Jefferson in Vietnam: Tet adventures

Hello all,

Sorry for the delay in posting, here's a slightly overdue update on Tết activities!

February 10 started the Lunar New Year, the beginning of the Year of the Snake! Lunar New Year, or Tết as it is called in Vietnam, is the biggest holiday celebration of the year. Lunar New Year, also called Chinese New Year, is celebrated by the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Koreans and the Japanese. However, Tet is most predominantly celebrated by the Chinese and Vietnamese.

I began to notice the buildup to Tết before going to Cambodia. The students were restless and distracted in the last two days before the weekend, giddy at the prospect of two weeks without school. I sighed and let them out of class early. Who am I to be a Grinch?

There are a few important traditions both before and after Tết that I got to witness in Ho Chi Minh City and Bến Tre.*

*It should be noted that Vietnam is a highly regionalized country, and that many Tet traditions are slightly different along the county. I am writing about the experience in the South, in the Mekong Delta. If you hear about a different tradition, or a slightly different experience, it is possible you are talking to someone from the North or Central parts of Vietnam. Or, you know, it’s possible I screwed up.

Before Tết:

- The ancestor’s graves must be cleaned. At this time more than any, respecting deceased familial members is tantamount. Several of my co-teachers left work early to go back to their hometowns and clean their parents or their grandparents graves before Tết.

- Decorating the house. Flowers are routinely purchased to decorate the house and create a festive air. The most common blooms I saw were yellow “longevity flowers” and the apricot blossom. The South’s traditional flower is the yellow apricot blossom, while the North’s is the orange peach blossom.

Every house has flowers out

Every single one.

The apricot blossom on the left. The full effect on houses that go all out is really rather impressive.

Close-up of the apricot blossom

- The fruit plate. Every family puts out a plate with at least these four fruits: Custard apple, coconut, papaya, mango. The names of these four fruits in Vietnamese (mắng cầu, dừa, đu đủ, xoài) sounds like the phrase “cầu vừa đủ xài”, “We pray for enough to live.” Other fruits are often added to the plate as well, but those four fruits are always present.

-Shopping and cooking. During Tết, the markets are shut down (see below) so a lot of food is prepared beforehand. Traditional tet foods are cooked in abundance, such as pork cooked in a clay pot and the delicious Tết cake.

Bánh Tết: Pork or banana wrapped in sticky rice. Delicious, delicious carbs. So bad for you, but then why does it taste so good?

-Travel. Preparations are made to go back to one’s hometown and visit the family.

During Tet

- Vacation. Students get two weeks off from school, and most businesses get at least one week off. Manual laborers get three days off. What this means is the almost complete cessation of all activity. For the first three days of Tết basically nothing is open. No restaurants, no shops, nothing. Travel during this time is impossible, as all major bus lines are completely shut down. The only restaurants still open are the ones looking to profit from the shortage of food options, and hiked prices are the norm.

- Giving lucky money. This is one of my favorite traditions. Children are given lucky money during the New Year. This lucky money is always freshly printed money given in red and gold envelopes. When a child is given lucky money he is expected to wish the giver a Happy New Year in all forms.

I remember as a child eagerly awaiting the next red envelope, each holding crisp beautiful bills.

Giving lucky money

Sometimes it would be one or two dollars, from my grandparents it was always twenties or tens. Giving me two dollar bills was very common; two dollar bills are lucky in Vietnam and given my name it was an obvious choice. Now, however, as an adult I was in the position of giving money to younger children.

It was great to see the kids struggling between their fear of me as a foreigner and their desire for lucky money. They would stare, approach, dart back, creep closer, size me up, try and decide if the potential lucky money I would give them would warrant approaching them.

Eventually I would approach them, and offer them lucky money. They would smile, and then disappear back into the house as fast as possible.

That is, except for my younger cousins, who were all around six to nine months old. They mostly just tried to eat the lucky money. Thankfully their parents were around to monitor them.

- Visiting family. This is the big thing. Around Vietnam every year, everyone drops everything and heads off to visit their family. People come from other provinces, other countries, the far side of the world to go visit their families. That is one of the reasons ancestor worship is so huge around Tết; it is a time for family, even those who have passed away.

Vietnam is a country that takes family seriously. The very language is infused with the hierarchy of family.

When you speak Vietnamese, the use of pronouns often confuses foreigners. Basically, there is no set pronoun for “I,” “you,” “he/she” etc. The pronoun you use depends on who you are interacting with. If the person is older than you, you call yourself “em,” and you call them “anh” (male) or “chị” (female) if they are a little older than you, “chú” (male) or “cô” (female) if they are a lot older than you and “ông” (male) or “bà” (female) if they are much older than you.

However, if you are older than them you call yourself “ông/chú/anh,” (male) “bà/cô/chị” (female) based on how much older you are, and you call them “em” (gender neutral) if they are a little younger than you and “cháu” or “con” (gender neutral) if they are much younger than you.

So, “Anh ăn cơm” could mean either “I eat rice” or “you eat rice” depending on your age and the age of the person you are talking to.

These pronouns are not only age-based, but also respect/power based. So, my co-workers are significantly older than me, but because they are my co-workers they call me “em” instead of “chau” and I call them “anh/chị” instead of “chú/cô” because putting them that much higher than me would make it weird to work with them.

Sound complicated? I know, it’s a lot to get your head around. The beginning of most Vietnamese conversations is people feeling out what to call each other.

However, the interesting thing here is that all of these pronouns are words for family members. “Ông” means grandfather, “bà” means grandmother, “chú” means uncle, “cô” means aunt, “anh” means older brother, “chị” means older sister, “em” means younger brother/sister, “con” means child and “cháu” means nephew/niece.

Every time you speak to someone in Vietnamese, you are always referring to someone as a family member, even if you have never met them before.

The only pronouns that do not refer to a family member are the informal “bạn” and “tôi” (gender neutral), meaning "friend" and "I" respectively. Using these pronouns sounds very informal and distant to a classic Vietnamese speaker, but it is more popular among younger Vietnamese kids.

Oh, and that’s just to talk to someone random on the street. If you are actually talking to someone from your family? That’s when things get crazy.

There are entirely separate terms to refer to “nhà nội,” or your father’s side of the family, and “nhà ngoại,” or your mother’s side of the family. If an uncle is the brother of your mother you call him “cậu.” Aunts who are the sister of your mother are called “dì.” Uncles related to your father are “chú,” aunts related to your father are “cô.” Unless the sibling is older than your father or mother, in which case you call them “bác.” There are different terms for those who marry your aunts and uncles as well. And oh my god, it goes on and on. I still don’t really understand what to call everyone in my family.

In America, family matters. But in Vietnam, family MATTERS.

The family is the most important unit in Vietnam, bar none, and how you relate to everyone else in the family is critical. Existing outside of the family in Vietnam is…weird. The idea of someone operating without a family doesn’t really compute in the classical Vietnamese worldview.

The most important thing in traditional Vietnamese culture is honoring your family. Your job is important, your education is important, your personal life is important. But nothing is as important as taking care of the family. Listening to your parents wishes, providing guidance to your younger siblings and nephews, starting your own family. All of these things are more important than anything else. Family comes first in Vietnam, and nothing else really comes close.

This whole culture really comes to a head at Tết, where everyone drops everything and heads back to see their family. People will travel across the whole country, or fly back from America and other countries, to visit their families. No matter where they went, they will always come home. The ancestral home where they were all born will draw back grown men and women from across Vietnam, with their children in tow. During Tết, everything takes a backseat to family.

As someone very geographically displaced from my closest family, this made Tết a bit of a strange holiday. But as I hope you’ll see, I was more than adopted by a more distant branch of my family, and by my wonderful friends in Bến Tre.

I got back from Cambodia on New Year’s Eve. As soon as I arrived I headed for the flower street, Nguyen Minh Hue, which has a massive festival for the new year. I met up with Anna and her sister and her sister’s boyfriend, who were passing through on the tail end of their trip from the north to the south.

Entrance to Flower Street

Year of the Snake!

Flower street was incredibly crowded, with people packed in from all sides. We saw beautiful bouquets of dozens of flowers, with people posing for pictures with each and every one.

The flowers

Anna and her sister Thao

Posing for pictures!

Being silly on New Year's Eve

Then we headed to Ben Thanh Market to watch the fireworks.

Ben Thanh market at night

The display was dazzling, and truly spectacular. As we watched, the fireworks erupted into the dark night sky and the entire city of Saigon fell silent. Motorcycles stopped in the street, children paused their yelling and laughing, hawkers ceased their peddling, everyone looked up and stared in wonder at the beautiful cascade of lights.

Then the fireworks stopped, and with a massive rumbling noise the city revved its collective engine and throttled up to its normal frenzied state.

The next day I was picked up from my hotel by my cousins Cuong and Mai, and we went off to see my Ba Hanh. Ba Hanh is my grandfather’s little sister, and the whole branch of her family was there to celebrate Tet. I lit some incense to my ancestors, and prayed for a good new year.

At the family altar with Ba Hanh and Chi Mai

Then it was time for a massive meal! I was told several times that people in Ben Tre drink a lot, so I now had to drink a lot to uphold my province’s reputation. Oy vey.

With my uncles

Well, I managed to survive drinking with my uncles, and then I went back to Bac Kim Anh (Cuong and Mai’s mom’s) house.

That evening I helped Bac Kim Anh and Bac Luan, my uncle and aunt, prepare dinner for Bac Luan’s family. I’ve been to several big dinners at people’s houses, but this is the first time I was involved in preparing one. I helped out where I could, with my limited Vietnamese and nonexistent cooking skills, but I still really felt like part of the family. Nothing like setting up and cleaning up after a big party to make you feel like a real part of the family.

Bac Kim Anh preparing the chicken

I also remember being a small child at most of these family gatherings, and leaving the table early to run around and cause havoc. At this party there were a ton of small children, but I was sitting with the grown-ups and having real conversations as the kids tore around. Eventually they swarmed me as the object of interest, and I entertained the kids for a bit telling them where I was from as they all giggled

hysterically.

At dinner

I had a really great time in Saigon with my family, and I especially have to thank Bac Luan, Bac Kim Anh, Cuong and Mai for being amazing hosts. They took me in without a second glance, and after one day in their house I felt as comfortable as if I had been living there for a year. It was a really great first day of Tết. That's what family's all about, right?

The next morning I headed back to Bến Tre for more Tết activities!

In Bến Tre, the college was entirely shut down. Basically no one was there, and I was the only person still staying on campus. Luckily I didn’t have much time to dwell on the emptiness of campus, as I was immediately taken off to visit people’s houses!

Over the next five days I would visit Mr. Tuan’s family’s house, Mr. Luan’s house, Ms. Y’s family’s house, Mr. Vu Hung’s house, Mr. Vu’s house, Mr. Duy’s house and Mr. Nguyen’s house.

At Mr. Tuan's family's house

At Mr. Luan's house

Mr. Vu Hung's house

Ms. Y's family's house

Mr. Duy's house

Mr. Nguyen's house

At all of these houses I was greeted with an overwhelming amount of food, sometimes an overabundance of alcohol, and always an amazing sense of hospitality. Like I said, Tết is all about family. And people in Bến Tre knew that my family is far away, and that I am detached from most of the family I have known for my whole life. So, they stepped in, and I felt like I was being adopted into several different families over Tết. I was the weird American cousin who no one really understands, but hey, I’ll take it.

Highlights:

- Meeting Mr. Tuan’s uncle, a former helicopter pilot for ARVN who trained in America and had some stories about drinking with Air Force instructors in Texas

- Three Vietnamese lunches in one day with Mr. Luan, Ms. Y and Mr. Vu Hung. So. Much. Food.

- Going to the house of Mr. Quan, Mr. Vu’s friend from school.

With Mr. Quan and his jackfruit tree

Picking a banana with Mr. Quan

Feeding Mr. Quan's fish

Mr. Quan is a fisherman who speaks no English, and he took us to his floating fish farm. These farms are all over the Mekong Delta, where people raise fish in the rich waters of the Delta.

The floating fish farms

On the boat over with Mr. Tung

On the fish farm with Mr. Quan

Standing on the fish farm

With Mr. Tung

Gazing out

Fish underfoot

Eating a snack inside the shack on the fish farm

This is inside the shack. Even here, there are fish underneath us

Mr. Vu took Mr. Quan's boat out for a spin

Lest I give you too rustic an idea of Mr. Quan's habitations, I would like to draw your attention to the TV in the background. The fish farm has lights, fans and tv, all hooked up to a generator on shore. Mr. Quan only gets local channels, no word yet on when he will get basic cable.

- Mr. Duy's adorable dog, Bon.