Tet is, in fact, the lunar New Year celebration in Viet Nam or what you usually call Chinese New Year in the States. The first day of Tet is February 14th this year, but preparations have been underway for weeks.
In the cities, decorations very reminiscent of Christmas lights in the States are going up on the streets. We're in the countryside now, but I'll try to get some pictures when we get back to Nha Trang. Most houses and shops have signs "Chuc Mung Nam Moi" (Happy New Year), which like some people's Christmas lights, never come down before next New Year.
Forget about it if you want to go anywhere except by your own vehicle. Bus, train, and plane tickets have been sold out for most of the month of February for months. Planning my recent trip to the States, I had to get back to Saigon by February 3rd the latest date I was able to procure a domestic ticket back to Central Vietnam, even though I was shopping in December. The highways are jammed with speeding busses as drivers try to get one extra profitable round trip from South to North before the holiday. Mixing this with excessive celebratory drinking and the frequent highway traffic tragedies are not surprising.
Flower markets are popping up in all the market areas. The most popular plants seem to be mums, with huge pots of yellow mums everywhere. I remember a huge flower market in Saigon last Tet when I was stranded there with a much larger variety of beautiful flowers, most coming from the mountain city of DaLat. Salem bought us a couple of beautiful pots of mums, almost as tall as she is. Each cost about $10US, but like the guy who buys his Christmas tree on Christmas Eve to take advantage of the lowered prices, she expects to go back this weekend for some discounts. I'm not allowed to go on these shopping outing because the price immediately doubles when I'm there.
At least in this farm household, the preparation of "cakes" for the many expected visitors is well underway, but I'm pretty sure it goes on everywhere. Each day Salem's mom makes a different one, often using instruments and pans that have come down to her from earlier generations. The other day (unfortunately I was without my camera) she mixed rice flour with a sugar water syrup into a very dry blend. You could form a ball, but if you put it down, it would fall apart of it's own weight. It was almost like a pie crust before the liquid is added. Anyway, this powder was poured into a metal ring about 1" tall. A little depression was made and filled with a sweet paste, and then a metal cap inserted in the ring. This was pounded with a block of wood to about 3/4 of its original volume. When pushed out of the ring it was a pretty little cake with a decorative pattern on top. Rather than being cooked, these were put in the sun for a day.
Next day, she and Salem made some little fluted cakes based on wheat flour. Because there are no ovens in the countryside, an elaborate little pan was used that sits on a bed of coals, but also has a top which is covered with coals. After the pan which sits directly on coals is heated and buttered, batter is ladled into the little indentations in the bottom of the pan. The top, which is covered with glowing coals is then lowered into place and 8-10 minutes later the cakes are done and the process starts again. This year's batch was mixed from 7 cups each of flour, eggs, and sugar and took most of the afternoon and evening. Soon after starting, Salem's mom was called to the field to retrieve sweet potato cuttings for the livestock that grandpa had abandonned, so Salem ended up with most of the task, well into darkness. Because there is only one flashlight, and cakes baking takes preference at Tet, mom had to return from the fields in pitch darkness.
Tet is not a time of major gift giving, like Christmas, so although the markets are full of people buying food, a lot of stores have already been closing so people can return to their ancestral homes for the 1st day of Tet. By the second day, when we ride the 5-6 hours to Nha Trang, we don't expect to find much but gas stations open along the way.
I was awakened today by calls that breakfast had just been delivered; excited, enthusiastic calls. i'm not a marine biologist, so maybe you can help me undertand what I had for breakfast.
How can you resist when you've got a sweet girl doing all the hard work? I did supplement with a bowl of corn flakes.
At 100 years, Grandpa and Grandma are pretty much off the hook for preparations.
10 days off school, 4 new puppies, and all the coconut shells you could ask for - what's not to like about Tet?
The ancestors need to be remembered too. Salem (above) and mom (second) prepare flower and fruit arrangements for the family altar.
No comments:
Post a Comment