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Tết - not just a Chinese New Year spin-off | ||||
This year’s Vietnamese New Year, Tết, will be a special one for Vietnamese students as the holiday coincides with the mid-term break – giving Vietnamese students a nine-day period to celebrate the festivities back home in Vietnam. “This is the first time I will be celebrating Tết at home,” said Pacey Ho Trong Tan, a fourth-year SOC student. Ho had not been able to celebrate Tết with his family for the past four years as he had to remain in Singapore for school. Another fourth-year SOC student, Nguyen Thi Thao Duyen, will also be going back to Vietnam for the first time in four years to celebrate Tết. “Even though the (air-ticket) price is astronomical, I think it’s worth it,” she said. According to Ho, Tết – a national holiday for the 54 ethnic communities in Vietnam – is a time for family reunions and paying respect to ancestors. Tết does share some customs and beliefs with Chinese culture such as refraining from cleaning one’s house or bathing on the first day of the New Year. However, contrary to common belief that the Vietnamese New Year is just an adaptation of Chinese New Year, the former has its own distinct set of customs and practices that are vastly different from that of Chinese New Year traditions. In Ho’s hometown, Nha Trang, a seaside town in central Vietnam, there is a unique custom practiced by the town’s community to usher in the new year. “Exactly at 12 a.m., we will face one direction, normally in the east, and set out in a specific direction,” Ho said. “It represents the year is moving forward and we normally travel parallel to the seaside.” Another unique Vietnamese New Year activity in Nha Trang is what Ho refers to as a “special wine-drinking session,” during which every member of the Nha Trang community drinks from a 2-metre long straw. Nguyen, who hails from the city of Hue, north of Da Nang, also has her own experience of Vietnamese New Year customs to share. She told The Observer about a traditional worship ritual that sees residents performing before indulging in a lavish New Year dinner. “It's just a small kind of ceremony,” she said. “We will lay food on the table and burn incense, paper clothes, gold and silver paper and fake paper notes to worship the God of the Sky and Earth, ” said Nguyen, adding that the ritual is an adaptation of Taoist practices. The meal that the Vietnamese partake in following such rituals and throughout the new year period is also unlike that Singaporeans have during the Chinese New Year. While Yu Sheng, a raw fish salad considered to be auspicious, is popular at dinner tables in Singapore, the dish is rarely seen at Vietnamese New Year meals. “We don’t eat fish in the New Year,” said Chau Huy Ngoc, an exchange student from Vietnam. “Fish is considered cheap and it is not supposed to be on the table on the holy day.”
Instead, chicken, pork and beef are the common meats found on the tables in a typical Vietnamese home during Tết. Apart from fish, mandarin oranges are rarely seen during Tết. “Oranges in Vietnam are green,” explained Chau, adding that green is not an auspicious colour. According to Chua, the flesh of Vietnamese oranges, like the skin, is also green in colour. The fruit is thus avoided during Tết. Instead, a watermelon, with its red flesh, is displayed in the living rooms of Vietnamese households. “Some people believe that your luck or destiny for the rest of the year depends on the colour on the inside of the watermelon,” Chau said. Additionally, the Chinese character “Fu”, which means prosperity, is written on a piece of paper that is them pasted onto the watermelon. Much emphasis is placed on the features of the watermelon. “The watermelon should have a little bit of root and the root must stay on the watermelon until you eat it,” Chau said. “The root of the watermelon represents the source of one’s prosperity for the year.” He explained that in Vietnamese culture, it is believed that everything has a beginning and great importance is placed on acknowledging one’s origins. A myriad of other food items also become celebrated cultural symbols during the Vietnamese New Year. These signature Vietnamese New Year dishes include rice cakes, which are referred to as bánh chûng, bánh dáy and bánh tet.
Bánh chûng and bánh dáy are commonly found in Southern Vietnam, while bánh tet is more commonly found in Northern Vietnam. Each of the three types of rice cakes is symbolic of a different meaning. According to Ho, bánh chûng is a rice cake that is wrapped in green leaves and is filled with green bean and meat. The colour of the green bean and leaves is thought to represent Earth’s flora while the meat filling represents fauna. Meanwhile, bánh dáy is a white rice cake of which skin colour represents the sky. “They only make (these rice cakes) in the New Year,” Ho said. “You can smell the special scent of the rice cakes all over the streets (in Vietnam).” According to Ho, bánh chûng and bánh dáy originated from a tale of a prince who dreamt of a male fairy. In the dream, the fairy told the prince that rice cakes symbolize Vietnam and taught the prince to make them. “We cut (bánh tet) up with the string that is strapped over the leaves,” Chau said. He added that the red-coloured rice cake is essential during the period of Tết. “Any girl that can do it is considered a good girl,” he said of the dessert. Apart from bánh tet, other sweet Vietnamese New Year treats include dried watermelon seeds, dried coconut and dried sweetened lamb. While enthusiastic about sharing about the unique delicacies that come hand in hand with their New Year celebrations, the Vietnamese students were even more eager to point out one difference between this year’s Tết and Chinese New Year. The former begins on Friday– one day earlier than the latter. Links: |
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