The Red River’s Mid-Island: Sketching an Alternative Narrative History of Hanoi’s Identity

Abstract

ABSTRACT The ‘mid-island’ is the folk name given to a peripheral piece of land in the Red River at the heart of Hanoi, Vietnam. This essay surveys this place’s representations in contemporary cinema, literature, television, and photography. Through these meaning-making practices, the mid-island becomes a narrative construction, revealing an alternative history of Hanoi's identity with many unknown or marginalised aspects. It has become a place where many layers of meaning are piled up, sometimes conflicting: it is both a check-in site where many activities of Hanoian youth culture take place and a refuge for those marginalised, who cannot find anywhere else in the city to survive. It is both a ground for Hanoi men to perform their masculinity and a private space for a Hanoian child to find the remaining mysteries of the city. Currently, the city’s government is promoting a plan of transforming the mid-island into an ecological-cultural park. To do so without paying attention to the narrative meanings of the landscape, however, could lead to the loss of memories of the place and even become an act of violence against the most vulnerable communities, human and not-human, of the city.