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Warding off plague, pestilence and parasites
Held on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, the festival of Tet Doan Ngo, also known as Doan Duong Tet and even the Insect-Killing Festival, is primarily intended to ward off sickness and keep evil far away.
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The festival is also observed in China and corresponds to the summer
solstice, which is thought to be an unhealthy time of the year,
a time when plague stalks the land.
As the first step in countering the threat, families put out fruit,
sticky rice, cakes and liquor and everyone makes merry and has a
good time with plenty of noise.
Some people even pray that plague will spare them, then partake
of nhong, the larvae of the silkworm.
They reckon that intestinal worms emerge on this day and that this
is the ideal time to eradicate them by eating green fruit and com
ruou (fermented glutinous rice) and drinking spirits made from glutinous
rice.
Another popular food for Tet Doan Ngo is banh u tro, a kind of cake
made of glutinous rice flour dipped in lye and wrapped in bamboo
leaves.
The cakes can be bought usually in lots of one dozen, either without
filling or with green bean paste inside, and are best eaten with
sugar.
Taking a therapeutic shower and rubbing the body with mint leaves
is another common practice during this time, as is wearing silver
bracelets to ward off evil spirits.
So is going into the countryside and picking medicinal herbs to
dry and store for later use against parasitic diseases.
People say these make good medicine if collected on the right day
and have therapeutic properties to combat many ailments and diseases,
but the wild herbs must be gathered in the two hours following noon.
Afterwards they can be dried in the sun and used anytime by boiling
in water and drinking the resulting brew. The most popular are absinthe
leaves, Eugenia and dewberry.
In many regions, people usually buy at least a bundle of different
plants and hang it in front of the doors of their houses, believing
it will ward off evil spirits during the rest of the year.
Tet Doan Ngo is also a day for praying that insects won't destroy
the crops. In the countryside there is a strong belief that every
tree embodies a spirit, so on this special day they make supplication
to these spirits that the crops will thrive and yield an abundant
harvest.
If they didn't get good crop last time around, the farmers try again
but in a different fashion.
Usually the son will climb to the top of a tree and pretend to be
an oracle, answering questions from his father, who rounds of the
proceedings by wielding a huge knife, making an incision in the
bark, and threatening the spirit with some phrase like "if you not
give me a good crop, I will cut you down".
Many believe that by cutting a tree exactly at noon the next harvest
will be bigger than the preceding one.
Reported by Thu Thuy
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