In the silt-laden heart of the Red River, where boats once anchored, where vendors' calls blended with the sound of market wooden clappers, the name “Kẻ Chợ” was born—plain and simple, yet holding the seeds of a prosperous city. It was no coincidence that from the autumn of 1010, when King Lý Thái Tổ moved the capital to Thăng Long, this land became the trading heart of Đại Việt.
Kẻ Chợ was not only a bustling place of trade but also a symbol of Vietnam's traditional economy: handicrafts, commerce, strong community spirit, and creativity. Through each feudal dynasty and then the French colonial period, the urban picture put on a new coat: from village-edge market sessions to busy craft streets, and finally crystallizing into a thousand-year cultural symbol.
In the summer of the Giáp Tý year (1804), when the Nguyễn dynasty built Thăng Long Citadel in the Vauban style, the Governor-General of Bắc Thành, Nguyễn Văn Thành, ordered the establishment of a large market right at the East Gate of the citadel[1], near Đồng Xuân ward. From that landmark, the market was not only a trading point but also the citadel's “collective living room,” where all news and events began with a nod, a greeting at a market corner.
The market grew with the pulse of the streets; each stall was like an artery of the city, each vendor's call like the heartbeat of a thousand-year-old city. And in that flow, at the end of the 19th century, when the French replanned Hanoi, Đồng Xuân Market was born—a modern accent in an old melody, connecting the folk Kẻ Chợ tradition with the imperial Thăng Long.
At the end of the 19th century, Hanoi entered a new chapter of urbanization. On December 17, 1887, at a meeting of the city council[2], issues such as slaughterhouses, markets, sewers, and waste were discussed, laying the foundation for a modern urban order. Two years later, in 1889, Đồng Xuân Market was built, located not far from the old Cầu Đông Market or the market at the East Gate and near the Red River wharf. The market gradually grew and attracted commercial activity from Hanoi and the surrounding area.
Đồng Xuân was not meant to replace the old “Kẻ Chợ,” but was a way to reorganize the commercial flow that had surged spontaneously over centuries. It is the heartbeat of Hanoi, where “boats below and wharves above,” where the word “market” goes beyond buying and selling to become the soul of the community.
When the tram tracks turned through the streets, when the Doumer Bridge spanned the Red River, when the Indochina trade route opened to Yunnan and Hai Phong, Đồng Xuân became the largest commercial center in Tonkin. It was a distribution hub for goods, a thread linking countryside and city, tradition and modernity.
But above all, Đồng Xuân is a collective memory of a plain, bustling, and enduring Hanoi. Among crowded stalls, people did not only buy, sell, and bargain; they also made friends, drank tea, and even found love. Đồng Xuân is therefore another “face” of Hanoi: not magnificent like the Opera House, not solemn like the Temple of Literature, but hardworking, vivid, and authentic.
From a Kẻ Chợ by the river wharf to a “Great Market” in the heart of the Old Quarter, Đồng Xuân has become a place where past and present meet every morning. To this day, vendor calls, the smell of hot quẩy, the sound of pull carts, and incense smoke from small altars tucked in market corners still echo, like a low note preserving the soul of the city—so that Hanoi remains forever beloved Hanoi.
