4 - Wards' Implementation of the Pavement Order Regime in Hà Nội

Summary

Since the early 1980s, many people in Hà Nội have taken to the pavement to sell goods and services. They include many former state employees, and they do so for basic livelihood and to supplement income. These needs came hard and fast in the mid and late 1980s, the years of hyperinflation and economic restructuring. The biggest blow to the economy then was the drastic reduction of the state sector, which had provided most, if not all, the employment in Vietnam. Here went a four-liner that slightly exaggerated and teased:

On one end of the street, a senior colonel pumps tires

On the other end, a lieutenant colonel sells black beans dessert

Thought he was a stranger but turned out a friend as we went near —

Our brigadier presses a horn to sell ice-cream.

People in Hà Nội were joined by roaming vendors (hàng rong), who came into the city from the villages to peddle farm produce, especially after 1988. In addition, though mainly in the older parts of the city where housing space for each family was tight, many Hà Nội residents reluctantly did their personal, family, and business chores on the pavement, including activities such as washing, cooking, recreation, and storing and displaying goods. A journalist of the Hà Nội Moi (HNM) newspaper criticized a typical scene he saw, whereby the pavement, a public space, became a yard for many families:

Around the [submerged] water tanks on the pavement many thoughtless and shocking acts take place that hardly show the refinement of Tràng An [an old alias of Hà Nội] people! Foreign guests walk by and are very surprised because they have never seen, in the capital of any country in this world, a stranger method to keep water. People even turn the pavement around the water tanks into their own private yard and do anything they want without a thought for others. They brush their teeth; wash their faces in the morning. They wash rice and vegetables at noon and in the evening. In time, they also do their laundry and bathe right there – first the children, then the adults …[…]