Behind the Opera House
It’s high noon. And, as always, in the minutes before the loud whistle of the Opera House across the street went off at exactly twelve o’clock, signaling lunchtime, all works had been halted and people getting ready to eat. This was the daily routine at the Institute of Geology of Vietnam, my father’s old work place and my old home. About twenty of the hundred officers who worked here also lived here; they and their families lived together in the extension plot of the Institute since they couldn’t be allocated in a formal KTT (a kind of collective housing unit built in Soviet style). Four officers and their families shared a room. I lived with my father. We shared a bed. Everything was in the open and there seemed to be no private lives.
The Opera House in front of our place was, and still is, considered the pinnacle of French colonial architecture in Vietnam; but it did not give me the same impression: it did not give me a nice feeling. To me it was just a huge shadow with large unwelcoming windows that were almost always closed. As a child I did not appreciate this building because it was not for living.
The area around the Opera House, including the Institute of Geology of Vietnam, was also built by French architects in order to allocate offices in the colonial period. The Institute of Geology of Vietnam, our place, was located in a calm street that accommodated the “Ecole d’Extreme Orient” in the other side. Our building was especially calm, containing only one level and lying behind many buildings. For me it always had a sweet deserted feeling. I could stand there and enjoy the contrast between the yellow walls and the blue sky of Hanoi in the afternoon, alone and in utter silence all around.
For me these French style buildings were not welcoming and seemed very mysterious. The Institute of Geology consisted of three main buildings: in the back there were the museum of Geology and two other similar buildings at its wings, in the middle there was a large courtyard for parking. For us children of the neighborhood this area was a whole world. We were raised there and stayed most of the time at home. The place then became our place of play and of exploration.
Many parts of the building were not in use and were deserted. In those places we could create some adventures. Into the basement of the museum, where people stored all kinds of things, we went on adventures seeking horror and danger; we walked silently through darkness and the cold in anticipation of horrific happenings; we found skeletons and defeated man-eating monsters – chicken bones and spiders, of course. On other days we ventured on to the roof of the buildings and we found many amazing and magical things like old typewriters and papers.
Later there was a place where we gathered under the leadership of some older kids, played games and were taught karate by a young man. There were also places far enough for some to smoke without being caught by their parents. And of course the courtyard became a huge playground for us, where trees, vehicles and features of the building were ideal places to hide.As a child I didn’t know anything about history and never asked why these buildings existed. For me these buildings were mysterious and full of things to explore. And there was always a slight feeling of melancholy each time I recall that area: people seemed to live without emotion towards the building, the architecture seemed to be apart from the lives of its inhabitants; it was like we lived in an isolated village in the heart of the city. Only for children like us the place had its unique importance. Only when more people had come to work and many people had moved out to live elsewhere did I realize how lucky we were. Now, more cars took up the whole courtyard leaving no room for playing, many of the old friends were gone, and the old museum was destroyed in order to make way for a much uglier building, for reasons that I did not understand. In the deserted area that used to be our territory for adventures stood a new awkward apartment building and around it there was a barrier so that children had no way to play together.
Architecture, after all, is for people. Colonial neighborhood like the one behind the Opera House was built firstly for French officers who came to mark their existence in Vietnam. We Vietnamese who enjoyed living among nature were uncomfortable in these closed blocks. The typical yellow hue of these French buildings was, thus, always for me the colour of melancholy, a melancholy unrelated to the French colonization. But why are some of us so proud of these colonial architectures? Perhaps pride is not the term I wish to use. Perhaps we should treasure our history and its elements whether or not it suits our traditional values, and so these buildings are a great heritage that needs to be conserved. For me, it was the world of an isolated life that gave me my childhood.