By IPS Correspondents
HO CHI MINH CITY, Dec 2 2003 (IPS)

Many centuries-old buildings that constitute Vietnam’s major cultural assets are crumbling under their load of time, but lack of funds and red tape make it difficult to find a way to preserve them.

The onset of the rainy season in October has revived concern about the damage it may add to ancient houses across Vietnam, most of them private property.

In Hoi An, the little town in central Vietnam that the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has certified as a World Heritage Site, floods have put under threat ancient buildings that are, apart from their cultural value, crucial to Hoi An’s tourism industry.

"Floods have taken a direct toll on the heritage of our city," the deputy director of the Hoi An Heritage Management Board, Nguyen Chi Trung, said. He added that four ancient houses were destroyed and many others seriously damaged.

Hoi An, a small town in Quang Nam province, is 74 kilometres south of Hanoi, and is home of to over 1,000 heritage buildings originally built by Japanese and Chinese traders.

These houses, the earlier types of residence suitable to marketplace inhabitants, have been used since their construction for living, working and trading. They are listed as "protected sites" by the town, as many have deteriorated over time and need upgrading.

Hoi An authorities are encouraging owners of these ancient houses to renovate them but not make major changes to their style. Some oldest houses on Tran Phu Main Street, for instance, have thus been turned into museums, galleries or souvenir shops.

But there are hundreds of other dilapidated houses whose owners are too poor to do anything to maintain them, and some say it is time that the city helped keep them as best as possible.

Some 73 houses have already been put on the Heritage Management Board’s urgent list; but their owners are still wondering how long their houses would remain standing.

The collapse of four historic houses in Hoi An sent a warning to residents of ancient houses in the Old Quarter of the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. Like people in Hoi An, they are asking: "How long can we still live in our houses?"

Many houses in Hanoi’s Old Quarter need extensive repairs, but their owners can do nothing as most of them are listed as "protected sites". Permission from the Hanoi Old Quarter Management Board (OQMB) is needed before reconstruction or repair can be done. Five families, for instance, share a house at 28 Hang Buom Street in Hanoi. The dilapidated building that used to be a temple dedicated to the Chinese Hero Quan Kun still retains some of its ancient features, especially the roof, which unfortunately is leaking.

"During big storms, there might be pieces of roof tiles falling down on our heads," said 70-year-old Ly Thi Tan who has lived in the house since her childhood.

The Old Quarter Management Board has this house on its list of protected structures, and is now responsible for renovating it. But years have passed and during the rainy season, old Tan still has to resort to using plastic containers to carry water from inside the house. That is because the house has the oldest sewage system in Hanoi – and is now out of order.

Hanoi’s administrators started looking at the Old Quarter with a keener eye more than a decade ago, when Hoi An began attracting world attention. They hope their Old Quarter would one day be honored in the same way as Hoi An.

They first listed about 840 out of the 4,341 houses in the Old Quarter as "ancient". But recent estimates put the number of ancient houses at 300. Some researchers even put the number around just dozens. The Old Quarter Management Board decided that nothing should be done to compromise the integrity of the buildings.

That means Tan and and other residents cannot do any renovation themselves. But waiting the city government to have funds for upgrading could take a long time.

This is of concern to experts like Vu The Khoi, a researcher of Han-Nom manuscripts and a university lecturer, who say that even the Old Quarter Management Board office itself – an old temple and thus listed as a protected site- has seen its "preservation done in a peculiar way".

The main temple had been removed and replaced with a new temple of seemingly modern architecture. "All the remains of the old are two timber roof beams," Khoi said.

Some conservationists want the city to buy the most typical ancient houses, restoring and turning them into tourist spots the way Hoi An has done. But this runs into the same problem – the city’s shortage of funds.

At Hoi An, the situation is little better. Because the houses are built very close together, the collapse of one could lead to the collapse of several others.

Local authorities have meantime set up a project for saving the nearly broken-down heritage buildings. Trung of the Hoi An Management Board said they had submitted their plan to upgrade these properties to central authorities and are waiting for approval.

"We are aware of how fast these properties are degrading and we plan to start work very soon and finish by 2004," Trung said. The total upgrade cost is estimated at 6.5 million dollars, but funding remains a big question.

Local authorities in Ho Chi Minh City too, where 19 "architecture artwork" buildings and 11 private properties that are more than 100 years old are deteriorating, are worried about their own heritage structures.

The Service of Culture and Information there has designed a 5.5 million dollar project to protect some 51 official cultural heritage sites from further deterioration.

One candidate for preservation is an ancient house in District 9. But the son of Huynh Huu Thanh, its owner, said: "My father can no longer keep the house intact if the government does not come up with concrete assistance Don’t let ancient houses disappear and then regret.”

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