Tet Tradition

First Morning or Head Day: is reserved for the nuclear family, that is, the husband’s household. Immediate family members get together and celebrate with the husband’s parents. A younger brother, if the parents are not alive, will visit his older sibling. Faraway sons and daughters journey to be with their parents on this day.

1. Children anticipate a ritual called Mung Tuoi, or the well wishing on the achievement of one more year to one’s life. With both arms folded in front of their chest in respect, they thank their grandparents for their birth and upbringing.

2. Reciprocally, the grandparents will impart words of advice or wisdom to their grandchildren, encouraging them to study seriously, to live in harmony with others. The promises made by the children are similar to New Year’s resolutions made during the western New Year. Adults will make silent promises to themselves to improve their lives, habits and relationships in the coming year. The children accept small gifts, usually crisp bills. Ideally, part of the gifts will be saved for future "investment," and part spent for Tet amusements. The words on the little red envelope in which the bill may be tucked read: Respectful wishes for the New Year.

3. When there was a king ruling Vietnam, the mandarins of the royal court formally wished the King and Queen, "Happiness as vast as the southern sea; longevity as lasting as the southern mountains." Each trade and professional guild in Vietnam has a founder or guardian spirit and on this or one of the next several days, the craft workers will make offerings to their guild ancestor.

Interracial Marriages and Blending The Two Cultures

By Jane Le Skaife for Nguoi-Viet Online

Michelle Nguyễn and Rachel Nguyễn are sisters-in-law, brought together by the love for their husbands, who are brothers. But what also united them is a common bond: white women married to Vietnamese American men who have learned to adopt their husbands’ traditions as their own and pass them on to their children.

“Most of my cultural experiences occur with Vũ’s extended family,” said Rachel, 38, of her husband Vũ and his family. “The best part of these encounters is being able to be a part of a very different culture in a very intimate way.”

Although mixed unions like those of the Nguyễn account for only eight percent of all marriages according to the 2010 U.S. Census, that eight percent comes out to about 4.5 million couples in the United States. That is 4.5 million opportunities to blend and appreciate cultural differences through matrimony.

MULTICULTURAL MATRIMONY: Michelle Nguyễn, 37, and Tuấn Nguyễn, 36, got married in 2002 wearing traditional Vietnamese aó dàis. Michelle and Tuấn embraced both cultures during their wedding ceremony nearly a decade ago. They paid their respects to Tuấn’s ancestors during their nuptial. The couple currently reside in Austin, Texas with their three boys. Photo courtesy of Michelle Nguyễn.

Even though Michelle and Rachel are not Vietnamese Americans, the two Austin, Texas, women both have taken strides toward respecting and practicing the cultural traditions of their husbands’ Vietnamese family. Tết is merely one of the many ways of doing so.

Michelle, 37, and her husband Tuấn met during their college years at Michigan State University. It was the first time she had ever dated a non-white person. When Tuấn left for medical school, the couple continued a partly long-distance relationship for seven years before marrying in 2002.

Together now for almost 16 years, Michelle still remembers the difficulty of meeting her husband’s family for the first time.

• “They didn’t really accept that he was dating me,” she said. “They continued to try to fix him up with Vietnamese women. It was a little bit rough for a while there. I didn’t go to his graduation because his parents were there.”

Fortunately over time, Michelle’s in-laws grew to love her as the mother of three of their grandchildren: Maxwell Tiến, 7, Miles Tuấn, 3, and Mason Tài, 5.

• “Once you have grandkids, everything goes away, and it’s great,” Michelle said. “Before we were married, it was a little rough. Now, I’m like ‘Miss Perfect.’ They love me.”

It also helps that Michelle has put forth a lot of effort into preserving the Vietnamese culture in her intercultural family. Whether it’s cooking Bún Bò Huế for the family, honoring the passing of her father-in-law, or celebrating Tết, there are definite signs of the Vietnamese culture in their lives even though the children may still be too young to recognize their mixed backgrounds.

ALL IN THE FAMILY: The Nguyễn brothers have committed relationships with Caucasian American women. From left: Vinh Nguyễn with his long-time girlfriend Claire, Vũ and his wife Rachel, and Michelle. Tuấn, Michelle's husband, took this picture during a nice meal of Bún Bò Huế Photo courtesy of Michelle Nguyễn.

Happy Vietnamese New Year/ Tet

 

New Year =Tet falls on a time when the old year is over and the New Year comes by lunar calendar. This is also the time when the cycle of the universe finishes: winter ends and spring, the season of birth of all living things, comes.

Tet is an occasion for pilgrims and family reunions. It is a time when one pays respect to his/her ancestors and grandparents who have brought up him/her. It is an occasion when everyone sends each other best wishes for a new year, stops thinking about unhappy things and says good things about each other.

Learning Medicine in France

The following is another guest post by Yveline Van Anh 

You have the power to change your future. Sure, some things are meant to be and fate does have play a role in it, but we only have so much luck. You have to go and grab those chances.

My mother left Vietnam at the age of 19, eight years after the end of the Vietnam War. Her family had attempted to escape via the sea mere days after the end of the war, but the ship's engine broke down just miles away from international seas where her family could be rescued from foreign ships. It took the next eight years for them to get a visa and be allowed to leave. She arrived in France in 1983 and was sent to Rennes where she lived in a refugee camp with the rest of her family for a year. Refugees from all over the world were there. Meanwhile, she was in a country whose language she did not know.

Teaching English in China

The following is another guest post by Yveline Van Anh 

McDonalds in Beijing

Driving around the roads of Shunyi, Beijing, one would never imagine such things as 10 families sharing a common bathroom or houses without heating and air conditioning. Most of the people I meet here are blinded by the newly opened McDonald’s, Starbucks and modern westernized villa houses which render them oblivious to the fact that just five minutes from their three story houses lie small villages in which entire families live in a single room no bigger than their living room.

Who am I? Identity question by Vietnamese-born overseas

The following is a guest post by Yveline Van Anh

My parents used to tell me never to forget my roots. “It doesn’t matter that your passport says you’re French or that you live in China,” they would say, “Con luc nao cung se la nguoi Viet Nam. You will always be Vietnamese.”

I was born in a Vietnamese family. I grew up, however, not in Vietnam, but in Paris and Beijing. I spoke and read not only Vietnamese, but also French, Chinese, and English. I was schooled in French, English, and sometimes Chinese. I met people from all over the world and experienced all these cultures. Yet, inside, I still felt Vietnamese. Every day when I came home from school, where everyone was from a different country, I would speak Vietnamese to my parents and eat Vietnamese food. I thought that this made me Vietnamese, that I could only be Vietnamese.