Tết Trung Thu celebrations

Oh hello all,

I decided to split this weekend/weekly post into two, so this first one is going to be all about the Tết Trung Thu celebrations in Bến Tre.

On Saturday, I went with Mr. Hoang to celebrate Tết Trung Thu at his house. Tết Trung Thu, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival or the Full Moon Festival, is a lunar harvest festival that is celebrated in early September or October. Tết Trung Thu is celebrated all across Asia, with important regional differences in the celebration of the festival. For instance, while mooncakes are eaten all across Asia during the Mid-Autumn Festival, the ones in Vietnam are different from those in China and those in Korea. Many of the stories told at the Mid-Autumn Festival also vary from region to region. 

Tết Trung Thu is primarily a festival for children to enjoy, although adults (especially those with families) will occasionally join in on the festivities. As a guest in Bến Tre, I went to Mr. Hoang's house to celebrate Tết Trung Thu with his students, who ranged in age from 5-20 years old. 

At Mr. Hoang's house

People celebrate Tết Trung Thu by eating mooncakes, singing songs, making and lighting paper lanterns and telling stories.

The students at Mr. Hoang's house

These are the leftovers. There was so much food that night...

There are several Tết Trung Thu stories, but the main one that I remember centers around Chu Cuội. Chu Cuội was a farmer in Vietnam who discovered a magical banyan tree. This tree's roots had magical healing properties, but it had to be watered with clean water every day. Travelers came from far and wide to be healed at Chu Cuội's tree, and Chu Cuội made sure that no one urinated or spilled dirty water on the tree.

On day, Chu Cuội's wife Chị Ha urinated on the tree, whether out of carelessness or spite varies from version to version. The banyan tree rose out of the ground and began flying back to the heavens. Chu Cuội ran after the tree and leaped on it, but the tree simply bore him up into the sky. The tree landed on the moon, and Chu Cuội to this day is the man on the moon.

Back on earth, Chị Ha was grief-stricken at her mistake, and so she began the first Tết Trung Thu. She made mooncakes so all the children would remember her husband living on the moon, and the children made lanterns so that Chu Cuội could look down and see that he wasn't forgotten back on earth.  

Two adorable girls singing the Tết Trung Thu song

With the older students in my 

Tết Trung Thu is one of the few parts of my Vietnamese heritage that was successfully preserved through my upbringing. I don't really know why, but for some reason Tết Trung Thu really stuck in my head, even when I left to go to Chicago. Even when I couldn't speak three words of Vietnamese, I could explain what Tết Trung Thu was and recite the story of Chu Cuội. In Chicago, my friend Emily Chen and I would try to go into Chinatown around Tết Trung Thu to buy mooncakes. 

Every year my mom celebrates Tết Trung Thu with the whole neighborhood, inviting all the children (none of whom are Vietnamese) to come hear Chu Cuội's story, eat mooncakes and light some paper lanterns. Almost every year I can remember back in Boston, we would have a procession of twenty - thirty kids, with ensuing parental supervision, singing the Tết Trung Thu song. 

The song goes like this 

"Tết trung thu đot đèn đi chơi,

Em rước đèn đi khắp phố phường..."

And then I have no idea what the rest of the words are. 

I used to be back in Boston with my family, or alone in my room in Chicago, eating a mooncake while half-murmuring a few bars from a song in a language I didn't understand. 

Now I'm in Vietnam, not just Vietnam but rural Mekong Vietnam, and I'm surrounded by eager Vietnamese children overjoyed to be speaking to me. I'm at least a continent away from all of my loved ones, and a continent and an ocean away from Boston and Chicago. I'm able to at least communicate in a language that I never used to understand. I now know that the first line says "It's Tết Trung Thu, let's light lanterns and play."

Of course, I still don't understand the rest of the song, or know any more of the words.

Oh well, the kids were impressed with how much I knew. 

Happy Tết Trung Thu, y'all

Full Tết Trung Thu song and lyrics here 

http://mp3.zing.vn/bai-hat/Ruoc-Den-Thang-Tam-Xuan-Mai/IWZ99OO0.html

Peace,

Jefferson