Here's how the Lunar New Year is celebrated in Vietnam:
Vietnam is one of the few countries in the world that use the lunar calendar, and one of the few where the Lunar New Year is celebrated nationwide.
The Lunar New Year is the biggest and most lively traditional festival of Vietnamese folklore. Vietnamese people regard the Lunar New Year as a day to celebrate the old and welcome the new, and usually start to do the New Year's shopping from the middle of December on the lunar calendar, while the most indispensable things for the Lunar New Year in Vietnam are probably flowers, rice dumplings, spring scrolls and firecrackers?
Flower markets are one of the important activities of the Lunar New Year in Vietnam. In Hanoi, for example, the flower market starts to bustle about 10 days before the Lunar New Year. Vietnamese people's favorite annual flowers include gladiolus, dahlia, kumquat and peach blossom. In addition to flowers and bonsai, the market also sells balloons, lanterns, toys, New Year's paintings, spring scrolls and calendars, decorating several streets in a colorful and festive atmosphere.
New Year dumplings made of glutinous rice, pork and green bean paste
Vietnamese people also have the habit of posting spring scrolls during the Lunar New Year. In the past, spring scrolls were written in Chinese characters, but after the romanization of the characters, most spring scrolls are now written in pinyin, where each pinyin character is a square, creating a style of its own.
Also, Vietnamese people love to post the words "Blessing" and "Hei Hei" and images of the stars of fortune, wealth and longevity, as well as traditional New Year's paintings at home to express their wishes and aspirations for the New Year.
Local Chinese must have rice cakes and other foods for the Lunar New Year, and Vietnamese are no exception, with the most national characteristics being rice dumplings and glutinous rice cakes.
The rice dumplings are the same as the ones we eat, but the Vietnamese rice dumplings are square and much larger, usually made with 200 grams of glutinous rice, wrapped with 200 grams of pork and 150 grams of mung bean paste in the center, and wrapped with banana leaves. Legend has it that the rice dumplings symbolize the earth, with the green color showing vitality, and the pork and mung bean paste representing the birds and animals, and the grass and trees.
Vietnamese people used to set off firecrackers on Lunar New Year, but since 1995 the Vietnamese government has banned the setting off of fireworks during Lunar New Year.
The Chinese have a tradition of observing the New Year's Eve, as do the Vietnamese. On New Year's Eve, people put on their festive attire and rush out onto the streets in unison, with young women wearing Vietnamese cheongsams. The festive atmosphere culminates at zero hour when the national leader's Lunar New Year speech is broadcast on the radio. People then pick a branch to take home. This custom is called "picking green". In Vietnamese, the words "green" and "loc" have the same sound. "Picking the green" means "picking the Loc", which means bringing home good luck.
The first guest brings good luck on Tet
Vietnamese people usually take a few days off for Tet, and it is also customary to pay New Year's visits to friends and relatives. The earliest visitor to a home is especially valued and is said to bring good luck to the host. The Vietnamese call this "Chon Ka" or "Chon Di", which is close in meaning to "Chon Hai". Therefore, Vietnamese people usually invite their closest and most respected friends as the first guests of the Lunar New Year.
In addition to visits between friends and relatives, during the Tet holiday, various recreational activities are held for several days on the streets, in parks and public **** entertainment venues throughout Vietnam, with performances of traditional Vietnamese drama, songs and dances, acrobatics, martial arts, wrestling, lion dance, etc., as well as folkloric activities such as swinging, playing chess, cockfighting, birdfighting, etc., which have immersed the whole of Vietnam in a festive atmosphere.