From Thương Nhớ Mười Hai to Miếng Ngon Hà Nội, Vũ Bằng’s way of lacing Hanoian features with melancholic reminiscence always brings me straight back to the embrace of my hometown, even more so after I moved to Saigon at age 19. Since then, my writing and social media posts about Hanoi have often been accompanied by quotes “stolen” from his books: “My spring — the spring of northern Vietnam, Hanoi's spring — is a season of gentle misty rain, cool tender winds, the sound of swallows calling all jade-dark night, distant chèo drum beats from distant hamlets with maidens lovely as poems singing timeless love songs.” This was how Vũ Bằng’s oeuvre made its way to my heart.
Apart from him being considered one of the greatest writers of Hanoi, Vũ Bằng’s literary and personal portraits were multifaceted. His career spanned all of Vietnam’s three modern historical periods: before 1946, 1946–1954, and after 1954 in the south. Though Vũ Bằng faced decades of suspicion and unjust accusations that were only rectified 16 years after his passing, his literary works remain a testament to love.
Writing, not for a living, but for the reality of life
Vũ Bằng, born Vũ Đăng Bằng in Hanoi in 1913, was a descendant of a renowned scholarly family from Hải Dương Province who moved to Hanoi and ran a large printing house on Hàng Gai Street. Maybe it’s just the personal bias of a girl who also spent her early childhood inside the Old Quarter, but I always feel like growing up in the heart of Hanoi was what blessed Vũ Bằng’s literature with so much tenderness and melancholy — the trademark spirit of the 36 streets.
Thanks to his family having both a scholarly tradition and a profitable business, Vũ Bằng was granted a favorable education and the opportunity to study in France. Despite his mother’s wishes for him to study medicine, he pursued writing and journalism after passing his Tú Tài (high school) exams. While his contemporaries wrote for a living, Vũ Bằng wrote purely for passion, to the point of admitting: “Nếu trở lại làm người, con cứ lại xin làm báo.” (If I were to become a human again, I would ask to be a journalist again.)
Vũ Bằng's portrait.
Vũ Bằng published his first work, Lọ Văn, at age 17 in 1931. From 1930 to 1954, he served as an editor of Tiểu Thuyết Thứ Bảy and a secretary for Trung Bắc Chủ Nhật, while contributing to various other newspapers in Hanoi. In the 1930s and 1940s, he was influential in the literary scene as one of the most talented and active writers focusing on portraying the realistic lives of urban citizens amidst historical turmoils.
Vũ Bằng’s influence on Vietnam’s prose landscape in this era wasn’t limited to his own work. As the editor of several important newspapers before 1945, Vũ Bằng played a pivotal role in discovering debut works by emerging writers, including Tô Hoài and Nam Cao. For example, he “picked up” Nam Cao’s first short novel Cái Lò Gạch Cũ from a pile of rejected manuscripts, and asked a senior, possibly the writer Lê Văn Trương) to write the preface and renamed it Đôi lứa xứng đôi. This work was later renamed again to Chí Phèo, what most Vietnamese today know it by, becoming arguably the most outstanding piece of realism from the literary movement of 1941–1945.
Furthermore, Vũ Bằng’s work left a mark on the development of other younger writers, as revealed by Tô Hoài: “During those years, Nam Cao was living with me in Nghĩa Đô. We were engrossed in reading Vũ Bằng. If any literary scholar pays attention to Vũ Bằng’s short stories from that period, alongside Nam Cao’s and my own, they will easily notice the influence of Vũ Bằng.”
Writing as a silent confession
Vũ Bằng is now honored as one of the greatest names in Vietnam’s literary history, but before this recognition, he experienced a tumultuous fate. During my secondary and high school years of grinding the subject as a Literature-specialized student, I studied my fair share of writers with troubled lives. However, Vũ Bằng was a rare case as he endured a life-long injustice.
Vũ Bằng in a Tạ Tỵ sketch.
Both Vũ Bằng’s personal life and literary career intersect with historical events and political turmoil. In 1946, Vũ Bằng and his family evacuated to the resistance zone, particularly Chợ Đại, Cống Thần (Hà Nam) before returning to Hanoi in 1948, where he discreetly participated in an intelligence network. Acting as someone who “dinh-tê” (abandoned the freedom resistance zone occupied by the Việt Minh, to return to the urban area), Vũ Bằng constructed a cover persona by maintaining the demeanor of a wealthy petite bourgeois. Because of this, many people believe that Vũ Bằng was the original model for the character Hoàng, a writer detached from revolutionary resistance, in Nam Cao's short story ‘Đôi mắt.’
In 1954, Vũ Bằng went south to work as an intelligence agent under the codename X10. Vũ Bằng continued his intelligence work until reunification on April 30, 1975, but didn’t return to the north even once before he passed away. At the time of his death, Vũ Bằng’s dignity hadn’t been restored due to disruptions in the communication network. His superiors had relocated to Hanoi after reunification, making communication with the south difficult, despite the political changes. Vũ Bằng died as someone believed to have “turned his back on the Revolution” and “migrated to the south with the enemy.”
It was not until the early 1990s, when documents regarding his secret activities were published, that his name and career were finally vindicated. In March 2000, Vũ Bằng was officially confirmed as a military intelligence officer. It was common for “artists to be soldiers, and their artistic works weapons” during the war and Vietnam’s literature even witnessed a generation of soldier poets, but there aren’t many cases of a writer acting as a secret intelligent officer, who never had his identity revealed, like Vũ Bằng.
During his time in Saigon, Vũ Bằng lived in poverty, a stark contrast to his earlier affluence. For the first time in his life, he had to focus on writing to make a living. However, more than just a job, it was also Vũ Bằng’s only way of expressing himself and bearing the multitude of injustice and longing. The writer Nguyễn Xuân Khánh stated that "the pain and loneliness he experienced contributed to the unique qualities of Vũ Bằng's literature.” I like to think that Vũ Bằng’s writings even became the catalyst for his actual vindication.
Writings with, and for, unwavering love
After moving to Saigon, I realized that I always seek the ghost of my beloved city anywhere I go — via vendors selling northern phở, coffee shops in small alleys with “Hanoian vibes,” posts about Hanoi on social media, and Vũ Bằng’s writings. I still recall how, during my first December without wintery coldness, I snuggled under a light blanket and read the e-version of Thương Nhớ Mười Hai, specifically its December chapter. Somehow, the fact that Vũ Bằng wrote it in Saigon, thousands of kilometers from Hanoi, made it even more of a empathetic companion to my longing, as we share the same loneliness and nostalgia:
“I love it all and I say I love it all — the grass swaying in the playful wind beneath drifting clouds, the mountains, the hills of melastoma, the tree sap, the earthen veins, the caterpillars and ants curled up in their nests now emerging to seek new leaves and fresh buds. I love the girl wearing floral silk pants with a rose pinned in her hair, the amorous butterfly dancing over the jasmine trellis, the green velvet dress standing out amid the garden of red tangerines and yellow oranges, and even more so, I love those tiny dewdrops clinging to the velvet, making the beauty glisten like an angel in dreams.”
Like anyone moving away from their hometown, I know how challenging it is to be so far from home and family. But while I still have social media to update me on what happens in Hanoi, Vũ Bằng could only rely on his memories to soothe the nostalgia. Thus, he poured his emotions out on the paper. In Saigon, Vũ Bằng mainly wrote ký (literary essays), particularly tùy bút, producing timeless works such as Miếng Ngon Hà Nội, Bốn mươi năm nói láo, and Thương Nhớ Mười Hai. In these works, Vũ Bằng’s love for Hanoi left an indelible mark on Vietnam’s literary scene.
Two of Vũ Bằng's most celebrated works.
In the faraway land, Vũ Bằng echoed his love for the city, continuing the legacy of pre-1945 Hanoian writers such as Thạch Lam, Nguyễn Tuân, Nguyễn Huy Tưởng, and Tô Hoài. When immersing myself in Vũ Bằng’s words, I often marvel at how a man who had been far away from home for over 30 years could write about Hanoi in such intricate details, lively and vibrant as if he was there, back to the embrace of the city: “I remember the evenings walking along the Court Road, perfumed with the scent of milk flowers, the nights under the moon when we strolled hand in hand on Giảng Võ Street to watch traditional opera… I remember the rainy streets with a gentle drizzle as I strolled with my wife along the shores of Bảy Mẫu Lake. I recall the nights we climbed the hill on the way to Pháp Vân, plucking an orange to eat while the distant sounds of traditional opera echoed back to us, stirring memories within.”
Hanoi's Hàng Mã Street on a wintry morning. Photo by Khôi Phạm.
It was challenging for me sometimes to remember every detail of Hanoi after moving to a new city. While certain things never falter in my mind, like strolling around Hoàn Kiếm Lake in Hanoian autumn and munching on roasted corn amid Hanoian winter nights, I’m not sure if I can truly recall and portray each memory in such a loving manner like Vũ Bằng. For me, his power lies the most in the way his memories are personal as well as collective, easily resonating with any Hanoian child. Reading Vũ Bằng makes me feel like I can live two lives at once: his past life in Hanoi of the 1930s and 1940s, alongside my own, nearly 100 years later.
Vũ Bằng wrote about Hanoi extensively and passionately, as if “to reclaim lost time.” Tô Hoài once mentioned Vũ Bằng in a book: “In Thương Nhớ Mười Hai, the author raises his hand to count a month, a day, a year, a lifetime... It took him more than ten years of relentless effort to complete the twelve months of a human life. Each sentence, filled with longing for Hanoi, makes even those currently in Hanoi feel a shared love.”
December in Hanoi is a time of warm soups and puffer jackets. Photo by Khôi Phạm.
And if Thương Nhớ Mười Hai paints a Hanoi throughout 12 months and four seasons, Miếng Ngon Hà Nội depicts Hanoian cuisine through 15 famous delicacies, from beef phở, green rice, shrimp paste, to fish cakes, and more. There are renowned delicacies that everyone knows and there are also dishes mostly known to only Hanoians. Nothing can beat a meal offered on any random pages of this book. Whenever my longing for familiar Hanoian flavors comes in full force, Miếng Ngon Hà Nội is the ultimate mental comfort.
Nearly 100 years after Vũ Bằng’s era, his literary legacy remains powerful, because love never goes out of date. Just like Vũ Bằng, I started to write anytime nostalgia emerged, from diaries to short poems, to missives about Hanoi, archived in phone notes or social media. And anytime the adrift feeling of unfamiliarity, a result of being far away from Hanoi for so long, gnawed at my heart, I came back to Vũ Bằng. His writings pulled the adult me to the highschooler me — happily enjoying chè khúc bạch on Trần Hưng Đạo Street and idly flipping the pages of Thương Nhớ Mười Hai — as if I have never left the city. Maybe, home is not simply a physical location but the memories that live on within us, echoing in Vũ Bằng’s quote: “Yêu sao yêu quá thế này! Nhớ sao nhớ quá thế này!” (How deeply I love! How deeply I long!)
