Should we change the Lunar New Year?

Peach Blossom – the special flower only blossoms in Tet

We just get back to work after Tet about 2 weeks and I have to say we still feel the atmosphere and the spirit of the holiday, which is a bit lazy and not fully concentrate on working.

As many years, Vietnam government have had in mind an idea of changing the Lunar New Year , to combine Tet with the New Year Eve with many other countries in the world.

They have their reasons and they are not completely wrong. We normally have 9 days of celebrating Tet. This could be too long, not to mention that Tet is after New Year Eve a month so we could get two holidays back to back and the affects to working time with foreigners because of the different celebrating period.

Tet also bring back old minded and behavior like a big feast, a whole month of playing, mass of worships and presents… Not to mention alcohol and the consequences of alcoholism. Not to mention gambling during Tet. Not to mention the fights when drinking, gambling. Not to mention the traffic accident in Tet …

If we want to join in the world economic and keep up with the world, this should be changed. They said we have made many changed many thing from the past, such as long hair, long nails, wooden clogs, using hieroglyphs… all of them can be changed so Tet is not an exception.

In tourism, Tet makes the cost of many services rocketing and even not available for you, causing lack of communication with your travel agents or can not visit any place because they are closed.

However, in the other hands, Tet is something special and meaningful to me and many other Vietnamese. There are many special things that we only willing and dare to do in this moment, like gathering together, saying loving word to our relatives, forgive any misunderstanding or dissidence, or don’t mind losses in helping others…

This is not about the date. This special feeling is only happened when we feel the weather start little rain, all flowers are blossoming and see the number 30 on our lunar calendar.

For tourist, you can have a change to see the unique in our cultural, enjoy a non-busy street during these days. And if you are lucky, you can join with a local family and blend yourself in our feeling to deeply understand it.

Another Tet has gone and we are now facing this question again. This time, we would like to hear your thought about this. Your opinion could make us realize to change this event or make us feel more confident to continue what we are doing. Look forward to any comments.

 

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Outside our window…

Each year, after the New Year Year about 2 weeks, everybody in Vietnam is getting excited and looking forward to our biggest holiday – Tet.

We need to work harder than normal days, concentrate to finish all the undone jobs and also arrange some future works after the holiday to have a long holiday without worrying about anything at work.

However, we are “lucky” to have our office not in the Old Quarter like others, but right next to a big kumquat garden. During January, they are always busy for customers who comes to check and buy a nice and fortunate kumquat to bring home for Tet.

Kumquat is an unique mascots in Tet in the North of Vietnam with Peach Blossom, while Apricot Blossom is represented for the South.

During a years, for 12 months, this garden has witnessed many changes, after each months. From the worst to the most beautiful that not many offices in Hanoi can have.

This was what happened after Tet in 2015. Trees had been bought and the garden looked like a mess!

Then the farmers start fixing it with new soil, using calcium carbonate to prevent worms, gathering left trees to arrange them in line.

New trees are arrived for the coming season. The thing is after Tet, these tree didn’t die. You can choose to throw it away or sell it back to the farmer or hire them to take care of your tree for the next Tet if you really like it’s posture.

These trees have to be green for the whole year and not have fruits until one month before Tet. This is a special technique of the farmers and they spend about 11 months to take care their garden while having a second job like others people.

Finally, when we are about one week to reach Tet at the moment, these trees are ready to bring home and getting decorated to stand out in the living room.

We could be distracted by this lovely view but our team are proud to have it outside our window! Happy a New Year of Monkey! Wish you are always full of energy and happiness like him!

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Tet’s food in Vietnam.

Tet is coming soon and all of Vietnamese people are counting each day till the biggest day.

Tet Nguyen Dan, or Tet for short, is always the biggest and most popular festival of the year in Vietnam. Celebrated on the first day of the first month in Lunar Calendar, Tet’s celebration is the longest holiday which may last up to seven days or even more, depend on each year. This year, 2015, Tet is on Febuary 19th but the actual holiday will last 1 to 2 days before and about 3-5 days after the day I mentioned.

Why is Tet changing each year? It’s all because Tet is calculated on Lunar Calendar. Different from the Gregorian calendar, Lunar Calendar has a fix number of twelve months with 30 days each, and a leap-year will have a whole intercalary month instead of the 29th day of February. The new year of Lunar Calendar normally will start in late January or beginning of February according to Gregorian calendar. That explains why Tet days vary from year to year: it is because the leap month may fall shorter or longer which create a smaller or bigger gap between the two calendars.
As a traveller, you might not need to get all the Vietnamese’s excitement and emotions, though there are certain things that you probably should know about. At least you should have an idea whether your upcoming holiday in Vietnam will coincide with this grandest event of the year.
This time, not like your imagination about most of festival in Vietnam, Tet is like Thanksgiving Holiday, when Vietnamese come back to their hometown, meet their family and spend most of time with their relatives. During 3 main days in Tet, you will see a totally different of Vietnam, less of people, traffics and completely peaceful and quiet.
Travelling in this time could be difficult for foreigners when most of stores are closing while the price of transportation is rocketing and even not available. But, it’s worth to give it a try to join Tet in Vietnam, especially in Hanoi.
There are a lot of unique thing you can only do in this special time, but in here, the favorite part I would like to introduce to you is some Traditional Tet’s foods of Vietnam which every family will cook in this time. Moreover, all of those dishes are so delicious.

1. Bánh Chưng – Square Cake

Banh Chung (steamed square cake) and its Southern variety called Banh Tet – is unique to Vietnam’s Tet holiday, though many other countries (China, Japan, Korean, Singapore, Taiwan) celebrate this holiday as well. Banh Chung is a food made from glutinous rice, mung bean and pork, added with many other ingredients. Banh Chung is covered by green leaves (usually banana leaves) and symbolizes the Earth, invented by the prince Lang Lieu from Hung King dynasty. Especially, in some villages, the true “Banh Chung” will be boiled in rain water.. Besides traditional reason, Banh Chung is chosen as the main food for Tet holiday because of it can last long for days in the severe weather of Vietnam.

Banh Chung can survive at room temperature for nearly 1 month!

2. Vietnamese Pickled Onions (Hanh Muoi)

In Vietnamese culture, Tet will be the biggest feast of the year with a lot of foods and the main dish will be meat. However, eating too much meat often makes people feel sick and that is the right time for something sour, fresh and low-calorie to play the role of balancing – and Vietnamese pickled onions come as the ideal solution. And for many Vietnamese generations, pickled onions have been a cannot-be-missed dish during Tet holiday.

As much as a meat taste-countering ingredient, Vietnamese pickled onions also serve as a natural medicine for better digestion after high protein meals. The typical aromatic, crispy and sour taste of pickled onions going with fat jellied meat and tasty sticky rice cake awakens the Tet atmosphere in every family dinner. This dish is usually served with Banh Chung and they seem to be born to each other.

This dish is quite strange to taste but it’s delicious and good for your health.

3. Mung Bean Pudding – Vietnamese Che Kho
To old Hanoian generations, mung bean pudding has become a familiar dish which always presents on the ancestors’ altar at New Year’s Eve. Mung bean pudding is not a delicacy but a dessert, its ingredients contain a precious medicine for gastrointestinal diseases – the cardamom.
Cardamom is a highly aromatic spice that is most commonly planted in mountainous provinces of Vietnam, its flavor is slightly sweet and hot, very suitable to combine with a wide range of other ingredients from poultry, vegetable to cake. And in the dish of mung bean pudding, the hot cardamom goes perfectly with the cool mung bean.

Unfortunately, this dish has lost its position in Vietnamese Tet’s meal, people can only see this dish at markets and pagodas or in some traditional village near Hanoi like Bat Trang – Ceramic Village.
Mung bean pudding is made from dried mung bean, sugar, grapefruit extract and cardamom following a secret portion that only skillful and experienced cookers know and that is the reason why ancient mothers always took this dish to test the ingenuity of their future daughter.

We hardly see this dish around but if you have a chance, don’t hesitate to try it. Very light and a perfect couple with Banh Chưng.

4. Boiled chicken.
“Ga Luoc” (boiled or steamed chicken) plays an important role in Tet holiday cuisine because all the tribute meals to the ancestors must contain a WHOLE boiled chicken. Chicken meat in Tet meals are various in forms: usually chicken are boiled and sliced, but in the most common way, people will place the whole chicken in a plate and the chicken may hold a rose in its beak. Chicken meat is served with Xoi (sticky rice) and Banh Chung, and become one of the most popular main dishes in Tet holidays. Boiled chicken are always go with sliced lemon leaves and salt-and-pepper sauce, as a tradition. Chicken (especially bones, legs and heads) can be used to prepare the broths for other soups.
Why does Vietnamese choose to cook chicken in Tet will be an interesting story you can ask your guide when you come to Vietnam.

To make a perfect boiled chicken is not an easy job. The most important part will be the decoration on dish.

5. Mut – Candied fruits
Mut Tet (Tet jam) is not a food to serve in a meal during Tet holiday, but more like a snack to welcome guests in this special period. Mut is always kept in beautiful boxes and placed at the table in the living room, and it is the main food for the owners and guests to taste when they’re talking, enjoyed over a cup of tea. Unlike Western jam, which is usually in liquid form and served with bread, “Vietnamese jam” is mainly in dry form, usually dried fruits and some kind of seeds (pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, watermelon seeds). This once-in-year mix of snack is very large in variety, with so many tastes: ginger, carrot, coconut, pineapple, pumpkin, lotus seed, star fruit, and sweet potato. Nowadays, cake and sweet are slowly replacing jam in Tet period, but many people still love the taste this unique food – an angle of Vietnamese culture.

You can easy find this in every Vietnamese family in Tet Holiday.

These are popular but meaningful foods we have in our biggest holiday. Let’s try them if you are travelling in Vietnam during this holiday.

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Tet, still a biggest holiday in Vietnam?

Holiday makers to Vietnam around late Jan till mid Feb period will likely be the ones who experience the special Lunar New Year which often known as Tet. This time of years are always overwhelming with colors of flowers, traffic jams in the streets. To an individual, it will be loads of work to be completed, shopping, visiting ancestors’ graves and on and on…
In the view of many westerners, Tet in Vietnam is more or less similar to a combination of Thanksgiving and Christmas in their culture. This is the time for family reunion, gathering together among the loved ones, repainting and tidying up the houses, tending all the graves of the lost ones, cooking special dishes and offering to ancestors as well as burning heaps of incenses for them. In the olden day central-planned economy, Tet was exactly the biggest Vietnam public holiday as when everything closed 5-7 days for Tet. In term of nutrition, that was the only time of year to have more than enough coupons to get pork, rib, fish and beef ( aka nutritious food lol ) without any worries. Children to be off-school for holiday and able to wear the new clothes ( may be the only time of year to be bought new clothes ), let alone the lucky money given from the older family members and relatives. Adding to this, the smell of fire crackers also brought back a very typical atmosphere of a Lunar New Year that anyone of my generation and older have to agree with.
“I hate Tet”, quoted by Pham Van Anh ( a friend of mine ) on her face book recently, who also a marketing and PR manager of a big travel firm, has shown a fact that Tet is becoming less and less welcome. The open door policy and market-oriented economy have brought back with magnificent improvements in living quality but then work-stress and work responsibility are inseparable. All kind of special Tet’s foods can be found in any market in the middle of summer. Clothes and shoes/sandals are now affordable all year round. “The atmosphere of Tet now is not as in my time, Tet is no doubt losing its traditional significance and nature “, said 74 years old neighbor while watching people choosing and buying kumquat tree for Tet. In the last month Thanhnien Newspaper, some government officers even suggested to celebrate traditional Tet at the same time with western calender. And you? What do you think about it?

Whatever it is, Tet will always remain hectic, busy, rush and at the end, people looking forward the reunion dinner before Lunar New Year Eve to come. That will be the time they make their New Year resolution, toasting each other nicest wishes and sharing those great moments to the rest of the family.
If you are making a holiday to Vietnam this time of year, let’s double check everything on your Vietnam travel package
to make sure all are in order prior to arrival. Traveling on Tet might lose some of the daily insights of Vietnam but then, you got all other special aspects of a Tet has to offer.
Happy traveling and Happy Tet 2013!

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