my tet part 2

it's almost time for my favorite holiday...lunar new year or as we viets call it...tet!

most people look forward to christmas, but when i was kid i always looked forward to tet cuz it meant $$$ and lots of it! thinking back on it now, i remember having to go to all the adults and individually wishing them a happy new year and listing all the things i wished for them in the new year to get my red envelope (all in viet, mind you). i would give anything to be near my family and doing that right now!!

on new year's eve my mom does a lot of superstitious things. at the stroke of midnight she makes sure that she is the first person who steps in the house and that my grandma always calls to "start the year off with good luck". on new year's day we aren't allowed to do a lot of things because how we spend the first day of the new year is an indication of how lucky the rest of our year will be. so no showering (washing luck down the drain), no cleaning (sweeping luck out the door), no spending money (throwing away all your money) etc. im not as superstitious as my mom but i do believe it is good to try to do good things as it is an indication of the rest of the year!

i was really irritated yesterday because i kept seeing all these facebook status with people wishing a happy chinese new year. i was this close to posting a snarky comment but refrained because that just isn't cool. so instead, i will rant about it here.

seeing comments about chinese new year makes me angry for several reasons. it is not chinese new year, it is lunar new year. by using the term "chinese new year" it makes it seem like only chinese people celebrate it and that just is not true. it is a big holiday for vietnamese and koreans as well (among others). i don't think it's cool to use the term chinese new year because then non-asians and other asians will think it's just a chinese holiday. and if among us asian people we don't know about each other's cultures, then how do expect non-asians to know about our cultures? i always hear stories about non-asians not being able to tell different types of asians apart and that ignorance makes us mad. just not knowing that there are other asians besides chinese who celebrate such a big holiday in my eyes is the same kind of ignorance.

then again, my anger (be it legit or not) probably comes from my alice 97.3 incident back in 2007 (refer to post "my tet" 2/16/10 and also from my childhood. i grew up around ALL taiwanese and chinese people. all my friends spoke mandarin and when i went over to their houses their parents thought i was chinese and spoke mandarin to me. heck, i dunno if i blame them, my last name sounds chinese and apparently i look chinese. but....I AM IN NO WAY CHINESE. people freak out about taiwanese versus chinese so i think im pretty justified in getting finally pissed that people think im chinese.

so the point of my rant is that it pisses me off that i feel that this holiday is all chinese. everyone only knows the chinatown festival, the firecrackers, the lion dance, blah blah blah. yes, vietnamese culture is in many ways similar to chinese culture but we are very very different and do distinct things on tet. for example, we eat certain types of cake that are only made during tet. one of the cakes is called banh trung and we eat it because it is made from all simple vietnamese ingredients and it's in the shape of a square to signify the earth. (i used to know this story really well because i told it during my pageant speech)

ok im going to stop ranting because it's almost midnight and i'm going to be happy! chúc mừng năm mới.....Vạn sự như ý

Happy new year!