A complete Tet celebration with banh chung (traditional Vietnamese rice cake).

A part of my sisters and I's childhood – growing up in a small town during the difficult subsidy period – was associated with nights spent watching over pots of sticky rice cakes by the flickering fire in the characteristic mild chill of Northern Vietnam. Around the 25th or 26th of the twelfth lunar month, my parents would bring home heavy strings of meat that they had been allocated at work. My father would painstakingly wash, slice, and divide it into portions: some for making jellied meat, some for marinating char siu, and some for the filling of banh chung (Vietnamese rice cakes)... My mother went in and out helping my father, always saying, "We're full for three days of Tet, but hungry for three months in summer. How wonderful it would be to have such abundance all year round." My father carefully placed the finest, freshest strips of pork belly into a large pot, instructing, "This is for making banh chung (traditional Vietnamese rice cakes)!" Watching intently as Dad divided the meat, my sister and I all responded with a loud "Yes, sir!" In our minds back then, the meat used for the filling was far more important than the char siu and jellied meat, though we couldn't quite explain why. The part the children looked forward to the most was wrapping the sticky rice cakes (bánh chưng). This important task was done by our grandparents. We busily swept the yard, spread out mats, carried the banana leaves… and then sat neatly around them, waiting for them. The vibrant green banana leaves were carefully washed, dried, and the veins removed by our mother before being neatly arranged on polished brown bamboo trays. The round, golden mung beans were already neatly arranged in the earthenware bowl next to the overflowing basket of pristine white sticky rice. Pork belly had been sliced, seasoned with a little salt, and mixed with pepper and finely chopped dried onions… Everything was in place, just waiting for the grandparents to sit down on the mat before the wrapping of the dumplings began. But every year, even though my parents had prepared all the ingredients; even though my three sisters and I were each in our own place, one next to the basket of banana leaves, another to the bowl of mung beans… my grandfather would still look around, ask, “Are you all here?” before leisurely going to the well to wash his hands and feet. Before that, he would also change into a new shirt and put on the turban he usually wore only on important holidays and festivals. My grandmother, already dressed in her lilac-colored blouse, was chewing betel nut while waiting for my grandfather. I, a 12- or 13-year-old girl, kept wondering why my grandfather always insisted that all three of us sisters be present whenever he made rice dumplings. Our participation only made things busier for them, because sometimes the youngest would drop sticky rice all over the mat, and other times my second brother would be caught red-handed by my grandmother eating mung beans… Nevertheless, he still asked my mother to arrange a rice dumpling-making session on the weekend so that we could all participate. The waiting time for him to complete the preparatory procedures before wrapping the dumplings was long, but in return, the wrapping itself was so much fun, because each of us was guided by our grandparents. Three small, pretty, misshapen, loose dumplings – "no different from bundles of shrimp paste" (according to my mother) – sat beside the square, perfectly shaped dumplings, their pale white color standing out against the green banana leaves, looking like little piglets snuggling up next to their parents and grandparents. Then the pot was placed on the stove, and he carefully placed each cake into it, one on top of the other, neatly arranged in a straight line. Then, the large logs of firewood slowly caught fire, the flames gradually turning from pink to bright red, occasionally crackling. All of this created an unforgettable memory from our impoverished but happy childhood years. Thanks to those late-year afternoons spent with our grandparents, we all know how to wrap cakes now, each one perfectly square and firm, as if made with a mold.

Heritage Magazine