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Tet is a busy time to prepare, give gifts, celebrate Tet, play Tet… Photo: Thanh Thuan/Bien Phong. |
Tet is not a moment, Tet is a time to let go of work and eat. That was the time when the fields of Vietnam had not yet sprouted tall blocks of houses, had not become project land, and the children were still able to safely map the sample essay “My village’s field is not very large, but it is enough for me.” The winged stork flies across the vast rice fields in the early followingnoon.”
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Tet is not on the lunar calendar, Tet is the product of the wet rice civilization, determined by the climate. Our Tet is therefore still similar to the Western New Year of the peoples living in another civilization, for example in this Europe. Tet, we or the west, even though they don’t call it that, is the custom of the ethnic groups that gave birth to those civilizations and grew up thanks to those civilizations, for a time.
Tet is not a moment. Tet does not return on a sunny day, the fields have been plowed and dried, waiting for the dust to be pounded and then drained to prepare for planting. Tet must come later, when the air begins to soften with drizzling drizzle, the north wind, and the rising spring.
Rest your hands and then be busy once more with spiritual things, go to graves in the followingnoon of December, go to the district market to buy food and drink, accompanied by a pair of red and black couplets, a bunch of raw confetti, red, yellow and green towers. Play once more, then go to the garden to take care of the moldy chrysanthemum bushes.
Then make pork, make all kinds of leaf cakes, from banh chung and banh chung to banh chung and banh gai, which can be kept for a long time without refrigeration. Then they go to give gifts, eat Tet, then play Tet, play until the second January.
That said, Tet is so poetic. But in fact, the time when the farmer is idle is just when the farmer is unemployed, the new rice is warm, and the potato is the root but not yet the tuber. The harvest season begins when the stomach is full for three days of Tet. The suffering started before that, the pain of visiting to pay attention to keeping the relationship between the top and the bottom, the relationships are very sensitive, careless and chipped in the village.
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I have lived in Hanoi during the subsidy period and many times have witnessed the scene of neighbors returning to their hometown to celebrate Tet, how much hardship it is to take a bus or train out of Hanoi for a few dozen trees. It is no different from the scene today, so many Vietnamese people scattered to work far away from the mountains and rivers rushed to their hometown to celebrate Tet, pretending to be the bus station and the pier now.
How regarding when you get home? Will you be happy or sad? It is also difficult to avoid sadness, just need a loved one to carelessly compare the generous affluence of one child with another, compare the wealth and joy of the family’s children with their own. Oh wow.
That’s not counting people, but not the descendants of Qi Tian Dai Thanh, who can separate themselves everywhere and are present. So it became a story that when I was at home I was still scared of my soul as an adult. Any Tet can be played, just worry is worry.
Lo from the bunch of dong leaves to the box of jam, for my home and for the houses I belong to, for the first day, the moldy jam cake is watery. Lo from the shape of the chicken that will sit on the offering tray to the leg of the pork leg in the bamboo shoot soup pot.
Play flowers? Play since the flower season, but what to play when frantically running to buy peach branches like a chicken to plant upside down on the altar? Among all those worries, there is a worry of water shortage or dehydration, to wash the leaves of the beans to make the chickens to wash the dishes every day and eat a lot of dishes, meal following meal, with so many dishes.
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Tet is not a moment. Tet is getting longer and longer, officially, through the state’s decision every year to take a Tet holiday, spend money on Tet decorations, set off fireworks to make the poor forget or encourage ringing bells to save money on fireworks. Through the leadership of all levels, it is publicly recommended not to give money on this day.
Bao left the New Year, someone immediately called to think of the miserable people who left their hometown to find food far away, there must be a day for people to reunite. Yes, that’s right, those people also think so, otherwise they can only rush home when they receive the news that their parents are old and dead. However, regarding why and how can anyone think for each other?
I can’t understand these things anymore. I have been away from the country for more than twenty years. In foreign countries, we see that they have many holidays, some days off, some days off, but the days off that fall on the weekend are not allowed to stay. Everyone goes to work.
Western New Year and Tet we live close to each other, now we are struggling, but we eat a lot from New Year to New Year in a way that we do not do and say, feel happier than the West. The West does not have a Lunar New Year, but Christmas in the hearts of Europeans is no different from the Lunar New Year in Vietnam. They eat Christmas and celebrate their New Year jubilantly. The Christmas market opens a whole month before.
The city hangs lights and flowers just like in Vietnam, but loses the colorful and gaudy density. On the followingnoon of December 24, most public agencies closed. The trading services continue to be busy until following noon and then will stop. Increased activity probably only police and doctors. On the 27th, all returned to the old cycle of work. And on the last day of the year following that, there were three days, excitedly vacationing together once more, the third day continued to work.
There is one thing that surprised me when I first came here: the days before and following the ceremony had to go to the public office, I did not see any sign of the staff neglecting their work.
I was also surprised when it turned out that New Year’s Eve was more jubilant than New Year’s Eve. Firecrackers are sold from the twenty-eighth twenty-nine of the Lunar New Year, including only fireworks and firecrackers. Since the sale of firecrackers, sometimes there are two or three explosions because someone burns the fire, and they have to wait until the thirtieth night to hear, see, and be burned.
People set off fireworks, people set off firecrackers in the sky from before New Year’s Eve until… right on the morning of the first day. Then stop. Several years of pandemic, lockdown, ban on firecrackers, to avoid large gatherings. Because of that, the atmosphere is also revived. It must be calculated.
Equally surprising was when I received my first Christmas present here from the landlady. It was a large pair of cotton towels to lay on the beach with the receipt. Attached a warning if I don’t like my gift or don’t need it, then take it to the store to return it, get my money back, okay!
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