It’s
5 am in the morning. Five small trucks turn onto Tran Mai Ninh Street in Tan
Binh District and stop in front of Ba Hoa Market, which is still quiet. A
driver climbs down from one truck, calling people in a strong central accent to
get their delivery.
Minutes later, several doors open and many
people start chattering “Hey, what do you have today?” “When will you have
candied ginger?”
Tet
comes from the market
The first delivery comes to Hai, who has sold
rice-paper in Ba Hoa Market for sixteen years, and is from central Quang Nam
Province’s Thang Binh District. Prior to Tet, she gets many rice-paper orders
of different sizes, as she wants all her regular Quang Nam-born customers to
get their hometown food for Tet.
She also sells green bean cakes, roasted
sticky rice cakes, chive bulbs, and caramel candies, which are Quang Nam
specialties. For many Quang Nam natives that live around the market, Tet begins
when the first truckload arrives with food from home.
Near Hai’s store is Nhan, an 80 year old betel
leave seller, who is from Nui Thanh District of the province. In the middle of
each month, she sells extra sand for filling up censers on altars. The pure
white sand is taken from Nui Thanh, filtered, and then sent by truck to her.
Selling sand is not very profitable, yet Nhan loves it, as she can meet many
people from Quang Nam while they shop for it.
Ngan, one of her regulars, said, “I prefer
using sand from my ancestors’ hometown to fill in the censer on their altar”.
At this time of the year, many northern
families start to look for phrynium, a plant with broad green leaves used to
wrap “banh chung” (square sticky rice cakes). Thus on the corner of Pham Van
Hai and Cach Mang Thang Tam streets in Ong Ta Market, shops selling such goods
have opened.
Bui Thi Ai, a rice shop owner on Pham Van Hai
Street, said that she started selling the leaves a week earlier this year.
According to her, many people from northern Nam Dinh and Ninh Binh provinces
have lived here for more than fifty years, but they never forget “banh chung”
with its unique leaf color, from home. They find that the shops in Ong Ta
Market provide a taste of home in Ho Chi Minh City.
Preserving
a taste of home
Stories of people who bring a countryside
taste of Tet to Saigon are not just about making a living, since they also have
a strong desire to remember their homeland for themselves, as well as their
fellow countrymen.
In a small house at the end of Nguyen Thi Tu
Street in Binh Tan District, Nguyen Thi Me is packing rice flakes with her son.
Me is from the central Binh Thuan Province’s Ham Thuan Bac District, where the
special rice flake balls are produced. In order to have these delicious rice
cakes, she goes to verdant sticky rice fields in the Mekong Delta and makes
pre-orders with the field owner to harvest when the grains are plump and ripe.
Surprisingly, she insists on finding the lumpy
yellow sugar, instead of refined white sugar, to mix the rice with thin-sliced
of pineapple to make delicious products.
Chance
to meet fellow countrymen
Hoc, a sponge cake seller in Ba Hoa Market,
said that she moved to the south more than ten years ago, and lost contact with
her friends at home. Two years ago, she met a friend from high school who
accidentally ran into her while shopping for sponge cakes for the Tet holiday.
According to Hoc, it has become a tradition
for all of the shopkeepers in Ba Hoa from Quang Nam Province to have a New
Year’s Eve potluck party featuring only food of the province.
“Come join us on New Year’s Eve and try all of
the authentic Quang Nam food. I’ll make it up for you if they do not have it,”
Hoc said.
Similarly, Hai, a rice paper seller, said that
the Tet is the biggest chance of the year to meet and talk to her fellow
countrymen. Somehow, selling food from home at this time makes her both happy
and sad. She shared that, “I am happy for the extra sales and the chance to
meet many people from my hometown, with whom I can comfortably talk in my own
countryside accent. But on New Year’s Eve they all start to go home, and the
market closes. That’s when I feel very homesick”.
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