Hoàn Kiếm, Hanoi – A stunning example of French colonial
architecture, cultural touchstone and site of major events in the history of
Vietnam, the Hanoi Opera House is to be demolished and replaced with a giant,
featureless grey box.
Much like all the other concrete obelisks that make up modern Hanoian architecture, the historical site is set to become a brand new mall and cinema – Regal City.
Much like all the other concrete obelisks that make up modern Hanoian architecture, the historical site is set to become a brand new mall and cinema – Regal City.
The Durian sent a fame-hungry and literally hungry intern to Hoàn Kiếm district to investigate, and came across a pitched battle between
student protesters and police.
Art history student and future parental disappointment, Giết
Bê Tông sighed “I hate to see the beautiful architecture of this city, the
Paris of the Orient, erased by fifty floors of grey.”
The students quickly left the area after being pacified with
some little propellers to stick on their motorbike helmets, which were thankfully distributed just moments before
riot police authorised use of milk tea cannons.
A combination of declining interest in the performing arts,
depressingly accessible Korean soap operas and shareable 30-second clips of
motorbike accidents, cats doing human things and make-up tutorials has been
blamed for the Opera House’s recent waning profits.
“We’ve had a hard time booking acts on our budget,”
explained Madame Phu Nhân, “All we’ve had for months is these simpering,
earnest teachers with their acoustic guitars.
“It’d be fine if they all knew something beyond Wonderwall
or slowed-down versions of The Killers’ first album, but it’s all so very
painfully white, mushy, middle-class word-guff,” she added, “Maybe we deserve
to be shut down.”
Local demolition worker Dinh Phuc shouted from atop a pile
of steel rebar that he neither cares about colonial French architecture or The
Killers and noted that he’ll happily demolish every single landmark in the city
if it means he can keep streaming YouTube videos while doing so.
A representative of Regal City’s owners, VinaRegal City
Story Ltd., offered a swift rebuke to protesters in a statement issued over
Instagram.
“Fear not, lovers of buildings – the Opera House is very
old, very fragile and so we’re merely making an improvement on this 1911 work
of architectural beauty by bulldozing it and replacing it entirely, but with
air conditioning and a 4-D cinema,” the post read.
VinaRegal City Story Ltd. went on to detail why they had chosen
Hanoi’s historic Opera House.
“Of course, the Opera House has contributed plenty to
Vietnam’s culture and history, but we feel that now is the time that it moved
over in order to let hot pot chain restaurants and outlet stores represent
Hanoi’s cultural development.”
Rumours remain unconfirmed that the underground parking area
will be both the largest and most disorientating in all of Vietnam, but
reporters were able to establish that it will contain an unknown number of
dead-ends, false exits and misleading signposts.
Local parking attendants are reportedly thrilled at the
challenge this development presents.
We tried to contact the officials supposedly responsible for
the protection of this historic building (the site of the establishment of the
Viet Minh, National Liberation Front in 1945, and the first meeting of
The
National Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1946), but they are
out of office, presumably on holiday gambling all of their lucky money away and
gorging themselves in the infamous all-you-can-eat seafood buffets of Da Nang.
The original Opera House was completed in 1911 by two French
architects, Broyer and V. Harley, following 10 years of painstaking design and
construction. Regal City, by contrast, is due to go up in the much more
impressive timeframe of two and a half weeks.
Demolition is due to go ahead either right now, at 3am on
Monday morning, or after four insufferable years of delays.
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