A Memory of Tet

...roosters would eat up the grains...

...In our family, we took no chances: It was always my father who, one minute after midnight on New Year's Eve, would venture outside the gate and then enter the house again...

...The Imperial armies refused to fight unless the Emperor let Duong Qui Phi die by hanging on a Mai (apricot) tree, which he did...

...On the fifth day, we joyously awaited the arrival from Phu Le of my great uncle...

...Sign of hard work and bad harvest...

...He is now teaching Asian studies at the Afro-Asian Institute of Temple University...

...Yes, it is a disease," I said...

...We would try to detect the first noise of the day: A cock crowing...

...That night in my dreams I wept for the pale fate of the beautiful Duong hung on a Mai tree...

...The front cover was in deep yellow and carried the Great Imperial Seal in vermilion...

...Worst of all would be the cry of an owl—the warning of coming epidemic and calamity for the community...

...Su Lo Dong is in the district of Phu Loc, which prides itself on the highest mountains and the deepest rivers in the region...

...But we remember Tet, and what it was meant to mean...

...I am sure," she said, "no matter what he will be doing, he will be doing well and will uphold the family's traditions...

...Pham Lieu, who was considered one of the four top scholars and poets at the turn of the century...

...Fortunately it was a Sunday, so I could stay home and witness the ceremony in honor of the departure of the three gods of the kitchen, known collectively as Tao Quan...

...More than just a New Year holiday, it is everyone's birthday, Easter, and end-of-the-year celebration wrapped into one...

...That year, my father concentrated on mine...

...Accompanied by an elderly and faithful servant, he toured the clan's cemeteries, some situated ten miles away from our village...

...He used his knowledge of oriental medicine, especially acupuncture, to treat farmers and peasants without charge...

...After dinner, my father, dressed in his nine-color brocade gown (as a laureate of the imperial examinations, he was entitled to nine colors), distributed gifts to us...

...Away from "things which disturb the ears and irritate the eyes," he devoted all his energies to his self-appointed role as the intellectual (and, therefore, moral) center of the village...

...Embassy in Saigon and, indirectly, into the heart of Washington itself...

...About eight p.m., when all had retired, he asked me to make some fresh lotus tea, and began to tell stories...

...We had no other visitor during the first day, and dinner was an intimate reunion of our immediate family...

...They all became sick...

...As large as my frock," Lord Buddha replied...

...The long Tet holiday came officially to an end on the seventh day with the ceremony of taking down the Signal Tree...

...These demons possess an unlimited power of destruction, but they have their weakness: They cannot bear noise and light...

...A year of confidence and trust...

...This qualified him as a doctor of medicine...

...In normal, peaceful times, Tet is the most cherished festival of the year for all Vietnamese...

...We copied and circulated revolutionary poems written by Nguyen Kim Thanh (now To Huu, the leading Communist poet in North Vietnam) who was then a senior at Quoc Hoc College...

...The devils, fascinated by the treasure lavished before them, asked Lord Buddha: "How large a piece of land do you ask...

...But my mother was wrong: In 1945, at the victory of the Viet Minh August Revolution, I volunteered for service in the Vietnamese Liberation Army...

...I picked up a pamphlet and showed it to my teacher, who calmly advised me to keep it in a safe place...

...We were not rich, but we lived comfortably on the income from fifty hectares of land my father had inherited from my grandfather, a mandarin in the Imperial Department of Ceremonials...

...he had cured the merchant's acute case of kidney stones by acupuncture and by prescribing his famed "Luc Vi" (Six Ingredients) medicine of rare herbs...

...Surely a year of sweat and toil...

...After much deliberation, we agreed on the conventional presents: wine and flowers...

...There was no longer any need to fear the devils...

...It is the Holiday of Holidays, an occasion for the Vietnamese—for three days, at least, and three months, at most—to meditate over the past, to enjoy the present, and to contemplate the future...

...My father's face brightened when he glanced at the back cover: There, in relaxed dignity and in supreme disdain for the "dusty world," was a picture of Lao Tu (Lao Tze) riding on a blue buffalo, the sign of a propitious year...

...And my father's prediction was only half accurate: Although I have been living abroad for years, I have not yet become a famous literary man...

...The leftist Popular Front had come into power in France, making it possible for Vietnamese intellectuals to enjoy a brief period of open and intense political life...

...My countrymen and I have had much dealing with authorities since then...

...He selected me...

...Tao Quan returns each year to the Kingdom of Heaven to make his report on the state of the Earth to the Emperor of Jade, and comes back to the mortals on the eve of the New Year...

...In a hot and humid country, delicacies prepared days in advance for Tet could be kept unspoiled only with nature's cooperation...

...The first day of the Year is reserved for the worship of ancestors invited back from Heaven...

...As the Imperial Bureau of Astronomy had predicted, the weather was perfect in the last month of the Year of the Rat: The days were generally sunny, and the nights breezy, cool, and dry...

...By the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth month, we had a stock of cakes and foodstuffs large enough to last our family and guests a week...

...My teacher was pleased, but when the ceremony was over he took me aside and whispered: "You are my best student, but you must be careful of what you say in public about patriotism...

...My father was a great admirer of Pham Van Dong's father, Dr...

...My father, a laureate of the last imperial examinations before they were abolished by the French colonial administration in 1919, encouraged me to pursue my "western studies" at Quoc Hoc, although he himself had long ago withdrawn from the "dusty world" of officialdom and cooperation with the foreign masters...

...That year my father took two extra days to find a final resting place for the old servant...

...At the end of the year, when the gods have gone to the Kingdom of Heaven for their annual convention and report, the Vietnamese are protected inside by the Canh Dao, just as the Cay Neu protects them from the outside...

...A Memory of Tet TRAN VAN DINH The American people were brutally introduced to the word "Tet" in the last days of January 1968, when the Vietcong, in a series of daring attacks, carried the war from the distant ricefields into the backyard of the U.S...

...A dog barking...

...To show their gratitude, they would bring him, a few days before Tet, a pair of chickens or a few fish...

...As for me, the Tet of the Year of the Buffalo, 1937, coincided not only with my physical puberty, but with the beginning of my political awareness as well...

...She held my hands and continued, "I know with these long fingers you can be only a scholar, not a soldier...

...the Vo Khuc (Military Star) is also in the direction of your Than (body...

...among its graduates were the late Presidents Ngo Dinh Diem and Ho Chi Minh...

...He was sixty-eight, but there was no generation gap...

...The last month of the Year of the Rat galloped in without our noticing it...

...The name of Ho Chi Minh (then Nguyen Ai Quoc, or Nguyen the Patriot) was not unfamiliar to us: for years my father had secretly received Ho Chi Minh's patriotic "overseas messages," and had discreetly mentioned this to us in the family...

...The time had come for serious preparations for Tet...

...Slowly sipping his tea, he sadly explained: "You know, when Duong Qui Phi was hanged, her body was exposed against a Mai tree...

...it falls this year on January 23...

...The devils will not dare to disturb you, and your ancestors will be directed by the bamboo safely to your homes...

...One of my uncles (the one who had given us the Imperial calendar) had to return to the capital on the fourth day to participate in the Khai An ceremony, which launched the court offices into a new year of business...

...Before he dies or, as the Vietnamese would say, before he "goes down to the Suoi Vang" (the Golden Stream, deep in the heart of the Golden Earth), a Vietnamese may forget everything else, but he will carry with him the memories of the best Tet he remembers from his life on this planet...

...Legend has it that one day, long ago, Lord Buddha descended from Nirvana to visit the Vietnamese, and was immediately surrounded by the malevolent spirits who plagued the people at that time...

...I am a descendant of generations of literary men and diplomats, so that prediction did not meet with much enthusiasm among members of my family...

...A retired mandarin-diplomat (he was a member of the last Vietnamese Embassy to China), he was rather poor in material things but had a rich store of poems and stories...

...The T'ang soldiers could not resist and made love to her corpse...

...In 1789, during a surprise Tet offensive, Vietnamese armies under Emperor Quang Trung drove the Chinese Ch'ing occupation forces out of Hanoi...

...My mother broke the uneasy atmosphere...

...The indispensable feature, even for the poorest family, is a Canh Mai, a branch of apricot tree, or a Canh Dao, a bough of peach tree...

...Therefore, you must plant in front of your house a high bamboo pole with clay and my emblem drawn on a piece of yellow cloth...

...All acts performed, all events that occur on the first day of the year exert a favorable or unfavorable influence over the whole year...

...Before that, all fundamental liberties had been ruthlessly denied the Vietnamese by colonial authorities...

...This required the early acquisition of the Lich Buu, the special calendar published yearly by the Kham Thien Giam, the Imperial Bureau of Astronomy, which gave the exact dates of Tieu Han (the Little Cold Wave) and Daj Han (the Big Cold Wave...

...Remember that the walls have ears...

...I was then fourteen years old, about to finish my primary education and to leave my parents, my brothers, my sisters, to continue my studies at the Quoc Hoc College in Hue...

...I have never known anyone else to teach a lesson in sex hygiene by means of a beautiful poem, as my great uncle did...

...To the Vietnamese, now delivered from the devils, Lord Buddha said: "At the end of the year, when you invite your ancestors to your home for Tet, the devils may mingle among them...

...My mother and sisters would have three weeks to cook such special dishes as meat in ginger sauce and such special cakes as the two-piece "husband and wife" wrapped in coconut leaves...

...his grandchildren and his grandnephews and nieces all loved him...

...Tao Quan and all the benevolent spirits had returned to Earth and would keep watch over the human race for another 360 days...

...With the malevolent spirits frightened away by the Cay Neu, we could now think of things material...

...It was a six-yard-high bamboo which my father had selected two months earlier during one of his visits to our relatives in Phu Le...

...My brothers and I contended for the honor of sharing the wooden bed in the western wing of the house with him that night...

...At this point, he showed some concern: "Son," he said, "you will be doing much traveling and living abroad...

...When Lord Buddha dropped his frock, it spread as wide as the territory of all Vietnam...

...I praised my teacher for "having instilled in us a sense of patriotism" and I quoted a few relevant remarks he had made in classes...

...The poem, which I still regard as the greatest love story I have read in any literature, tells of the T'ang Emperor, Hsuan Tsung, whose passionate love for Duong Qui Phi led him to neglect his duties and provoked the An Lu Shan's rebellion in 755...

...Then, almost suddenly, he asked: "Do you know what Duong Mai is...

...Equipped with his extensive knowledge of geomancy, my father finally selected a piece of land in the shape of "a blue dragon chasing away a white tiger," not far from the tomb of my great grandfather...

...Then, for maximum safety against any possible intrusion of demons and bad spirits, especially on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, the Vietnamese light firecrackers to thwart the most notorious devils, Na A and his terrible wife...

...A Confucian scholar in a Buddhist family, my father was, I suspected, a secret convert to Taoism—secret, because he never openly admitted it...

...Had the buffalo been white, it would have denoted a bad year...

...I never saw my father in such high spirits, and he kept himself busy from dawn to dusk...

...My school did not close for Tet until three days before the holiday, but my classmates and I were already busy trying to decide what we should buy as gifts for our teacher and the principal...

...Without these cakes, served with meat stewed in Nuoc Mam (fish sauce) and pickled onions, there is no Tet, the Vietnamese believe...

...Lord Buddha calmly explained to them that He wanted to exchange precious stones, gold, and silver—which He produced by a miraculous gesture of His hand—for a small piece of land...

...Tet is a movable feast corresponding to the new moon and placed half-way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox...

...We could now turn our attention to decorating the interior of the house...

...I almost forgot to ask my great uncle what the poem had to do with Duong Mai (syphilis...

...The devils agreed, thinking they had a very good bargain, and promised never to disturb Buddha's land...

...He nodded and recited the poem "Truong Han Ca" (Song of Unending Sorrow) by the famed Chinese poet, Back Cu Di...

...That was the second time in nearly two centuries that Vietnam was shaken by war during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year holiday...

...As the valedictorian of my class, I was given the honor of making a short speech when we presented our gifts...

...A Cay Neu (Signal Tree) was erected in front of our house...

...The old servant was so happy that he seemed eager to die at once in order to be buried in such a propitious place...

...This year, again, I am not physically at my native home in Hue, the former imperial capital of Vietnam, but my mind is filled with recollections of the most memorable Tet of my life, the Tet of 1937, a year of the Buffalo...

...most of the officials would spend the day pondering the calendar to find propitious days for certain important undertakings in the year ahead...

...One of his duties, as the oldest direct-line descendant in the family, was to maintain our ancestors' tombs...

...At school, my teacher was an ardent nationalist who seized every opportunity, especially during history classes, to remind his students of the glories of past Vietnamese dynasties and of the Vietnamese resistance to a series of foreign invaders...

...The first visitor to one's home must be a happy man, a man of virtue...

...The twenty-third day of the twelfth month came almost too suddenly for me...

...They were now all assembled on an illuminated altar, enjoying the perfume of burning sental, incense, and Thuy Tien, a kind of narcissus which blooms at New Year time...

...I see advertising in newspapers about various medicines which claim to cure it in twenty-four hours...

...The fall harvest was unusually good that year and the villagers were looking forward to an abundant Tet...

...Even dead, it was still beautiful...

...My mother supervised the preparation of Banh Day-Banh Chung, the typical Tet rice cakes, some round like the sky, others square like the surface of the earth...

...At midnight of the last day of the old year, all earthly worries are left behind...

...They would have preferred six or seven weeks...

...That year we had 100 of each type...

...In its ceremony as well as in its essence, it embodies the total spectrum of Vietnamese mythology, the entire concept of man and his place in his family and his universe, his relations with the dead and the spirits...

...I slept soundly until eight o'clock, when all in the family were up and dressed in their best to receive visitors...

...We always had a generous stock of firecrackers supplied to us free of charge by the local Chinese merchant, whose life my father had saved ten years ago...

...It is a complex mixture of primitive Vietnamese beliefs with Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, the three currents of religion and philosophy that have shaped the Vietnamese society at least since the beginning of the Christian era...

...Then came the solemn moment when we read our Tu Vi horoscope...

...On the second day, my parents received visitors and went out to call on our relatives...

...In the hierarchy of values of the traditional Vietnamese society, the military ranks lowest...

...Reluctantly I went back to school...

...But these were historical exceptions...

...When I entered my class I saw, scattered on the floor, pamphlets signed by Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh), calling on Vietnamese youth to unite to fight for independence...

...If, for some reason, a Vietnamese cannot be physically at the place "where his placenta was buried and his umbilical cord was cut" to be reunited with his clan, he feels as if he has been exiled from the community of man...

...While Tao Quan is away on his week-long journey to Heaven, the Vietnamese must look for ways to guard their homes against the invasion of bad spirits...

...Normally, during the Tieu Han and Dai Han periods, the temperature drops from ninety degrees to between forty and sixty...

...Vietnamese of all walks of life, of all ages, always go back to the village of their birth during Tet...

...Quoc Hoc, founded by the late President Ngo Dinh Diem's father, was without doubt the most famous school in Vietnam, the academy for leaders of the country...

...Offerings to Tao Quan include food, paper models of a stork, a horse, a carp that will eventually transform itself into a dragon, a pair of mandarin boots, and a formal dress...

...Like most of my friends, I developed an intense love for Vietnam and an abiding hatred for the French colonial administration...

...He noted that the star Van Xuong (Star of Literary Accomplishments) was shining from the Thien Di box (foreign travels) directly to my Menh (fate), and concluded that I would be known as a literary man and would enjoy a greater reputation abroad than at home...

...With all precautions taken, we calmly waited for the "arrival of the first spring," the Tet...

...He had retired, at the age of twenty-seven, to our village, Su Lo Dong, fifteen miles north of the capital...

...A buffalo bleating...

...In the heavy silence that followed my father's remark, I had the impression that they were all feeling sorry for me...

...To my father's great satisfaction, the Little Cold Wave was to come that year three weeks before New Year's day and the Big Cold Wave within two weeks...

...He arrived at about five p.m., in time to join us for dinner...

...On the third day, we bade farewell to our ancestors, who returned the same evening, after a sumptuous meal, to the Kingdom of Heaven and the Land of Immortals, satisfied that their descendants on Earth were doing well...

...Then he paused, as he detected something else: "Ah," he continued, "although I am quite sure you will become a famous writer or poet, you will also spend a few years in the army...

...Since then that terrible venereal disease has been called Duong Mai...

...On the second day of the twelfth month, my aunt, whose husband was an official at the Ministry of Education in Hue, brought us the long-awaited precious calendar...

...As a Confucian scholar in residence, my father, thanks to his deep knowledge of the Four Classics, of the I Ching (The Book of Changes), had also penetrated the Tao (the Way) of Heaven and the Tao of Man...

...A general truce is declared—a temporary one, of course—among human beings and spirits...

...He said, however, that this was simply a formality...

...Tet is not only a festival for the living, but also for the dead...

...The authorities," he said, "would not like to see it...

...This is the New Year of the Tiger, the third among the twelve animals which symbolize the twelve cyclical signs...

...For the first time, I heard that year the name of Pham Van Dong, now the Premier in Hanoi, who, fresh from his release from the notorious Con Son penitentiary, had gone back to Hanoi as editor of a leftist daily...

...I did not hear any noise in the first hours of New Year's Day...

...Tran Van Dinh, a former cabinet officer and senior member of the South Vietnamese diplomatic service, has contributed articles to numerous American publications...

...In 1937, censorship was abolished and newspapers printed political news and commentary...

...At the top of the bamboo were attached a clay tablet and a piece of yellow cloth...

...The predominant colors of Tet are red and gold...

...Tet is an annual eruption of the patriotic romanticism nurtured in a rugged and beautiful land over centuries of hard and bloody fighting—a moment for the Vietnamese to immerse themselves in their traditional and national milieu, to refill themselves with spiritual energies, to face a year of struggle ahead...