"You eat a lot of lotus flowers!"

My father is musician Tran Tat Toai, a member of the Vietnam Musicians Association. He loves Vietnamese tea, but it has to be the young bud tea from Tan Cuong or the ancient Shan Tuyet tea from Tay Con Linh infused with lotus flowers from West Lake that makes him "satisfied".

My mother was very indulgent to my father. Every time the West Lake lotus was in season, she would sometimes wake my husband up early in the morning and take her to West Lake to pick lotus to make tea for my father. My mother said: "Lotus is only in season, and you have to buy it from people who pick it before the sun rises so that the lotus can retain its full fragrance." During the lotus season, I don't know how many times my mother went to West Lake to buy lotus flowers. My mother often teased my father: "You eat a lot of lotus flowers."

Dad said he loved tea since he was young. During the years he was a light music intern at the Bulgarian National Conservatory of Music, he missed home and craved a cup of Vietnamese tea in a foreign land.

Once, my father poured me a tiny cup the size of a jackfruit seed, and I drank it all in one gulp. Seeing me drink tea like that, my father shook his head and laughed. He said that what I did was just "drinking tea", while his way was "enjoying tea".

Dad's joy was to sit and relax, chatting with his old musician friends over a pot of lotus tea from Mom. When they sat together, they would talk about all sorts of things, from the past to the present, about life, about their careers. Sometimes they would whisper and be quiet, sometimes they would laugh loudly, making the whole attic of my house ring. In between the stories, there were clinking glasses as if drinking wine, but in reality, they were clinking teacups. Dad told them: "This dish would be much better if mixed with mountain water or rainwater from an underground tank, wouldn't it?"

For the past seven years, during lotus season, my mother has gone to West Lake to buy lotus to make tea for my father. But for the past seven years, my mother has only gone once each lotus season, not as often as before, because just one time of making lotus tea is now enough for my mother to make tea and burn incense for my father for the whole year.

(Entry to the contest "Impressions of Vietnamese coffee and tea" under the program "Honoring Vietnamese coffee and tea" for the 3rd time, 2025 organized by Nguoi Lao Dong Newspaper).