As a compilation of articles from Indochina Magazine, Tet Viet Nam Xua (Ancient Vietnamese Tet Festival) provides readers with a panorama of how Vietnamese people prepare for the Tet holiday, describing typical rituals, customs, and hobbies.
Tet Viet Nam Xua is a collection of writings from Vietnamese and French scholars.
The writings were compiled by Associate Professor Nguyen Manh Hung from the Institute of Vietnamese Studies over the course of many years. With nearly 200 pages, the book is divided into three parts: Tet rituals, Tet customs, and Tet hobbies, including 50 lively illustrations.
Tet is a time for people to bid farewell to the old year and prepare to welcome in the new. One section of the book describes in detail the traditional rituals and customs performed in the hope of a better year.
Meanwhile, the section on Tet customs is the most interesting, as it brings together writings from foreign authors and travellers and French and other international scholars, such as “Letter from Lunar New Year’s Eve” and “Tet in the Village” from French writer Jean Marquet, and others.
The book presents a lively and interesting overview of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, the most important and largest holiday of the Vietnamese people.
Being so deeply-rooted in the national culture, Tet still lives in the heart of every Vietnamese, despite industrialisation, urbanisation, and technological development and their effect on customs and attitudes./.
