A New Zealand professor has been researching Tet (Vietnam’s Lunar New Year) for the last six years, as he believes the holiday will provide him with a deeper understanding of the Southeast Asian country and its people.

Prof. Patrick McAllister, originally from South Africa, teaches anthropology at Canterbury University in New Zealand. He decided to explore Tet – which falls on January 31 this year – because, as he said, it would give him fascinating insights into Vietnamese life and culture, as well as the local mindset.

Tet is in late January or early February every year, and lasts from the first day of the Vietnamese lunar calendar to at least the third day.

According to Vietnamese tradition, each lunar year is associated with one of the 12 zodiac animals: rat, water buffalo, tiger, cat, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, chicken, dog, and pig.

The upcoming Tet will mark the beginning of the Year of the Horse.

Prof McAllister, 65, stayed in Ho Chi Minh City for two weeks in early 2008, when locals were busy preparing for the Lunar New Year of the Rat, after learning some basic Vietnamese.

Tet has its own distinctive features, such as the Kitchen Gods, banh tet (a sweetened cake made primarily from glutinous rice and rolled in a banana leaf into a thick, log-like cylindrical shape) and banh chung (a rice cake which is made from glutinous rice, mung bean, pork and other ingredients), though the holiday is similar to the Chinese Lunar New Year, the academic said.

“Everybody knows about the Chinese Lunar New Year, but not many outside of Vietnam are aware of the importance of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year,” Prof McAllister said.

“I was interested in doing research on Vietnamese Tet because I wanted to find out about the country and its people,” he explained.

First Tet experience

Prof McAllister said his first experience with Tet in 2008 was his most memorable. Several interesting stories about Tet habits and customs impressed him very much.

That year, Nguyen Huyen Thanh Binh, one of his two Vietnamese assistants, invited him to her home to see how her family celebrated Tet.

He travelled by motorbike with Binh's family to her uncle’s house about 20 km outside of Ho Chi Minh City for the tao mo rites (the cleaning and decorating of ancestral graves at the beginning of a lunar year) dedicated to her mother's family.

After that, he paid a visit to the uncle’s house for a large family meal. Then Prof McAllister and Binh’s family continued by motorbike to a Theravada Buddhist pagoda in Tan Binh District, where all the monks and worshippers had gathered to pray.

Then he returned to Binh's house in the evening for giao thua (a ceremony observed on the Eve of the Lunar New Year), which he said was a wonderful experience.

At midnight, everybody in her family expressed their wishes for each other and exchanged li xi (lucky money stuffed inside red envelopes).

“It was interesting to see that young and old people gave one another li xi. Of course I also gave and received lucky money on that occasion,” he said.

Prof McAllister then went out on the balcony to watch Binh's grandmother preparing offerings for the gods, as fireworks exploded in various parts of the city.

Prof McAllister, Binh, and her cousin then moved on to a temple, Lang Ong Ba Chieu, not far from her house. There were hundreds of people there and the air was thick with incense smoke. Inside it was very crowded, as people were praying for good luck for the New Year. As an anthropologist, Prof McAllister works hard to learn about various Tet habits and customs. He asks questions frequently and observes everything going on.

Thanh Thuy, Prof McAllister’s other assistant who helps with Vietnamese translation, said sometimes his questions were so hard that she and Binh couldn’t even answer them. All they could do was laugh.

“When we were at the temple, he stared at a horse statue and asked why there was a red cloth on it” – Thuy told Tuoi Tre, adding that she had to do Internet research to find the answer later.

When asked about this, Prof McAllister smiled. According to him, there were many interesting things at the temple – not only the horse, but also a fortune-telling fish, a tiger, a hammock, elephant tusks, and whale bones.

He said that people touched all these things and animals, and rubbed their hands all over their bodies in hopes they would receive good luck.

Another very interesting experience for him was when a friend in Tan Binh District invited him to attend a ritual called cung xom, which is performed during Tet by people whose ancestors originally came from Quang Nam and Da Nang in central Vietnam.

The members of different families in a neighborhood usually contribute money and work together to pray before an altar in the open during this ceremony.

Afterwards they throw a party with lots of food and drinks.

“Most people in HCMC who do not come from the central region did not know about this kind of observance. I had to explain it to them” – he proudly said.

As Tet is the time for family union, Prof. McAllister said he had a wonder experience when he was being invited to join the Le Hoang family Tet reunion in My Tho Mekong Delta town when he could see how about 30 members of one family get together annually to enjoy Tet.

The professor is also interested in the annual VTV show about the Kitchen Gods going to heaven to report to Ngoc Hoang (the Jade Emperor). He interviewed the director and scriptwriter. “It was fascinating to hear about how they plan and develop this show every year. I also like the fact that Vietnamese people communicate with other spiritual beings and gods during Tet,” he said.

Bringing Tet to the world

The first Tet Prof McAllister celebrated in Vietnam created a long lasting desire to come back year after year. To gain a deep understanding of Tet, he has interviewed people with a very intimate knowledge of Vietnamese culture and history.  

In his experience, Vietnamese people are very proud of their country and culture, and they are always keen on helping him understand what happens during Tet.

“They have made me realize that Vietnamese culture is deep and complicated, and that I need to know the language to really understand many things,” Prof McAllister said.

To date, he has given eight presentations on Tet at international conferences and workshops in Thailand, Germany, Indonesia, Australia, and at New Zealand universities.

He told Tuoi Tre that the audience members were very interested because they did not know much about Tet beforehand.

He has also spoken about Tet at conferences in Vietnam. His research is supported by Hoa Sen University in HCMC and he conducted a research workshop attended by the staff of the university, in which he explained how he conducted his research on Vietnam’s Lunar New Year and provided research findings.

Prof McAllister has also included the Vietnamese festival in many of his lectures to anthropology majors at the University of Canterbury. “They loved to hear about it and about my experiences in Vietnam. I am trying to encourage some of them to do research in Vietnam when they graduate,” he shared.

“I’ll continue coming to Vietnam to research Tet, as many aspects of it as possible,” the professor said, adding he really does not know when he will stop the research work.