Happy New Year.
Well, its been a long time, hasn't it? Finally I am writing again. The main cause of this lengthy pause is the inconvenience of my manual SLR camera, and the incredibly unreliable internet in Vietnam. Anyway, no more excuses.
As you may be aware, the most important holiday of the year has just happened, the Tet holiday. The Chinese new year, the lunar new year. Most of us foreigners are familiar with the Tet holiday from all the Vietnam war films that the Americans made, I can assure you, its not anything about that.
So what sort of things can you do at the new year?
Most people return to the village for Tet. I obviously don't have a village here in Vietnam, so I did have the luxury of choosing one of my friends. I went to Nam Sach, a little way out of Hai Duong town. Theres LOTS to do there, you can take photo's, stand in the street, stand in the yard, eat, drink, breathe, even run or sleep if you like!
At Tet, of course, many people who live in the city return to the village, so you do meet quite a lot of people who are quite interesting and do a variety of jobs, so I should be so cynical, it is fun.
However, it can be a challenge, eating a lot is not enough. You need to drink a lot, and you need to drink it through straws. Also, there is smoking to be done. Anybody seeking to sample Thuoc Lao (rustic tobacco) should train their body with some Winfield 25mg cigarettes. Smoke about 2 packs a day.
There are many customs here. One of my favorite was paying honour to the kitchen gods. this particular job is achieved by releasing fish into a lake or body of water. The fish will transport your kitchen gods up to heaven, and ensure your kitchen is really great for the year.
The cost of fish here is quite cheap, and there are many to choose from. We chose the cheapest, smallest ones. Why you ask? The lakes in Hanoi, if you ever see them, aren't that clean. Sure I have seen people fishing in the lakes, and indeed have seen some catches. However, the only other fish I have seen in the lakes were floating on top of the water, not gracefully swimming in it, like happy living fish should. So we chose little fish, figuring that a small fish would die from the fouled water much quicker, and thus have less time for suffering than a big fish.
We took the animistic point of view, and assumed the fishes soul would take care of trasporting to heaven - if it didnt have time to do so while living.
Theres many kinds of special food. The most important is Banh Chung. Its sticky rice densely packed around a small compacted parcel of egg and pork meat, it is then wrapped in a banana leaf in a brick shape, and incredibly, with brick-like weight! I think a good banh Chung, with dimensions of 15cm x 15cm x 8cm should weigh between 1 and 2 kilograms.
In the past is was quite important, possibly because people were starving and it has enough energy to power the Pacific Princess though at least 2 seasons. If you get sick of eating it (which you will) then you can slice it and fry it, making it seem like you are eating something different.
It's a bit like christmas time. You can even have a tree, in fact there are many kinds to choose from. The two most common varieties are the Kumquat tree (Cay quat) and the Peach Blossom (Cay dao). This is the Cay Quat.
There are four componants to make for a nice tree;
As you may be aware, the most important holiday of the year has just happened, the Tet holiday. The Chinese new year, the lunar new year. Most of us foreigners are familiar with the Tet holiday from all the Vietnam war films that the Americans made, I can assure you, its not anything about that.
So what sort of things can you do at the new year?
Most people return to the village for Tet. I obviously don't have a village here in Vietnam, so I did have the luxury of choosing one of my friends. I went to Nam Sach, a little way out of Hai Duong town. Theres LOTS to do there, you can take photo's, stand in the street, stand in the yard, eat, drink, breathe, even run or sleep if you like!At Tet, of course, many people who live in the city return to the village, so you do meet quite a lot of people who are quite interesting and do a variety of jobs, so I should be so cynical, it is fun.
However, it can be a challenge, eating a lot is not enough. You need to drink a lot, and you need to drink it through straws. Also, there is smoking to be done. Anybody seeking to sample Thuoc Lao (rustic tobacco) should train their body with some Winfield 25mg cigarettes. Smoke about 2 packs a day.
There are many customs here. One of my favorite was paying honour to the kitchen gods. this particular job is achieved by releasing fish into a lake or body of water. The fish will transport your kitchen gods up to heaven, and ensure your kitchen is really great for the year.The cost of fish here is quite cheap, and there are many to choose from. We chose the cheapest, smallest ones. Why you ask? The lakes in Hanoi, if you ever see them, aren't that clean. Sure I have seen people fishing in the lakes, and indeed have seen some catches. However, the only other fish I have seen in the lakes were floating on top of the water, not gracefully swimming in it, like happy living fish should. So we chose little fish, figuring that a small fish would die from the fouled water much quicker, and thus have less time for suffering than a big fish.
We took the animistic point of view, and assumed the fishes soul would take care of trasporting to heaven - if it didnt have time to do so while living.
Theres many kinds of special food. The most important is Banh Chung. Its sticky rice densely packed around a small compacted parcel of egg and pork meat, it is then wrapped in a banana leaf in a brick shape, and incredibly, with brick-like weight! I think a good banh Chung, with dimensions of 15cm x 15cm x 8cm should weigh between 1 and 2 kilograms.
In the past is was quite important, possibly because people were starving and it has enough energy to power the Pacific Princess though at least 2 seasons. If you get sick of eating it (which you will) then you can slice it and fry it, making it seem like you are eating something different.
It's a bit like christmas time. You can even have a tree, in fact there are many kinds to choose from. The two most common varieties are the Kumquat tree (Cay quat) and the Peach Blossom (Cay dao). This is the Cay Quat.There are four componants to make for a nice tree;
- Ripe fruit
- Green fruit
- flower buds (yet to blossom)
- and young, newly forming leaves
posted by Pseudomys at 9:27 PM
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