Blue Trees

After the initial din in the streets of Hanoi, slipping into an art gallery or two, was soothing to the senses. I entered a world with long empty spaces and up narrow staircases, I discovered wall after wall covered with contemporary Vietnamese art that attracted and entranced.

It's easy as a visitor to find the galleries as there are a few streets in the Old Quarter of Hanoi which have a gallery every few steps. I wandered into the Green Palm Gallery, and a few others along the same street and finally came across the Mai Gallery which had paintings by my favourite Vietnamese artist, a woman called Phan Thu Trang, who paints lyrical, impressionistic scenes of trees, houses and people with the colour of the trees showing the season: green, pink, orange/yellow and blue for spring, summer, autumn and winter. I especially liked the winter and summer landscapes. I also came to the conclusion that the Vietnamese must love their trees as quite a number of artists had clearly taken some pains with their trees lavishing them with a nuance, gradation of colour and suggestion of movement that caught my eye. And Hanoi had a great number of old trees in it with the roots spilling across the pavements.

Other pieces which stayed in my memory were the oil and acrylic mixes of bucolic farmhouse amid field scenes where it was more the impressionistic mix of colours that was so striking. The haunting, subtle monk or monks disappearing into a canvas of dark black or orange also stood out.  

But the surprise was saved for the last as one of the last galleries we entered turned out to be a gallery where one could order a masterpiece so to speak eg if you wanted a Van Gogh Sunflowers, you could tell them this was what you wanted and in three days, they would have one ready for you at USD $30-40 depending on the size.  Some of the work was original but the gallery clearly did their best business simply in providing a poor art enthusiast with an inexpensive rough copy of his favourite artist's work.  These paintings were sometimes simply in the style of, sometimes outright copies, albeit not fakes as they were clearly copies.  These would have no investment value obviously unlike the expensive S$700-1400 pieces of emerging Vietnamese artists, but they had their own market niche.   

So, a blue tree by an unknown artist anyone? 

Picture courtesy of Taking5.  All Rights Reserved.

The Sidewalk Sidle

Photos courtesy of Taking5. All rights reserved.

Being in Hanoi was a dusty, noisy experience on the sidewalk as it's often filled with motorbicycles, cyclos and scooters taking up half or more of the space and the remaining space being taken up with little hawker stalls selling all manner of vietnamese meals and snacks.

The hawker stalls are a picturesque sight with little communities forming around them and often regular customers chatting to each other and to the hawker. The food is often cooked in a largish metal pot and the customers sit on kid-sized wooden stools. They usually sit on the side of the sidewalk nearest the road, leaving the pedestrians a little space to squeeze past whilst still on the sidewalk. The country folk come along with their baskets at a tidy little jog, their fruits neatly piled in a conical fashion and always on the lookout for a customer. These hawkers have walked for miles from their farms since 3am or so to sell their wares in the cities before returning in the afternoon or evening back home.

It struck me altogether than the Vietnamese were extremely efficient in their use of space in the Old Quarter but of course that often meant the pedestrian was often forced to walk onto the narrow road, which is filled with hooting motocyclists and scooters and the occasional car, truck or minibus. The din has to be experienced to be believed but by the end of the first day, I had a splitting headache from walking around amidst this lively scene no doubt accentuated by the difficulties of figuring out how to cross a Hanoi street. (The answer for those who might be visiting, is to wait for a little gap preferably with no cars or trucks and walk out slowly into the river of motocyclists who will part like water around you. )

The little narrow shopfronts which I slipped into to escape the din were a welcome relief of coolness and quiet. They often ran deep inside and I often found myself mounting a flight of very narrow wooden stairs into a further floor deep within. No wonder the Vietcong were so very efficient at living in tunnels!

Now that I'm back in safe, clean Singapore, I miss the din of the Hanoi streets and the sense of life lived literally out on the sidewalks.   There is a sense of warmth in seeing these little communities out on the sidewalks, of little side street markets where people often know each other and settle down to drink a cup of Vietnamese coffee together as they get an early start to the day.  It's a city which grows on me and doubtless if I lived there long enough, I'd start looking past the dilapidated or gentrified shop fronts, to see more the heart and soul of the people of Hanoi, and the communities they've created in so very little space.