Originally named after Paul Doumer, the Governor-General of Indochina, the bridge was renamed Long Bien after Vietnamese independence in 1945. At that time, northern Vietnam was in the grips of a historic famine, caused by the stockpiling of rice for the Japanese-Vichy war machine. The famine killed up to two million people, and served as a rallying point for Ho Chi Minh's independence movement. Tens of thousands of starving refugees staggered across the bridge into the city, in search of food. Doug told me that the now-bricked-up niches beneath the Long Bien Railway Station (Ga Long Bien), served as make-shift morgues; bodies were piled one atop the other. Later, during the American War, these same niches served as bomb-resistant maternity wards.

Today, the Long Bien Bridge continues to play a dual role. On its surface, a steady stream of rail, motorbike, and foot traffic pumps economic blood to and from the city. Underneath, the bridge provides shelter for Hanoi's downtrodden, a collection of semi-visible constituencies who, in Vietnam's economic euphoria, have been pushed to the edge of the city, in some cases all the way into the river. Behind the fruit market - the main entry for fruit entering the capital city - lies a shantytown of makeshift structures and tin roofs beside a polluted canal. In this neighborhood, site of Hanoi's earliest European encampments, the drug use, criminal activity, and police shakedowns rival any third-world ghetto.

The bridge's role in providing a "powerful meridian for people's minds" (Jardine) is evidenced by the sociological divisions among the "boat people" who live on the Red River. North of the bridge are people who, for one reason or another, have been pushed onto these tin-roofed crafts. These are the poorest of Hanoi's poor, people who eke out an existence by collecting plastic bags, and other desperate measures. South of the bridge are people who have traditionally led an aquatic existence, subsisting by fishing, and towing light loads up and down the river. Despite their commonalities, these are culturally distinct communities. For all these boat dwellers, the bridge provides a clear physical and sociological divide.

RELATED INFORMATION

• Hanoi travel guide 

  • Hanoi