Ly, owner of a store on Le Hong Phong Street, District 10 mobilizes a tree chunk to display her goods.
“I have been selling drinks under this apitong tree for 40 years,” said Sau, a 60-year-old woman, “I remember in the 1970s there were so many them planted along this street. Then they were axed down as more houses and shops emerged.”
As the city population grows, many trees on Le Hong Phong and Tran Phu streets find themselves growing inside a house.
Many good old trees are considered to be sacred and seen as the adobe of spirits. They are worshipped with an altar, where people come to pray for good health and prosperity.
On Ly Van Phuc Street in District 3, a whole neighborhood has grown around the above-50-year-old tree line.
Inside one of the houses, a tree becomes a pot hanger in Nguyen Thi Ba’s kitchen. “The ground used to be a dumping site,” said the 70-year-old woman. “Poor people flocked in and settled down under canvas huts and used the tree trunks as pillars for their ‘houses’,” Ba recalled.
“Usually the corrugated iron roof makes the house hotter under the sun,” said Tuyet Mai, a resident since 1959, “but the canopy above helps cooling it down.”
The slum is about to be demolished due to the risk of collapse. Many trees have grown and broken the walls built around them. Dead branches falling also threaten life of people living under them.
However, over the time, the trees have become a member to families living here. “It’s been over 50 years, we have a lot of memories here with them,” Ba, an elder in the neighborhood, said. “After our families move out of here, we hope the city won’t chop them down .”
This repairment stall on Ton Duc Thang Street is about to be uprooted as the tree-lined street will be cut bare for the project of Thu Thiem 2 Bridge.
It will soon look like this: Le Loi Street where twenty-seven 50-year-old trees stand on the sidewalk were axed down last year to make space for the city’s metro line.
