Welcome, Spring: Vietnam Gets Ready for Lunar New Year

Vietnamese city streets are mad: if you’ve ever tried to cross one on foot, weaving around the speeding motorbikes and avoiding the exhaust, you know this. But for the weeks leading up to Tết Nguyên Đán—the Vietnamese Lunar New Year—it’s as if they become touched by a little magic, bedecked with flowers and fruit and red and gold and wishes of luck, prosperity, happiness and success. It’s like this every year as Vietnam gears up for Tết, the most important holiday of the year.

Coinciding with the Chinese New Year, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year is a time of celebration, of being with family, relaxing, and eating specially prepared foods. The country basically shuts down during Tết (which in 2011 begins on Feb. 3rd) as people spend time at home with family and friends.  But like the promise of spring itself—the season for which the holiday celebrates—the weeks leading up to the holiday are exciting ones, bustling with anticipation and activity.  Families clean and decorate their dwellings in anticipation of homecoming, but it is on the streets where the buzz is most palpable: it can be felt in the air, and is impossible to miss.

Special Tết flower markets fills the streets with the florescent yellows of chrysanthemums (hoa cúc) and apricot blossoms (hoa mai), the bright pink of peach blossoms (hoa đào), and the vivid orange of persimmon trees.  Food markets are packed with vegetables to pickle, rice to steam, fruits to candy, and meats to simmer. Bikes weighed down by potted plants and family gifts pedal by stores spilling with festive red and gold decorations and twinkling lights. Planes, trains and buses are rammed to the gills with family members traveling back home. 

If Tết is essentially a private family holiday, the preparation for the event is very much a public one, played out on the streets of Vietnam.

Click on the above slideshow to see photos from Vietnam as the country prepares for Tết. (click on right hand box to make full screen)

Click here for Tết stories, recipes, and article from Vietnamese food expert Andrea Nguyen.

Click here for a bánh chưng recipe from Serious Eats