả màu thời gian, những mảnh chằng chịt dây điện, lá cờ đỏ bay phấp phới điểm xuyết một nét chấm phá rực rỡ trên nền màu trầm tư, những tấm biển hàng lô xô, những dây phơi trĩu nặng quần áo. Những mảnh kí ức đan xen lẫn nhau đầy ngẫu nhiên, đầy mâu thuẫn nhưng lại hài hoà đến lạ."