The last smithy on Hanoi's Blacksmith Street

Seth Mydans, Hanoi
November 29, 2010

The traditional trades have all but gone from the Ancient Quarter.

HE IS the last blacksmith on Blacksmith Street, dark with soot, his arms dappled with burns, sweating and hammering at his little roadside forge as a new world courses past him.

The son and grandson of blacksmiths, Nguyen Phuong Hung grew up when the street still rang with the sounds of the smithies, producing farm equipment, horseshoes and hand tools, before modern commerce and industrial production made them obsolete.

Advertisement: Story continues below ''I still remember, when it was raining lightly, the streets were empty and that all you could hear was the sounds of the hammers,'' said Hung, 49. ''It created a special atmosphere. Every shop had a fire going. All you could hear was the hammers.''

The other smithies have been replaced by clothing shops, a cosmetics boutique, a bank, welding shops and two showrooms selling jade carvings.

''Now it's only me,'' he said, forging crowbars, hammer heads, files and drill bits. ''I'm proud to be the last one. I'm unique, like if I speak an African language. Just a few people know it and you are special.''

He has not passed on the family trade to his son, who is in college and who in any case does not have what Hung calls the sensitive hands of a blacksmith. His daughter is also in college, and she can't even recognise a forge and bellows.

''Once I am gone the street will have no meaning any more,'' he said. ''Blacksmith Street will be only a name.''

That has been the fate of almost all the 36 narrow streets in Hanoi's tree-shaded Ancient Quarter, each named for the guilds that once controlled them - Fan Street, China Bowl Street, Sweet Potato Street, Conical Hat Street.

Only four of the streets had retained something of their original businesses, said Nguyen Vinh Phuc, a leading historian of Hanoi.

There are still jewellery shops on Silver Street, sweets and pastries on Sugar Street, votive papers and toys on Votive Paper Street and pots and pans on Tin Street.

''Of course, when nobody sells the product any more, then all this history will disappear,'' said Phuc, 84. ''I'm an old man. I feel sad to see us lose these ancient streets.''

Traders had done business on this spot since the ninth century, Phuc said. The 36 guilds established themselves at the start of the 19th century.

Today in the Ancient Quarter the outside world means tourists, and this new trade has brought hostels, restaurants, silk shops and travel agencies to the 36 streets.

Most mornings Hung's father, Nguyen Huu Thinh, 88, visits on his bicycle and sits silently for a while, reading a newspaper and looking on as his son hammers the red-hot iron. Flames and smoke gush from the hot metal as he tempers it in a bucket of oil. By the end of the day, his arms and face are black with soot.

It is not a glamorous look, and Hung said his wife had told him she never would have married him if she had known he would become a blacksmith.

NEW YORK TIMES