Once a thriving riverside trading hub home to wealthy merchants, Hanoi’s 400-year-old Cu Da village still carries echoes of its golden age in old houses and French-style villas.
A centuries-old riverside village in Hanoi was once a thriving trading hub that produced many wealthy merchants. Today, traces of its prosperous past survive in traditional homes, French-style villas and a village landscape increasingly under pressure from urbanization.
Traces of a riverside village’s golden age
Set along the Nhue River, Cu Da in Binh Minh Commune, Hanoi, is a village with a history stretching back around 400 years, known for making tuong, a traditional fermented soybean sauce, and glass noodles, as well as for its distinctive architecture.
It is also one of the few ancient villages remaining in northern Vietnam’s Red River Delta where traditional Vietnamese houses stand alongside buildings displaying a clear French architectural influence.
Cu Da follows a “fishbone” layout. From the main road running along the riverbank, narrow lanes branch into different neighborhoods. Their entrances are marked by arched gates with curved roofs and parallel couplets on either side.
The historic entrance to the Trinh clan ancestral house, one of the village’s major family lineages.
The village’s riverside location once provided favorable conditions for trade and commerce.
Historical records indicate that Cu Da experienced its most prosperous period from around 1890 to 1945, when it became a major center for trading and exchanging goods across the surrounding region.
Many Cu Da residents moved into central Hanoi to establish businesses in bustling commercial streets such as Hang Ngang and Hang Dao.
Among them were exceptionally wealthy merchants, including Cu Doanh and later Cu Chan, who is regarded as one of the pioneers of the Dong Xuan knitting industry.
One day in August, Dinh Cong Minh, head of the elderly association in Cu Da-Khuc Thuy Village, guided VietNamNet reporters through the narrow lanes in search of surviving traces of that prosperous era.
According to Minh, Cu Da once had many beautiful old houses that gave the village its distinctive character, with traditional Vietnamese homes interspersed among French-style residences.
Around 40 old houses remain in the village today, but relatively few have preserved their original architecture intact.
The historic entrance to the Trinh clan ancestral house, one of the village’s major family lineages.
The home of Trinh The Sung, born in 1952 and head of the Trinh clan council, is among the traditional houses still being preserved by descendants of the family.
According to Sung, the house was built in 1874. He represents the fourth generation of his family to live there, while the family’s grandchildren have now reached the seventh generation.
Trinh The Sung’s family home is more than 150 years old.
The house follows a traditional five-bay, two-wing layout and was built using xoan wood, or bead-tree timber. Its facade features traditional wooden panel doors, while the roof is covered with old-style ri tiles fired using rice straw.
Passed down from one generation to the next, the house still contains a pair of parallel sentences presented by students to Sung’s grandfather.
Sung wonders whether future generations will be able to preserve their ancestral home.
While Sung’s family home represents traditional northern Vietnamese architecture, the house where Nguyen Van Bao lives tells a very different architectural story.
The property once belonged to an extremely wealthy merchant and was elaborately constructed in the French style, with two stories and a garden.
The villa bears the hallmarks of Indochinese architecture, combining French structural elements with traditional Vietnamese motifs.
Bao’s family was assigned to live there in 1955. In his memory, the house was remarkably beautiful at the time, complete with carefully crafted flower stands and ornamental fish features.
The villa bears the hallmarks of Indochinese architecture, combining a French structural style with traditional Vietnamese decorative motifs.
Its most distinctive features are eight small statues of deities of good fortune positioned in front of the main entrance.
Eight small statues of deities of good fortune stand in front of the house’s main entrance.
According to the homeowner, several people have attempted to steal the statues over the years but failed. Others have offered hundreds of millions of dong to buy them, but the family has refused to sell.
After nearly a century of use, however, the villa has deteriorated significantly. Its walls have yellowed and are peeling in numerous places.
Extensions and alterations made over the years to meet the family’s changing living needs have also left the building looking considerably different from its original design.
Preserving a ‘village within the city’
Cu Da’s moss-covered communal house retains the atmosphere of an ancient northern Vietnamese village.
Although relatively few historic homes remain, Cu Da still preserves many features associated with the life of a centuries-old Vietnamese village.
Amid newer buildings, its communal house, pagoda, flagpole and network of old lanes continue to define the distinctive character of this 400-year-old community.
At the heart of the village stands Cu Da Communal House, also known as Vat Communal House, which Minh helps look after.
A tranquil corner of Cu Da Pagoda, also known as Linh Minh Tu.
The communal house worships the village’s tutelary deity, a military mandarin from the Dinh Dynasty. The structure retains its long ironwood pillars and dramatically curved roof, while a pair of stone toads in the courtyard have been worn smooth by the passage of time.
Alongside the communal house, Cu Da Pagoda, also known as Linh Minh Tu, is one of the village’s most important surviving historic structures.
The pagoda was designated a national heritage site in 2000. Its main three-entrance gate faces south, with two enormous old mango trees standing in front.
Another reminder of Cu Da’s prosperous era is its flagpole, built in 1929.
The village’s nearly century-old flagpole stands close to Cu Da market.
Around 1930, the village also had 12 cast-iron streetlights lining its roads, powered by a gasoline generator brought from Hanoi. Only two of the original lamp posts remain in the village today.
In recent years, visitors have increasingly come to Cu Da on weekends to explore its old houses, communal house, pagoda and narrow village lanes.
Historic architecture and traditional crafts have become attractions for visitors to Cu Da.
Dinh Cong Minh at the Dinh clan ancestral house, a building preserved by generations of descendants.
The traditional crafts of making tuong and glass noodles also give visitors another reason to discover the community.
Yet behind the appeal of this historic riverside village lies a growing concern over the gradual disappearance of its heritage.
Minh said many of the beautiful old houses that once shaped Cu Da’s distinctive appearance have deteriorated over time, been renovated or extended, or disappeared altogether to make way for new buildings.
For those who have spent much of their lives in Cu Da, the gradual loss is a source of deep regret.
Some Cu Da families continue the traditional crafts of making fermented soybean sauce and glass noodles. Photos: Nguyen Huy
Under Hanoi’s 100-year Capital Master Plan, the concept of a “village within the city, city within the village” is among the central ideas intended to balance urbanization with the preservation of local identity.
The “village within the city” approach seeks to retain elements of traditional village culture - including communal houses, festivals, traditional crafts, customs and community relationships - as urban development advances.
Minh hopes Cu Da can be planned along those lines, allowing its remaining historic houses, communal house, pagoda, traditional crafts and village structure to be preserved.
“The village can change, but the values our ancestors left behind need to be preserved for future generations,” he said.
Vietnamnet.vn
Podcast
.svg){kind=icon}
