Today, the 41-year-old wife and mother of two presides over a 200-seat, three-story restaurant at the end of Hai Ba Trung Street specializing in goose and bamboo shoot soup, called "bun ngan."

Mrs. Khan likes to be called "Madame Goose." She sports the trappings of Hanoi's growing, truly wealthy class: Chunks of gold jewelry, a $4,500 Spacey motorbike, a StarTac cellular telephone -- even a coveted passport. Last year she and her family traveled to Thailand during the two-week national Tet holiday, and this year plan to visit China.

The restaurant does well, in contrast to the majority of Hanoi's restaurants, and is five or ten times larger than most.

It is made from four adjacent apartments she's bought over the last few years, and is open from seven in the morning until ten at night, every day of the year except Tet. It is typically filled with customers, each of whom spends about $2.00. Between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., five motorcycle valets lock customers' bikes and swing them into position. Two armchair-sized cauldrons simmer at the open entrance, coal cracking beneath them. Khan can be found serving soup or perched on her gleaming motorbike, wearing her gold.

When asked to measure the growth of her business since opening, her financial statement is spare. "I once had twenty bowls, now I have 300." It was not always this way for Mrs. Khan.

While riches are being gathered by many Hanoians thanks to the capital's mix of foreign aid and cash and a clever, well-connected citizenry, actual business success remains very much a novelty. This modest shop, therefore, can be a lesson in what is required to make an honest buck in Vietnam's capitalism-weary capital, for the relatively few locals and foreigners who are seeking such a lesson.

"People often ask, what is the prayer you've made to get this good fortune?," says Khan fondly. She replies to luck-conscious locals that she just goes to the pagoda twice a month, to make offerings to her ancestors, like everyone else.

In reality, the story of Khan and her family is success that came from disappointment, integrity and perseverance. This arduous journey is the closest thing northern Vietnam has had to business school, and it is one version of a tale that is painfully familiar to other successful entrepreneurs scattered throughout Vietnam.

When Khan began selling bun ngan, in the early 1980s, entrepreneurship (along with any form of private business) was forbidden in Hanoi. At that time she lived across the street from her present restaurant with her husband's family. Every day she composed a kettle of duck soup in her smoke-covered stock-pot and sold it as she squatted on the sidewalk -- on and off for ten years.

Her product, she believed in from the start. "I always knew it was bun ngan that I wanted. I just love its taste," she said.

As she acquired savings she took her business into a string of rented storefronts for several years, always on the same block. But Khan said that each time the owner observed her success, he would break the lease and open his own goose soup shop. For her, there was no legal recourse. These were the very first days of capitalism in Hanoi.

"The process extracted endless tears, sweat and even blood," said the tough-looking proprietor, sitting on her traditional wooden bed and glancing around the whitewashed, large room in which her family now lives.

In the bathtub is a modern exercise bicycle and tennis racket, more symbols of her rising economic status, along with the 27-inch Sony television. Even today, this single room transforms into part of the restaurant during lunchtime, and will continue to until she can negotiate the purchase of the three remaining apartments in this building, so far a three year effort.

After the loss of her first shop in 1991, she traveled to Saigon, which she knew to be the only place in the country to see how businesses run. She returned to Hanoi to try and apply some of her new-found lessons.

Each step of the way Khan was required to break through northern Vietnamese laws and taboos set up to hinder the establishment of a private business, which even today is considered a practice that runs counter to Hanoi's ideologies that are rooted in Communist economics, and before that centuries of colonialism and feudalism. Bribes and taxes -- which replace one another for businesses here -- are subjects met with only a coy grin. A long-term investment and establishment of a recognizable brand are considered foolhardy in this environment.

Saigon's main lesson was quality control, and this remains her primary concern, she says. To spend more time managing the restaurant and less time hustling ducks, a few years ago Khan adopted a village "in a secret location" where they feed and culture the geese she serves.

To the villagers, she says, she is the goose-master. "When they deliver the geese to my restaurant, I watch the drivers throwing them off the truck. I can tell their quality by the sound they make as they hit the pavement," Khan says. (That's one boast that Frank Purdue has never made.)

These days, Khan spends much of her time presiding over two shifts of employees, each of whom earns about $22 plus room and board per month. Most are from the countryside, where her reputation as an employer, she says, is most prestigious. Employees become professional and stay for years, earning at least four times what they would back home. Male employees sleep on the second floor, her family on the third and females on the fourth.

Yet the next steps for Madame Goose, she fears, are beyond her reach.

She says that franchising or diversification may be too risky. She is reluctant to trust others to maintain the quality and service her logo is meant to represent. Even if others bought franchises, she would insist on managing them all, she says, and that could cause the flagship restaurant to sink.

"Unlike other countries where you have a lawyer and manager, in Vietnam people think only about money, and there are no lawyers or (professional) managers," says Khan firmly. "It's hard for me. I've worked too hard to set up this business."

In a country where one's personal reputation can be regarded as brand name, credit line and customer base rolled into one, Khan's skepticism is understandable, especially given her experience.

On the other hand, it is she who raised the subject of franchising. When this lady with the slick cartoon goose logo visits China next February, she will be most likely takeone look at McDonald's and imagine the Tonkinese landscape awash in her beloved soup.