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Huế, for now
October 2015 Beat
From urban engineering to corporate blogs, romancing the future with visions of smart cities, living buildings, streets with self-driving cars, and streets with no cars is as popular a cultural phenomenon as downloading apps that will micromanage our time and energy to a nanosecond.
When futurism is the norm, thriving vestiges of the past can be surprising and refreshing.
Huế, Vietnam is a dynamic blast to the past. Today, like yesterday, city streets are filled with more loiterers, pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, and cyclos than cars. Buildings rarely rise above trees. Lotus ponds stretch for kilometres.
Occasionally, roadside entertainment is provided by brash, raucous motorcycle gangs – ruling class offspring from Da Nang – who notoriously act like celebrities and cruise scenic, mountainous Hải Vân Pass between Huế and Da Nang.
Aside from coastal Da Nang, which has been redeveloped into a towering masterplanned megaresort with international investors, the economy and infrastructure of the central region have not progressed as rapidly as the region around the two biggest cities, Saigon in the south and Hanoi in the north. Cars – a sign of wealth – are less prevalent here than in the financial and government capitals.
Extreme weather has historically made agriculture difficult around Huế and increasingly so with climate change. There’s even a park outside town where people pray for good weather.
Signs of economic disparity between the top fraction of a percent and everyone else are less striking here than in Saigon or Hanoi, where only a mile away from flashy Prada and Dior stores people still wash clothes by hand. This can be viewed as socially positive or industrially negative, or both.
Pretty Tipu and Jacaranda – the favored trees of today’s landscape architects – don’t yet line boulevards in Huế, as they do in young developments around Da Nang. Instead, mature bougainvillea and banyan trees remain quiet reminders of a colonial and stately past.
Other than exploring royal tombs and the Imperial Citadel; floating along legendary Perfume River on a dragon boat; eating the elegant cuisine of emperors; and relaxing with a gin and tonic in the historic, opulent Art Deco bar at La Residence Hue, half-expecting Hercule Poirot or Graham Greene to walk in... there’s not much to do except slow down, lounge, and stay awhile in this ancient royal city, as the world speeds up. That’s Huế’s charm, and its wealth. For now.
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