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Hàng Đường
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08/10/2010 | 2:03 PM
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VGP - In the early days, shops in Hàng Đường Street sold dried, sweetened fruits or vegetables called mứt (jam). Another specialty of the street was ô mai, sweetened or salted whole fruit and a few shops here still sell these delicacies.
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Hàng Buồm
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08/06/2010 | 8:59 AM
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VGP - By the mid-eighteenth century, Hàng Buồm, had become almost a self-contained community of Chinese from Canton selling mostly agriculture products, rice and sugar as well as fruits imported from China. Among those imports was opium on behalf of the French Opium Monopoly. Following the Treaty of Ports, the British foisted Indian opium onto the Chinese market. The Manchu authorities protested at the British import of Indian opium – opium had been prohibited in China for many centuries although there was a thriving black market – first in 1840 by dumping chests of imported Indian opium into the harbor, igniting the Opium Wars, then by exporting some of the unwanted evil on to Hà Nội.
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Hàng Gai
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06/04/2010 | 11:00 AM
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VGP - Both Hàng Hòm and Hàng Mành turn into Hà Nội’s luxury shopping street, Hàng Gai, known to foreigners as Silk Street. In the fifteenth century this street sold rope and jute products, but from the nineteenth century, wood block printing came to Hàng Gai.
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Hàng Quạt-Hàng Hòm-Hàng Mành
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06/04/2010 | 10:17 AM
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VGP - Naturally in a hot, humid climate, fan making in Hà Nội became a highly specialized traditional craft. There were paper fans, thin silk fans, duck feather fans, fans made using bone frames, ivory frames and bamboo frames – and fans so dedicatedly pierced that they shimmered like silk when the sun shown through, There were even fans for separating rice from the husks.
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Hàng Thiếc
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06/04/2010 | 10:11 AM
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VGP - The noisiest street in town – and that’s saying something in the Old Quarter. Hàng Thiếc (Tinsmith) Street originally made oil lamps, candlesticks, teapots and metal boxes. The tinsmiths here still work with sheet metal as well as selling mirrors and glass, a spin-off from tinsmithing, as tin was used to blacken the back of mirrors. Before glass mirrors, bronze and tin were highly polished as mirrors.