When you think of the New Year celebrations in Australia, what comes to mind? I think extravagant fireworks, popping a bottle of champagne, and a nice sizzling barbecue. But when I think of Lunar New Year celebrations, I think extravagant firecrackers, cracking open a juicy watermelon, and a nice pot of slow-cooked braised pork belly and egg. It’s fascinating as a Vietnamese-Australian to live in Australia with such a duality of New Year celebrations - that being said, there is one thing that the New Year definitely enunciates. The New Year is all about harmoniously bringing together and uniting loved ones and family and friends from all walks of life and from generations galore! Lunar New Year is even more special in a different sense, as it garners hundreds and thousands of years of timely traditions that emphasise the importance of the start of the new Lunar year, and amalgamates them all into a fruitful cluster of beauty and joy. It is obvious that Lunar – referring to the moon – is the foundation of the New Year celebration, which is different from the regular calendar typically used in that the reflections and rotations of the moon are used to determine when the New Year passes. So, this is a reflection of how I, and indeed many others, celebrate Lunar New Year, which is a dear time in my heart as a crucial method of maintaining clarity in my heritage and cultural background.

First of all, the food. The food is incredible to say the least, but this food isn’t just for tasting and consumption. This food brings a plethora of meaning and accentuates a different dimension others may not have begun to think about. A brisk walk through your local Asian market during January-February is more than enough to see that almost every food item is decorated red: red diamonds, gold-framed, with calligraphic phrases boasted in gold as well.

You will see this on a bunch of different foods, including:

 - Watermelon (as aforementioned!)

 - Platters of dried candied goods including lotus root, ginger, winter-melon, coconut, seeds, etc.

 - Durian, pineapple, mango, dragonfruit, custard apple

 - Meat jerky

And indeed, on almost every fruit and vegetable! This is because we cherish the food that we have, and with this decoration, we honour it and wish that food will always come in a prosperous and plentiful manner. Lunar New Year also is an opportunity to splay out a mouth-watering and majestic spread of food. As savoury symbols of fullness, I remember cooking for hours and hours before Mùng 1 (New Year’s Day) to prepare with my mum and my younger sister. We make (definitely not exclusively):

 - Caramelised pork belly and eggs (as aforementioned!)

 - Sticky savoury rice (xôi)

 - Bánh chưng (square rice cake) and bánh tét (cylindrical rice cake)

 - Nem (pork skewers), hand-made spring rolls, vermicelli salad, various noodle dishes

 - And a wide range of small bite-size foods, including bánh xèo, bánh bột lột, bánh

khọt, etc.

My mouth is drooling just writing this out! It’s a whole diverse range of palettes and textures that really signify Vietnam’s flavours, which highlight spice, sweetness, and umami tastes. It’s very homey and is an easy (and tummy-filling!) way of making sure this food, which was brought down from generations and generations, is continued to be cooked and shared even in foreign countries and in an emerging society where languages and mother tongues are being gradually diluted with the upcoming workforce, industrialism, and urbanisation.

We also have a range of special and unique traditions and customs that we partake in to ensure that Lunar New Year is optimally celebrated, which tie in things that my great (great great great great…… great great……) grandparents did! Some of them may shock you, but this is the norm for me and others!

Here’s what my family and I do:

 1. Before it hits 12am of Mùng 1 (New Year’s Day), the family goes on the patio/balcony and does a miniature elaborate spread of food on a small table outside, and also brings out thick sticks of fragrant incense, red candles, cups of rice, and saucers of freshly-brewed tea. We then decoratively present this and as it hits 12am, we pray to our ancestors and offer this to them as a way of welcoming them to our celebrations, ensuring that our familial roots are never forgotten and are kept throughout our family tree. We also pray and offer this to a god named Ông Táo who is the emissary between those on earth and heaven, bringing family together spiritually. We leave this spread out for a week or for however typically long the Lunar New Year is actively celebrated for (5-7 days). This spread is accompanied by a wide range of colourful flowers (mainly the yellow daffodil), which symbolise the ‘blooming’ of the new year for all, dead or alive. 

 2. Once the clock hits 12am, there are a suddenly a bunch of things we cannot do! We cannot sweep or mop the floors as that symbolises us sweeping our luck away for the rest of the year; we cannot break any glass objects like cups as that symbolises our luck ‘shattering’ for the rest of the year; we cannot immediately throw trash away as that symbolises ‘throwing’ our luck away; we cannot blow any candles out ourselves as that symbolises ‘blowing’ our luck away, etc etc. 

 3. We also do a grand outdoors celebration that encompasses a swimming-pool-length of red firecrackers that we hang and light. The extremely loud clusters of ‘bangs’ are to welcome the New Year and is a ceremony to drive away bad spirits and essentially for good luck! These firecrackers, that often light and go off for up to 5 minutes, is always jaw-dropping; the smell, the sight, and the embracing of culture is always gratifying and immensely joyous.

 4. And of course, you can’t forget the red envelopes. Called ‘lì xì’, it meaningfully symbolic of not just money and wealth coming into the new year, but it encompasses and is accompanied by a myriad of wishes. Given by the older and received by the younger, the latter give customised and personalised wishes to the person giving the red envelope, hoping them along the likes of prosperity, physical and mental wellbeing, beauty and youth, success, peace, a happy family, stable finances, everything is per their wishes, a good fate, health, etc. There’s one saying I say especially to family members who I know work or own a business, and that is: ‘tiền vô như sông biển, ra như nước vọt’ which directly translates to ‘water coming in like the waves, coming out like a water spurt’ or in layman’s terms, ‘money comes in plenty, money comes out scarcely’. As Vietnamese is a language centred around word play and idioms, it’s a great way to practice your fluency and creativity with such wishes!

And last but definitely not least, the costume we wear is visibly the most prominent thing resemblant of Vietnamese Lunar New Year and indeed, of the Vietnamese culture and people itself. We strut a bunch of different colours, and what’s even better is that everyone wears the same unisex base outfit called the ‘áo dài’, a long blouse-type dress that is often decorated with gold embellishments, paintings of flowers, made of different materials like silk, among a range of other small touches that ultimately make every áo dài unique and beautiful in their own way. Custom fitted to one’s body, it is worn over airy white pants, and a traditional circular hat is work with it. You can imagine the family photos are incredible!

Being born and raised in Australia with my first language as English was definitely an ethnic and cultural challenge and dilemma for me; my childhood journey was a constant questioning of whether I was Australian or Vietnamese. But now I’ve realised that this is harmonious and should be celebrated as a simultaneous label, and indeed that’s how I introduce myself - as a Vietnamese-Australian 19 year old person! I am grateful for my mum, who’s a first generation migrant from Vietnam, always trying since I was born to seamlessly integrate Vietnamese customs like these into my life so my roots and identity as a Vietnamese person do not die out or become detached, which is a problem and unfortunate commonality I’ve observed within my community and nationally. That’s why as I grow up, starting a family or not, I will always advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion when it comes to race, ethnicity, and culture, because it is the epitome of how we express ourselves. It is when we get and stay in touch with our backgrounds that we can resonate with who we are. Learning Vietnamese all of my life and being fluent in the language, and perfecting it in writing, listening, reading, and speaking both personally and as a second language academically in my VCE is a feat that should be the norm and a universal for all, not just the Vietnamese. This is not just a reflection of my experience, but this is also a call to action for everyone to actively and avidly partake and participate with where they came from, because it’s not just a personal development, but it’s something learnt from parents, who learnt from their parents, who learnt from their parents, and the timeline goes on and on. Culture is something so deeply rooted in history and should be celebrated as such. So, growing up, seeing Vietnamese restaurants and eating at them, going to annual Lunar New Year festivals, seeing dragon dances and taking in the beauty my culture has to offer is extremely amazing. 

Lunar New Year is timely based on the cycles of the moon, and I hope such celebrations continue for millions and millions of moon cycles. It is then our responsibility to ensure this as a local community, as a nation, and as a globe living and co-existing together.