Today is Vietnamese (or Lunar) New Year, or, as I call it, Tet - and it is absurd how unlike Tet it feels right now. The only happenstance that gave me even a slightest feeling that it is actually New Year is the small gathering of families at my aunt's house yesterday for New Year's Eve celebration. Even then, it didn't strike me as being any different than the normal occasional "big" family dinners. And that makes me miss Tet at Vietnam so terribly.
Before I go on any further into the topic of Tet, I would like to apologize for getting sad over the simplest of things. I used to be so much happier normally, but it seems that today, everything I see and hear reminds me of Vietnam, which makes me sadder than ever. These reminiscences make me long for the past that I can't have anymore. But, regardless of how this post might turn out to sound like, I would like to assert that Tet is a joyous occasion, perhaps the single most celebrative event of the year, especially for us children. There is quite nothing like it.
On some plane, Tet for Vietnamese (or at least Vietnamese at Vietnam) is somewhat like Christmas - the most look forward to holiday of the year. Just like Christmas, you can feel that it's coming a mile away, even without the comercial aspects that Christmas seems to entail here. And, unlike Christmas, which holds a sense of being universal and not confined to any cultural aspects, Tet holds in itself the feeling of being a Vietnamese on Viet's land, a feeling that few Vietnamese would recognize without being out of the country because it is so much a part of them as to be non-recognizable apart. Here, I am talking about Vietnamese New Year specifically as opposed to Lunar New Year (or Chinese New Year, as often being generalized) because that's the only New Year I know, the only kind of New Year I feel qualified to talk about. Even if Tet is derived from Chinese New Year and henceforth has many facets that are decidedly Chinese, it also contains many traditions that are uniquely Vietnamese.
The week leading to the New Year is often the busiest week of the year for anybody. The air is charged to with an excited feeling of an upcoming festival, of something so familiar and yet so anticipated at the same time. The markets (open markets, usually, because I've only seen one closed market like Wal-Mart all my time there) are much harder to wade through than usual, and the fragances of watermelons and especially of hoa mai, the flower closely associated with Tet. As a child, whenever I saw the yellow patches of hoa mai, I always experienced an excited jolt in my heart - spring always seemed so near whenever I saw hoa mai that I could almost taste it. The streets suddenly became a lot busier - in a good way. You could see people holding a pot of hoa mai every several cars that pass by. People go out to buy new clothes, new shoes, to wear when Tet finally comes.
Don't think I have forgotten about that watermelon I mentioned. Food in itself is such a typical part of Tet that I cannot imgine mentioning Tet without talking abou the food. Perhaps the most celebrated food in Vietnam when it comes to Tet, the food that, even more than hoa mai, symbolizes Tet itself and all that it represents is rice cake (banh chung, banh tet). There is a popular myth/folklore that explains how banh chung and banh tet came into existence and how they symbolize Vietnam, but it is too long and if I were to delve into mythology, this post would perhaps stretch on forever with no definite end in sight. In short, however, banh chung (which is a square rice cake) symbolizes the earth and banh tet (which is a cylinder rice cake) symbolizes the sky. They are both made of rice, the agricultural product that is most crucial to any Vietnamese, and inside, there are beans and pork, all products of the earth. They are wrapped together with banana's leafs, which is another thing that is so telling of Vietnamese culture. It is almost like everything Vietnamese rolled up into one. Apart from rice cakes, there are also watermelon seeds (hat dua), which seem to exist mostly for us children (it's the best food during Tet, in my opinion). And then the various kinds of mut, and, of course, watermelons.
Then we come into the most important part itself: Tet. In the Zodiac years, this year is the year of the Dog, or "Binh Tuat," as called by Vietnamese. But regardless of what year it is, the celebrations are normally the same. I remember waking up early on the first day of Tet and donning on a completely new outfit with a small purse (unlike here, carrying purses is not a normal concurrence, unless travelling far is necessary), which would be used to hold li xi (the red envelopes with money in them). My parents and my siblings and I would then drive to my grandfather's house and stayed there for an hour or so to chuc Tet (which is akin to saying Happy New Year with various blessings) him and my uncles and aunt. Then, we would go around in my grandfather's neighborhood because the majority of our relatives live in that neighborhood (our part of the city is very, very close-knit). After that, we would branch out and chuc Tet other people whom we know. In the evening, we would invite our uncles' and aunts' families to come over and have a big family dinner - less of a dinner than a party. For the first three days of the year, almost no shop would be open - some opt to close for five days, even - a bit like how Thanksgiving day is.
From the way I've described it, many of you would probably scratch your head and wonder why I would ever miss such thing. And I don't blame you. Tet is an event and a feeling that my lack of ability to write well would never do justice to. It is one of those things that you feel in your bones, that you miss terribly when you don't have, but you can't explain. It is akin to try to explain how it feels to be alive. You just can't explain it in anyway that would enable the readers to understand it the way you do - a shadow of it, perhaps, but not what it is really is.
I miss Tet so much.
Happy New Year (Chuc Mung Nam Moi)!
<3
Thanh
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