Toan's tea

“About ten years ago, it seemed obvious that middle-aged and elderly Hanoians often drank tra man (traditional tea), while the young preferred ready-made tea.

I tried tea bags and found that their flavor could not compete with that of tra man. The only difference is that tea bags are prepared with lemon and sugar”.

That is the story Truong Ngoc Toan told us about the start of his lemon-tea shop at 31 Dao Duy Tu Street, which serves weak tea cups with jasmine fragrance, a little sugar and a slice of lemon.

In the morning, they serve coffee for the middle-aged and in the afternoon, tea and coffee for office staff. Then in the evening, teenagers come here for lemon tea. The shop is run by 7 members of Toan’s family and 20 employees.

Iced lemon tea is popular in summer, and hot lemon tea is the favorite drink for teens in winter. The tea is neither acrid nor bitter, and it can be enjoyed with a bowl of black bean or taro sweet soup. In order to serve such simple drinks and snacks, Toan has rented several houses on Dao Duy Tu street to expand his business.

Truong Ngoc Nam, Toan’s son, came back from studying abroad to work at his family’s tea shop. As his father said, “There is no place like home,” he had quit his job as a photographer and model to sell tea in his homeland.

Nam reflected on his active and friendly style of service, “My father taught me to talk nicely to customers and do business well.” That’s also the reason why, since the 1980s, many generations of tea drinkers from the same families have come to this shop.

Hoi's pickles

Boong is the nickname of Nguyen Thi Hoi, bestowed on her by the people of the Hang Be Market.

Laughing to show her shining black dyed teeth, Hoi told us, “I have no idea why they gave me that nickname. But it is the trade name for my pickles, salted shrimp and shrimp paste.”

In the 1940s, Hoi was still small and lived with her parents in Kham Thien market by-street. She recalled, “I was used to the smell of pickled egg-plants. Just by smelling it, I could tell whether the pickles were sour or not and the egg-plants were crispy or soggy.”

During childhood, she was taught to help her mother cut egg-plants’ stalks, make salt water, or wash the vegetables. As soon as she could use the rattan yoke, she was allowed to follow her mother to the Hang Be Market to sell pickles.

After 1975, she continued to sell pickled egg-plants, except for a period when she went out of business lest her husband would be named as a spouse of a private proprietor. Since the late 1980s, after the abolishment of the subsidy policy, Hoi has resumed her business of selling pickled vegetables and salted shrimp.

“Now all my four children have graduated from university and each has two houses,” she said with pride and happiness.

Everyday, from 6 to 10 a.m, Hoi gets fresh vegetables from her suppliers. Sang, who brings her 50 kilograms of eggplants, told us, “My family in Gia Lam district has been selling vegetables to Hoi for two generations. We sell vegetables to her and then buy delicious pickles from her for our meals.”

Hoi informed us that she had bought shrimp from Thanh Hoa, egg-plants, vegetables and onions from Gia Lam. During the recent Tet holiday, she sold several tonnes of pickled onions, and hundreds of kilograms of salted shrimp each day.

Phong's eyewear repair

On Luong Van Can Street, Luong Quoc Phong, a great-great-grandchild of the patriotic scholar Luong Van Can, has opened an eyewear repair shop for 30 years at a corner near two big buildings.

With a small grinder, a blow-torch, and a tray of various styles of frames, glasses and nameless eye-glass items, Phong does his repair job skillfully while his wife collects and returns the glasses.

“I learned this job from my father, who used to work in an eyewear shop.”

Amongst the eyewear repairers in Luong Van Can Street, Phong is the one who can repair the smallest and most difficult parts.

Phong has repaired the glasses for tens of thousands of customers. Once, an overseas Vietnamese came to his shop with a very thin frame of round glasses. He said foreign repairers could not fix it and advised him to buy a new pair of glasses but he had no heart to throw away the old thing that has long been his close companion.

Also fresh in his mind is the image of a woman crying over the loss of her milfoil hairpin while she was cutting the grass in the field.

She explained to him later, “The hairpin is a small thing but it has been with me for a long time.”

No wonder Phong loves his job of restoring old things to their former glory as customers wish to evoke good memories from the past.