Visiting the Hue Tet Market

After having four children, my parents asked permission to move out, but my grandmother suggested that if one child was removed, I could stay with them to keep the house lively. So I continued to live with my grandmother under the familiar roof that had been there since I was a baby.

My grandmother came from a humble country girl, but she had a remarkable talent for domestic skills that my mother and the other women in the family all admired. I remember back then, every morning around the end of the lunar year, she would take me to the end of the lane to play and watch the women carrying their produce from the mountains. Usually, it was arrowroot, fresh ginger, sweet potatoes… She would choose the best ones and bring them home to process. She only bought a moderate amount of ginger and sweet potatoes, mainly for making jam for Tet (Lunar New Year). But my grandmother bought an enormous amount of arrowroot, peeled it, washed it, and then carried it to be ground to extract the flour. It wasn't just for making cakes for Tet, but also for the whole year, sometimes even to give to relatives and friends who needed it but didn't have the time or the knowledge to make the flour themselves. That's why my grandmother had to make so much, and it was a real burden for me, a little child, sometimes spending the whole afternoon peeling arrowroot with her, feeling sore and bored.

Choose jams and cakes for Tet (Vietnamese New Year).

After making candied ginger, candied sweet potatoes, and candied pumpkins, my grandmother switched to making printed cakes, lotus seed cakes, and glutinous rice cakes. She made five or seven different types of printed cakes, using mung bean flour, glutinous rice flour, and mung bean flour… I remember my grandmother had a beautiful set of copper molds for making these cakes. After the flours were carefully fermented, steamed, and kneaded, through my grandmother's hands, printed cakes of various shapes and patterns appeared one after another, beautiful and attractive like a fairy tale dream. The finished cakes were dried, then wrapped in colorful cellophane paper, and carefully arranged in boxes to await Tet (Lunar New Year). After successfully making a batch of cakes, my grandmother smiled with satisfaction. Her glutinous rice cakes were sweet, melting in my mouth, and their aroma lingers to this day. More than 40 years have passed since my grandmother passed away, and I have tried to find the same flavor as her glutinous rice cakes from those days, but I have never been able to…

Many families still organize bánh chưng-making sessions to try and preserve the traditional Vietnamese Tet (Lunar New Year) customs.

And it wasn't just my grandmother; even the older generations of women and mothers in Hue, no matter how skilled or unskilled they were, always had to show off their talents by making one or two kinds of candied fruits and cakes for Tet (Lunar New Year) to offer to their ancestors and to entertain guests visiting during the three days of Tet. As for banh chung and banh tet (traditional rice cakes), they had to wait until closer to Tet to prepare the leaves, strings, sticky rice, beans, lard, onions, etc. Then, when the ceremony of "raising the New Year pole" began, all the dishes for a joyful Tet reunion had been meticulously prepared by the mothers and sisters. Wrapped in each fragrant cake and each sweet piece of candied fruit, crafted by their skillful and talented hands, was all their filial piety, love, and hope for prosperity, harmony, and unity for the whole family.

Life is increasingly busy, and Hue women now have to participate in all kinds of work like men in society, so they have less time and skills to make traditional Tet cakes and sweets. Nowadays, you can just go to the market or make a phone call, and everything is readily available. However, there are still families who, no matter how busy they are, try to make some cakes and sweets themselves when Tet comes around. It's a way to preserve and pass on the flavors and culture of Hue Tet and Vietnamese spring to their children and grandchildren...

Hien An

Source: https://huengaynay.vn/van-hoa-nghe-thuat/mien-man-mut-banh-161231.html