About 45 kilometers west of downtown Hanoi, Duong Lam Village in Son Tay Town has maintained many of its enchanting historical and cultural features. It boasts 956 houses from antiquity, including those built in 1649, 1703 and around 1850.
In 2006, Duong Lam became the first village recognized by the government as a national historical and cultural relic.
As one of the oldest cultural sites in Vietnam, Duong Lam still boasts many typical features of traditional Red River Delta villages: banyan trees, wells, a communal house, temples, and a village gate.
According to existing regulations, only houses officially categorized within these classifications are eligible for state-supported restoration. Owners of historic and culturally significant properties are granted VND400,000 (US$16.42) a month to maintain the houses in their most original form.
Among the houses in the village with historic or culturally significant features, only ten with all the structures of a typical "ancient" house (they must contain a main house, a substitute house, a garden, and a yard) are on the sponsored preservation list. Owners of these specific homes have been granted the monthly stipend.
Other houses that also make up the village's allure, but that are not officially in the category, have increasingly deteriorated, posing dangers for people living there. This has prompted their owners to consider the option of demolishing them to build new houses.
Giang Thi Ha, 64, stands in her family's house in Duong Lam Village.
The house is now more than 200 years old, but it is not on the preservation list.
Inside, the house has been seriously damaged by the wear and tear of time.
In this photo, a wooden pillar of the house has been destroyed by termites.
The march of years has also pushed a wall inside the house to gradually separate from a wooden pillar.
Ha's family built the wall when the house started to show signs of deterioration.
Ha cares for a pile of old tiles in a corner of the yard by covering them with a tarp.
She bought the tiles from other families in the village, in case her house ever needed to be re-tiled.
Ha said authorities visited to study the condition of her home, and they put it on the list for preservation. But that happened years ago and there has been no action taken since.
In the future, if the house deteriorates further, her family plans to take it down to build a newer, safer structure.
All walls in the house are now cracked.
Five people in the family have been living in constant fear that the house could collapse anytime.
The roof built of bamboo and wood has not been repaired for nearly 20 years now.
Co said her family has no funding for such projects.
Ha Van Thinh, 72, sits in his former Duong Lam Village home. The house was built nearly 200 years ago.
With the house gradually degrading over time, his family has already built a new concrete house to live in next door.
The wooden pillars at the main door of the house are "on their last legs" these days.
Thinh said that his family’s financial situation does not allow him to restore the status quo of the house.
“I really love this house, so I have kept it until now despite how much it has deteriorated.”
Nguyen Dang Thao, head of Duong Lam Ancient Village Relics Management Board, said the board is planning a project to ask for city funding to repair degraded homes, but the plan will have to go through many steps to be approved and will not be able to begin right away.
