A large crowd forms around a table spanning the length of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Vietnamese church’s basement. Emblazoned on the table are six logos: a fish (cá), shrimp (tôm), deer (nai), crab (cua), chicken (gà), …and a squash? The entire room from young kids to seasoned adults places bets on these symbols, waiting with bated breath as the event coordinator lifts up the opaque covering. “BA CÁ BA CÁ!!” he screams over the crowds exploding in either excitement or frustration. Because of these three die showing fish, I won $12!
The name of this game is Bầu Cua, one of the many celebrations and traditions which make up the holiday of Tết or Vietnamese New Year. Unlike American New Year where drinking and staying up late ring in a new year, Tết revolves around a celebration of vitality and life. Churches in Carrolton, Garland, Arlington, and around the metroplex host huge festivals filled with vibrant decorations, lion dance performances, and traditional Vietnamese games. My childhood favorite tradition was receiving red envelopes called lì xì from older relatives, gleefully shouting “Chúc Mừng Năm Mới!!” before stuffing my fists with freshly minted currency.
This year, my cousin Truc “Cecelia” Nguyen spent Tết in America for the first time since immigrating in August. Tết requires substantial preparation, and each year Truc goes to the market with her parents to “buy hoa mai the yellow flowers for Tết, fruit to decorate the house, and lucky money to give children on the first three days of the year.” The entire Vietnamese calendar revolves around celebrating this holiday, because “after working all year, workers have to close up shop and spend time with their families.” Superstition plays a key role in determining luck for the New Year, and the night before Tết, Vietnamese families vigorously clean to avoid sweeping or washing away any good luck. The celebration acts as the equivalent of Christmas break in America, lasting for two weeks and “even after the two weeks are over, people still celebrate at school.” Tết commemorates letting go of the past year’s troubles and hoping for a brighter upcoming year with the swiftly approaching spring.
Besides saying Happy New Year in Vietnamese, family members offer specific wishes to bring good fortune in the coming year, “for your grandparents, you wish health, a good life, and the grace of God, and for your parents, you wish that they stay with you forever.” Unfortunately, Truc could not offer these desires in person, her parents thousands of miles away in Vietnam during the happiest celebration of the year. Instead, Truc’s adopted family and mine merged together in celebration of this exciting holiday, playing Bầu Cua for hours and reuniting with long lost friends and relatives. Since Tết takes place on a Monday this year, each community held festivities the week before in preparation for the anticipated date. As with any other Vietnamese holiday, food is a necessity; Tết festivals serve tightly packed sticky rice called Bánh chưng and Bánh tét alongside the mouthwatering Vietnamese pork Chả lụa. The two of us shared Heo Rừng Xào Lăn, a delicious curried boar handmade by the church.
Although Vietnamese New Year offers a wealth of traditions on its own, my involvement in kung fu blended my celebration of the new lunar year with the equally festive celebrations of Chinese New Year. Culturally, both celebrations are quite similar, with the elements of cleaning, firecrackers, cooking massive feasts, and celebrations with close family and friends overlapping. Other than years where the one hour time difference makes the new moon on different days, Tết and Chinese New Year are also celebrated on the exact same day. Unique to China, however, is the decoration of every available surface in the color red. Unlike Vietnamese people who decorate with flowers to celebrate spring, red brings good fortune in the coming year and the red lanterns, envelopes, and firecrackers all stem from this tradition. Many Tết traditions like Bầu Cua were simply adapted from Vietnamese culture and brought into this revered holiday; however, the traditions remain otherwise very similar.
One of the teachers most experienced talking about Chinese culture is our very own Mandarin teacher Ms. Rodriguez. Ms. Rodriguez described Chinese New Year as “a mixture of the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas,” a time for reflection on the past year and spending time with and honoring loved ones both living and deceased. Any holiday which involves the special bond of family and cooking delicacies appeals to Ms. Rodriguez, but the “communal experience of cooking and wrapping dumplings together with my family” stands out as an all-time favorite. Each year the Chinese zodiac highlights one of twelve animals, and 2016 is the Year of the Monkey or con khỉ in Vietnamese. Since both Ms. Rodriguez and I are tigers, this year should bring conflict with our rival monkeys, but Ms. Rodriguez still wished that “hopefully it will be a good year for [us] anyway!”
After four years of shaolin kung fu starting when I was eight, our Sifu or instructor invited me to participate in the school’s demonstration team. Every since then, I’ve spent every Chinese New Year season traveling with the most elite members of our style to perform traditional weapons, forms, and even lion dances. Lion dance stands out as the most important tradition of both cultures, a way to honor the cultural pride of a lion with the color and theatrics characteristic of the lunar new year. Performing a lion dance set requires incredible physical fitness, moving a hollow carcass of sequins and papier-mâché in the same lifelike mannerisms of an animal. Each event takes anywhere from thirty minutes to two hours, the lions collecting red envelope packets from the entire venue and performing intense acrobatic stunts. One of the traditional good luck rituals is baiting the lion dancers with a head of lettuce on a stick, and a classmate of mine once had to stand on the tail performer’s shoulders to grab greenery twenty feet in the air! With half a decade of experience, I’ve run the entire gambit of performance positions, going onstage as a head, butt, lion leader, cymbalist, drummer, and gong player.
Performing for so many years has allowed me to experience a lot of interesting venues and meet many amazing people. A lion dance performance at the DMA actually convinced me to join kung fu, and since then, I’ve performed at venues all across the Dallas area. My favorite demos were performing at 560’s annual Chinese New Year party up in Reunion Tower, and I got to meet Wolfgang Puck twice! The second year his restaurant brought us a tray full of complimentary food just for staying late to perform on a work night. Our school also maintains a close relationship with both the Perot and the Crow Museum, the latter of which actually featured our LED lions for this year’s event photo.
Because of my Vietnamese heritage and participation in kung fu, each year’s celebration of the New Year is never limited to just one day. For months after January 1st, parties with my family and friends ensure that each new lunar cycle begins in style. This year, Tet and Chinese New Year fall on President’s Day, burying the century-old tradition under door buster sales and days off of school. Instead of simply making a list of resolutions to be quickly abandoned, try celebrating the endless possibilities of 2016 and the rapidly approaching spring season with your own friends and family! Whether it be Vietnamese or Chinese, gambling or calligraphy, any tradition focused on celebrating connections and bringing in prosperity is certain to make this February 8th anything but a typical Monday.
The Crow Museum will be hosting a ceremony all day Saturday culminating in an explosive fireworks show. For more information and details on the hourly events click here.
