Haiphong
— — the city the flame trees set alight each May.
Not only on a wall.
“Vietnam's great northern port, where the Red River meets the Gulf of Tonkin. In May the phượng vĩ — the flame trees — bloom along every old French boulevard and the city goes scarlet for six weeks. East of the port lies Ha Long Bay; west, the rice paddies of the delta; underfoot, the centuries the Bach Dang River carried away.
Haiphong, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Vietnam's third-largest city and its principal northern seaport, on the Red River Delta about one hundred kilometres east of Hanoi. Urban population is roughly two million, with another half-million in the surrounding districts. The harbour faces the Gulf of Tonkin and serves as the maritime gateway to Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island, both in adjoining Quang Ninh province. The colonial quarter, laid out by the French from the 1880s, still holds the Opera House, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary, and the tree-lined boulevards around Dien Bien Phu street.
Haiphong is called *Thành phố Hoa Phượng Đỏ* — the City of Red Flame Flowers. Each May and June the royal poinciana, *Delonix regia*, blossoms scarlet along the colonial boulevards and over the Tam Bac Lake. The trees were planted by the French in the late nineteenth century and have since become the city's emblem; a Flame Tree Festival has been held every summer since 2012, usually opening on the second Saturday of May. The bloom holds for about six weeks and is over before the worst of the typhoon season arrives in August.
The Bach Dang River, just east of the city, carries one of Vietnam's foundational battles. In 1288 the general Tran Hung Dao defeated a Yuan-dynasty Mongol fleet by planting iron-tipped stakes in the riverbed at low tide and luring the ships in at the turn. The same tactic, on the same river, had defeated Southern Han ships under Ngo Quyen in 938. Wooden stakes from the 1288 battle were recovered from the riverbed in the 1950s and are displayed at the Bach Dang Giang historical area. The river still feeds the port today.