| Preparing a traditional year-end party is a way many expatriates express their nostalgia for their homeland. Photo: T.D. |
In Le Minh Ha’s writings regarding Hanoi, gossip regarding Tet holds a special place. With a gentle and emotional voice, sometimes mixed with a little joke, many memories of the Tet holidays in the subsidy period, along with the long-lasting Tet holidays in the country, appear very vividly.
Bring the Vietnamese New Year to Europe
Writer Le Minh Ha has been living in Germany for nearly 20 years, that time has added to the author’s longing for the land of thousands of years of civilization. Like many expatriates, the days before Tet are the time when writer Le Minh Ha misses Hanoi the most, because the older people get, the more nostalgic they are.
It’s also far from home, but those who live in Europe understand how twisted and persistent the nostalgia for Tet is. Because in this country, people do not have the Lunar New Year, the husband still has to go to work on New Year’s Day, the children still go to school, the daily wheel is still regular like that.
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| Writer Le Minh Ha. Photo: To Chiem. |
In order to bring the Vietnamese New Year under the roof, let their children learn, then love and remember the traditional culture of the nation, housewives often take advantage of cooking a few traditional dishes, which often appear in the year-end banquet. such as bamboo shoot soup, frozen meat, fried spring rolls, fried spring rolls… even some people put in a lot of effort to earn dong leaves to wrap banh chung.
Reading the pages of Le Minh Ha, readers understand more regarding the Tet holidays of expatriates. In a foreign land, wives, mothers, and grandmothers still try to prepare the best Tet possible, although not as complete as at home.
Le Minh Ha has shared in many poems regarding Tet, so that the year-end rice tray has a whole chicken curry, not frozen chicken cut into pieces, a bowl of soft and sweet soup ball or a plate of sticky and fat gac sticky rice, need both sharpness, ingenuity and calculation mind and sometimes the ability to communicate and connect with friends. Because buying Vietnamese food in European markets is not easy.
With the same scene away from home, friends think regarding each other even more on Tet. In the middle of a cold winter day, covered with white snow, being sent a package of pork tongue bamboo shoots to cook a bowl of soup to celebrate Tet with your husband and children in a few days is nothing. It’s great, if someone remembers that their friend is sweet, bring you an extra bag of coconut jam, sip it with a hot teapot, and then forever remember the color of peach blossom back home.
