In the last month of winter, the riverside is bright yellow with canola flowers. The Xoan flowers at the beginning of the village are falling purple on the country road. In the garden, grapefruit buds have opened to show off white flowers, peach blossoms are hesitantly waiting to bloom. The wind is still cold but not freezing. The light drizzle is like flying mist. Along with the colors of flowers, trees, light wind, flying rain, the sounds that no other month has of the old countryside are also bustling and bustling, calling for Spring to come.
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| Images of the last days of the year are familiar in the memories of Vietnamese people. (Illustration by Tran Nguyen) |
The December mornings are bustling with people calling each other to go to the fields early to plant the last rows of winter-spring rice, dig up the last rows of sweet potatoes before Tet, and finish planting eggplants… Although they are all busy and in a hurry, everyone is cheerful and excitedly discussing the prices of goods at each Tet market in the area. Waiting for the day to stop walking barefoot and busily through the fields, they will invite each other to go shopping for Tet.
December nights have the sound of water-draining wheels. In front of the village hall, the hamlet shrines and the family temples, there are fish ponds - built from soil - so December nights from one end of the village to the other resound with the hurried sound of water-draining wheels. People draw fish at night to catch fish in time to sell at the early market to get money for Tet and avoid being embarrassed by the fish-snatching children, who are from the same family and village.
Smelling fish is an extremely exciting game that only happens once a year, so the children eagerly look forward to it. On school days, when their mother calls them until their voice is hoarse, they lie down and sleep in. But on December nights, all the boys are wide awake because of the clattering sound of the water-draining wheel. They wish for morning to come quickly so they can wade through the mud, laugh and joke freely, argue and scream in pain because of being pinched by crabs.
Early in the morning of December, the village resounded with the sound of pigs squealing. Normally, only occasionally would a family sell pigs for weddings or funerals. But at the end of December, every family would sell pigs to prepare for the three days of Tet. Some families would “touch” meat with neighbors and relatives, while others would sell it to pig traders. The sound of pigs squealing throughout the village signaled the full Tet of the countryside at that time.
The night of December resounds with the rumbling sound of the rice mill, the thumping sound of the rice pounding pestle so that the carefully selected grains stored during the year become rice for Tet, sticky rice, sweet soup, banh chung and banh tet. Even further, so that after Tet, we can relax without having to "touch" the mortar and pestle but still have rice to eat and bran to "feed" the new pair of pigs.
December has a strange echo on the brick roads of the countryside. It is not the dry, dull sound of wooden clogs, the familiar sound of “Gia Dinh” shoes of the dignitaries when they go to the communal house for village meetings, but the sound of the soles of western shoes clicking, the sound of “modern” clogs clacking of people who come home from far away to celebrate Tet. This strange sound increases every year, making Tet in the countryside more colorful and rich in cuisine than in previous years.
In December, there is a bustling sound outside the sugarcane fields. The sound of people calling each other, the sound of knives cutting sugarcane, the clattering of ox carts carrying sugarcane to the molasses press and transporting to the local Tet markets. Sugarcane not only produces molasses for the Spring, provides refreshments for the Summer, and creates decorations for the “moon-watching” tray in the Autumn... Sugarcane is also an indispensable offering during the Tet holiday in the old countryside. Sugarcane with bunches of green leaves cut neatly and placed on both sides of the altar are “shoulder poles” for the ancestors to carry the offerings of their descendants after the flag-lowering ceremony.
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| At the end of the year, the village's xoan trees show off their purple color. (Illustration by Mai Xuan Oanh) |
In December, the molasses kiln at the end of the village has the creaking sound of a primitive sugarcane pressing machine. The sound of sugarcane juice flowing into the pot. The snorting sound of the buffalo walking around slowly pulling the crane to turn the machine. The space of the village in December seems to thicken into a golden molasses. Molasses is used to make sticky rice cake, gai cake, and stewed rice cake. Molasses is eaten with banh chung, banh gio, banh duc… Molasses is indispensable during Tet holidays in the village at that time.
For the gluttonous children, honey is extremely “impressive”. Lying in a straw bed with adults watching the pot of boiling banh chung, and being given fragrant roasted sweet potatoes and some leftover honey to cook sweet soup by their mother, they immediately thought of the “sweet potato month” that the adults were talking about in December, the month they get to eat sweet potatoes dipped in honey. No need to understand the deep semantics. In the folk game, there are sweet potatoes and honey: “Nu na nu nong/ The sewer is inside/ The bee is outside/ Sweet potatoes dipped in honey…”!
The old December in the countryside was bustling and noisy until the 23rd of December. After the day of sending the Kitchen Gods to heaven and the pole-raising ceremony, these sounds were no longer bustling around the bamboo fences of the village but seemed to have been refined and soared high on the poles planted in front of each house. It was the harmony of the ceramic gongs, terracotta bells and offerings hanging around the pole, the rustling sound of the green bamboo leaves on the top of the pole, the fluttering sound of the red flags with blessings written on them flying in the new wind...
Following the wind, the sky suddenly rises high. Flocks of small swallows fly across, weaving their wings. The pink sunlight rises with the month of December, calling Spring back.
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