Hanoi and The Abandoned Vietnamese Dream

Once upon a time, Hanoi was not filth. It was rich with cultures, filled with joy, and full of excitement. It was where I was bred and raised by my parents. It was where I had my first experiences of the world for the first time and my first encounters with many good friends of mine who with me went on to have so many good times together at every street corner from Dong Da to Long Bien to Hoan Kiem.

At some point, I thought being brought up in Hanoi was a privilege - not the opposite.

Being a 2001 kid, I am more associated with the 2000s - early 2010s, so most of my memories were of Hanoi of that period in time. Every single day going out in Hanoi used to not be a struggle. Every single day, it was not trying to get through the honest-to-god awful traffic jam to get to your destination on time, absolutely stressed out and exhausted from taking in all the harming air into your lungs, constantly avoiding the police officers trying to wring some dough out of their citizens who don't know any better.

But then something happened.

And I’ve checked with myself and with others - it's not just me, or rather it's not just me growing up and losing the “magical childhood feeling”. It's a real thing. Hanoi’s very own people and those from other places are getting disillusioned with the city. Even the weekends are now stressful, as stated by many if not most people who were once in love with the city, or for lack of better words - the idea of Hanoi - the “Vietnamese dream” term coined by some expats, which they had since abandoned when finally getting to see Hanoi for what it truly is - for certain not the escape from the industrialization and corporations that of Western countries which Hanoi has inevitably fallen victim for.

Hanoi has been compared to New York in many ways, and there is a certain amount of truth to that analogy. Of course the bun cha's are remarkable just as much as hotdogs and pizzas. Xoi, even more so, especially when taken in the morning with a jolly cup of coffee (that hits you harder than any 25,000 dong upper could get you).

And even Vietnamese who grew up having it often still can't ever get enough of Pho. I know, for it has been 20 years for me and it remains special every single time I pick up a pair of chopsticks looking at my freshly made bowl all the whilst hearing the teenagers and geezers smoking Lao tobacco within walking distance. You can even smell it from afar, which makes the experience so much Hanoian that you can't find anywhere else.

But aside from the phenomenal cuisine, what has Hanoi turned into but a parody of itself? Asides the subculture-upon-subculture by the youth which we of this generation are blessed with thanks to globalization, what Hanoi has offered these past couple of years but more honking from the cars bought by the privilege trading the sake of the environment for the sake of status and “convenience", more aggression due to the decrease of mental health (or lack thereof) or more buildings taking place of what once were gatherings for cultural (i.e. Hanoi Cinematheque). And there is no sign of stopping - I'm looking at you, VinGroup enthusiasts.

About 30, or just 20 years ago, bicycles were the norm here. We have always seen that as a sign of poverty. In retrospect, wasn't it more peaceful, and there was much more space back then for people to walk and garbage wasn’t everywhere you went?

And for me to see, these past few years, the space of the streets no more when they are filled with nothing but garbage, air polluted so bad we can hardly breathe due to the absurd amount of four-wheeled vehicles purchased by the privileged, the quality of life/culture deteriorated to the point of the average people cannot go for about 30 minutes without either shouting at each other aggressively (violence has in fact been normalized through a weird mixture of cultures), or sitting so quietly like mindless souls on their phones laughing at mindless Tik Tok reels on whatever latest trend, and can't even get a decent human interaction out of them, is overall just very saddening.

Way before the economic boom, cars were a rarity. Then all of the sudden, they became more widespread. People started buying more cars in the late 1990s as a means to show off their status - which was clearly just a sign of a country getting itself out of rags and going to riches.

Like the remarkable speech by the character Will McAvoy played by Jeff Daniels in HBO's The Newsroom. Is Hanoi one of the best cities to live in the world?

It once was. And it probably still is for some.

I was born and brought up in Hanoi so even though I despise it very, very much as demonstrated in most of my rants on the Facebook platform, deep down I hold it still a very dear place - just that it has ran its course of being a place for me to be able to thrive, like many New Yorkers in the 1970s (or 2020s) that I assume went through the exact same thing.

Hanoi, though, has no Central Park. To see virtually everything falling apart - from the cultural heritages and places being taken down for unnecessary infrastructure, to the physical degradation of the city itself is up there with seeing your parents getting older and grumpier.

Part of the process, but very hard.

Imagine Hanoi if everyone were to ride a bicycle and didn't throw garbage everywhere they went. And imagine if there are actually changes being made to the environment. And just imagine if people don't get killed for ridiculous reasons because their state of well-being and rationality is never looked after - by faith, by science, or by not being raised by irresponsible parents who put phones and tablets in their kids hand to avoid actually engaging with them - by anything, at all.

The city which I had held dear for so long has pretty much for the most part died. But here's a tiniest little hope for the future when Hanoi, just like how many other cities in the world going through the same thing can get past all this and become a brand new one. A better one. And the spirit of Hanoi lives on with those that still believe in the city. Maybe 10 or 15 years from now, We'll look at the Hanoi again as how it used to be.