New Year hopes bloom for Tet
Trees on motorbikes and fish for the Kitchen Gods are among Hanoi's telltale signs of a change in calendars
“I ONLY SOLD three today because it was raining,” 22-year-old Nguyet says as she struggles to strap a kumquat tree onto the back of a motorbike. The trees are cultivated especially for Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year that began yesterday, and are a necessity for every family home, much like Christmas trees in the West.
“It’s good luck to have golden and green fruit and flowers on the tree,” Tuyet says.
The sight of these small, leafy shrubs weaving through rush-hour traffic is one of the most visible signs that a fresh year and the nine-day annual holiday that accompanies have arrived.
But it is far from the only indicator. In the Old Quarter much of the traffic is heading towards Hang Ma Street, which sells seasonal festive decorations.
Among the glittering stalls and displays are elaborately crafted items made from coloured paper – sports cars, villas, fridges, bank notes, washing machines and even iPhones – which are to be burnt as offerings for the dead.
At one stall 17-year-old Nguyen Thi Hoa watches over a table covered with embossed red and gold envelopes, known as li xi in Vietnamese.
Many of them are decorated with goats, in honour of the impending Year of the Goat.
“Don’t buy that one, it’s Chinese,” she says, handing over an |alternative design. “We fill these envelopes with lucky money and give them to friends and children at Tet,” she says.
Money in small denominations is also donated to pagodas at this time of year and can be seen scattered across the steles (standing stone slabs which rest on stone turtle sculptures) in popular tourist spots like the Temple of Literature where people go to wish for success in school exams.
This “lucky money” is however more difficult to find this year because the State Bank has announced it will not issue new denominations lower than 5,000 dong over Tet in order to |cut costs.
Plastic bags filled with water and three goldfish were also a common sight on the 23rd day of the Lunar Calendar – a week before New Year’s Day – as Hanoians headed to one of the city’s many lakes and waterways to release them.
According to tradition, the fish accompany the Kitchen God, which lives in the stove of every family home, when the deity makes his annual trip to heaven to report on the family’s doings over the last year.
Not everyone approves of the way this custom is upheld. On Long Bien bridge – one of Hanoi’s most celebrated landmarks – which crosses the Red River, 50 students carrying posters and wearing matching T-shirts line the path.
They call themselves the Carp Team and meet here to discourage people from throwing the fish off the side in plastic bags, saying the practice is bad for the environment and kills the fish.
“We collect the fish from people and put them in a basin. Then we lower the basin down to the |riverside and release them there,” |says 19-year-old Hoang Hong Vi.|“We collected so many I couldn’t count them all.”
One less welcome precursor to Tet is the 24/7 rush-hour traffic as residents fill the city’s narrow streets on a mission to stock up on festive food, ornaments and gifts.
There are more police on the road too, handing out fines for traffic violations, and watching for the drink drivers that tend to be more common around New Year.
On the first day of the Lunar New Year, on Thursday, everyone will stay home to celebrate with their families, bringing another once-in-a-year phenomenon to the Vietnamese capital: peace and quiet.
