What kind of masks do people like to wear?

Beautiful masks are not only one of children's favourite toys but also a unique art form among rural people. Vietnamese people enjoy masks of the unicorn (ong lcin) and the happy, round-faced monk (ong dia).

They also appreciate masks with a human face because these affirm the Vietnamese national identity

Which sixteenth century scholar used the moon as his motivation for study?

That was Le Tai.

In 1504, the court held the Highest Imperial Examination to select new talents to lead the country. Two brothers, Le Nai and Le Tai, left for the capital to take part in the exam. Le Nai was a composed person and applied himself to learning. However, his younger brother, Le Tai, was very intelligent but quick-tempered and impulsive; he did not immerse himself in his studies. Finding the literature test difficult, Le Tai asked for his older brother's help. Le Nai refused, saying, "We're in the examination. It's not fair if I help you".

Le Tai became angry and left the examination room. On the way back home, he realised his bad behaviour and felt ashamed. By the time he reached his house, darkness had settled over the village. He did not dare wake everyone, so he slept on the threshold.His mother got up at midnight, when the moon was shining brightly, opened the door, and found Le Tai. Guessing that her son had troubles, she woke him gently and fed him. But Le Tai did not care about eating; he immediately plunged headlong into study. On seeing this, his mother shook her head, saying, "You're too erratic. You work hard today, but you may stop tomorrow. You will never succeed without regular study.""I've already thought about this". Le Tai replied, his voice determined. "I promise I'll study seriously and diligently from now on."

In order to validate his promise, Le Tai pointed to the moon and said, "The moon above is my witness."

Indeed, Le Tai did apply himself to his studies. Sometimes he felt tired and wanted to relax, but the bright moon motivated him to work harder. After much effort, Le Tai passed the Highest Imperial Examination in 1510.

Where should we go for fun in Ha Noi or Ho Chi Minh City at Mid-Autumn Festival?

Mid-Autumn Festival in Ha Noi

The Ho Tay Water Park (614 Lac Long Quan Road), Van Ho Exhibition Centre (2 Hoa Lu Street), and Giang Vo Exhibition Centre (148 Giang Vo Road) all have musical performances for children.

The Youth Theatre at 11 Ngo Thi Nham has variety shows for children.

At the Children's Palace (36 Ly Thai To), beginning at 19:30 on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the eighth lunar month, there are activities such as film shows for children, cake and fruit parties, and a fruit and flower arrangement competition, children's martial arts shows, musical performances, the unicorn dance, a lantern procession around Hoan Kim Lake, and a distribution of gifts for children.

Mid-Autumn Festival in Ho Chi Minh City 

Ho Chi Minh City hold "Full Moon Festival" parties for children. Activities include: lion dances, singing and dancing, lantern-making contests, and the floating of lit candle lanterns on lakes or rivers. Two moon fairies - the buffalo boy, Cuoi, and his sister, Hang - distribute lanterns and moon cakes to children.

On this occasion, city residents pay special attention to disadvantaged children. The city arranges for some 5,000 children to participate in lantern processions along the main streets

How is a Mid-Autumn Festival organised abroad?

Erika Daum-Karanitsch describes below how she organised a Mid-Autumn Festival in Vienna.

Last May, I met up with a few Vietnamese friends and suggested that we organize a Mid-Autumn Festival in Vienna. I thought it would be fun for Austrian children and for Vietnamese children born in Austria.

We all grew excited about the idea and started thinking how we could organise a festival as close as possible to the Vietnamese original. Since many children had not been to Viet Nam, I started our party by asking questions. "Have you been to Viet Nam?" "Can you tell me the name of Viet Nam's most common crop?" "What colour is that plant?" "Have you celebrated Mid-Autumn Tet before?"

After our question-and-answer session, I started our little programme by describing the Mid-Autumn Festival.I told the children about our festival in HA Nei in 1995, when all our neighbours had put out chairs and tables in the little lanes. They decorated the tables with candles and gave the children fruit and sweets. The children ran around, playing with the lanterns, masks, and toys their parents had given them. The parents also enjoyed themselves as they chatted with family and friends.

After this introduction, we helped the children make their own masks And lanterns. One Vietnamese family crafted the typical stars made with a bamboo frame covered in coloured paper. We all had fun making masks and lanterns. By then, the mothers had laid out the fruit and sweets. While eating, we showed a video about Tet Trung Thu in Viet Nam. After that, some of the children started singing Vietnamese songs. Then one boy said that he remembered a dragon dance. I asked him to tell us more. All of a sudden the children grew very excited. I said, "OK, let's do it!". 

We chose a big boy with a mask to be the head of the dragon. Another boy became'Ong dia, the smiling, round-faced monk who holds a fan and makes the dragon dance. Parents showed the children how to do the dragon dance. At first they hesitated but then joined in. We had so much fun! When the party ended, the children took home their lanterns, masks, and sweets. We all agreed to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival again next year.

What do pop stars have to say about the Mid-Autumn Festival?

My Linh: When I was a child, my family was very poor. My parents couldn't afford lanterns. I could only touch the drums, the running-horse lanterns, and the star-shaped lanterns in my dreams. During Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations, I ran after th other children, who carried their lanterns proudly an I marched in the streets. Today, I can afford Mid-Autumn Festival toys, but I am too old to celebrate. Each Mid-Autumn, I make up for my childhood wants by organising a merry party for my children.

My Linh singer

Hong Nhung: Whenever I think about Mid-Autumn Festivals, I recall the children's song, "The Star-Shaped Lantern" (Chiec den Ong sao). When I was small, I was a member of the San ca (Lark) Singing Team of the Ha I10i Children's Cultural Palace. I often welcomed the Mid-Autumn full moon with the other team members. Each of us received a small piece of baked moon cake and a segment of a half-ripe pomelo. I think that the atmosphere during Ha Mid-Autumn Festival is much more animated than in Ho Chi Minh City. When it comes to Mid-Autumn, I often feel a vague sadness and miss my home in Ha Noi.

Hong Nhung singer

Tran Thu Ha: My childhood room overlooked a pond of mu muong (a kind of green vegetable). The room was often dark during the day but especially bright on moonlit nights. 

Tran Thu Ha singer

During Mid-Autumn Festivals, I used to sit by the open window and watch the reflection of the moon in the pond. The scene was so wonderful, but I felt empty and lonely. As stubborn and mischievous as I was, I still felt like crying during those nights because I missed my mother, who had passed away.

What is an innovative way of using masks?

Over the past few years, masks made of bamboo, wood, coconut shells, and even copper are no Arotz,longer seen as the simple children's toys they once were but have become fashionable interior decorations. Artisans paint masks on the back of flat, round bamboo baskets of many sizes and designs. Craftsmen polish and paint raw coconut shells and then skillfully create colourful masks, and add multicoloured wool strings to both sides to make the masks more vibrant. Wood and metal masks have many nuances, from joy to anger, from love to hatred.

According to a shopkeeper on HA NOi's Hang Gai (Hemp Street), which is famous for souvenirs, the bamboo masks are best suited to rooms that have walls with warm tones and furniture made of wood or bamboo.

Most masks are painted in dark colours and can create too much contrast in brightly painted rooms. The price of a decorative mask ranges from VND 5,000 to VND 100,000 (US$0.33 - $6.67). Masks are on display in souvenir shops on Ltrong Van Can, Hang Urge, and other HA NO streets.

What is the most famous lantern-making hamlet in Ho Chi Minh City?

Phu Binh is a lantern-making hamlet near Dam Sen Park in HO Chi Minh City, but most of its residents come from Nam Dinh Province's Bao Dap Village, which is ninety kilometres southeast of HA NO and famous for paper-dyeing. After 1954, many Nam Dinh people moved to Sai GOn (former name of HO Chi Minh City), taking their traditional crafts with them. During their leisure time, these skilful artisans created beautiful lanterns for children to welcome the full moon at the Mid-Autumn Festival. Since then, they have produced lanterns shaped like butterflies, chickens, and other animals. Now, because of its lucrative profits, their craft has spread to neighbouring districts.

More than a hundred households in Phu Binh make about 500,000 lanterns a year for distribution throughout southern and central Viet Nam and for charitable organisations to give to orphans and street children. This part-time job brings workers a handsome income. Mr. Minh, a lantern maker, said the profit margin on a lantern is about fifty per cent. Village houses are more comfortable now as a result of this thriving industry, and some people have even saved enough money from lantern-making seasons to buy a motorbike or build a house.

Makers prepare their materials and begin lantern production. July is their busiest month; they work all day to get ready for their autumn market. Making a lantern involves several stages. First, the artisan forms bamboo slats into the desired shape, then covers this frame with coloured paper, and then decorates it. While not difficult in artistic terms, decorating a lantern requires skill and concentration to produce an attractive finish.

Increasing demand for lanterns has prompted families to cooperate in an assembly-line production process. Some families focus on frames, while others specialise in decoration. Families hire unskilled workers to do simple tasks.

Lantern makers in Phu Binh say they strive to improve their designs, materials, and productior methods so their products can compete with those of ethnic Chinese lantern makers in CO Lau ("Big Market"), H6 Chi Minh City's Chinatown. Luckily for Phil Binh lantern producers, Vietnamese children seem to have changed their tastes recently and now prefer locally made lanterns with candles inside over Chinese-inspired designs.

Why is it so difficult to find Vietnamese made toys?

When Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, parents often puzzle about which toys to choose from the shelves of supermarkets and toyshops. Of course they cannot humour their children's every wish. Unfortunately, local shops only sell either high quality, expensive toys or low quality, cheap ones. High quality toys made in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Japan are too expensive for most buyers. Chinese toys — including soft toys, miniature cars and planes, robots, masks, and assembling toys —have flooded the Vietnamese market but are of poor quality.

Domestic businesses don't pay much attention to this potential market. At present, domestically imported ones because toy production costs are high while profit margins are low.

Only a few Vietnamese companies produce toys. These include Hirng Sang Limited Company (which makes soft toys) and Educational Equipment Company 1 (which produces wooden and plastic assembling toys). Some other companies make outdoor playthings.The prices for these domestically made toys are not cheap for Vietnamese buyers. The smallest Hirrig Sang teddy bear costs from VND 15,000-20,000 (US$1.00 - $1.33); a set of assembling toys from Educational Equipmr nt Company 1 is equally expensive.

Several domestic toy companies have failed in the market economy. Mr. Than Ngoc Tinh, a member of the Hung Sang Company, said that his company's soft toys are of very high quality and also have an educational nature, but the price is high. The company's major markets are Ha NOi, South Korea, Canada, the U.S., and Eastern European countries. Hung Sang can't yet make other toys because of the huge investment required and the current market instability.

Demand for children's toys is large. Most parents are prepared to buy toys even though the family might not have other material comforts. Toys offer children companionship and encouragement and help them enlarge thei understanding. Toys also help develop a sense of beauty, promote positive behaviour, and improve mental and physical strength. Unfortunately, many imported toys do not meet these educational and aesthetic requirements but are made simply to satisfy market demand. Some of these toys — guns, war machines, and aggressive monster figures —also encourage violence and have a bad influence on children.

Toys provide a wonderland for children and help nurture and develop their personalities. Our families, schools, and society as a whole should care about the development and distribution of Vietnamese-made toys.

Which village in northern Viet Nam has been making rice figurines for 300 years?

The village of Xuan La in Phil Xuyen District, Ha Tay Province is well known for its skill in making delicate to he toys, which are figurines fashioned from coloured rice dough. These simple toys still give children immense joy during the Mid-Autumn season. However, few people know that this village craft has a 300-year history. Unfortunately, villagers no longer know which ancestor created their famous to he because the village's record book burned during the French War.To he makers do not teach the craft to women because the fathers fear their daughters will reveal precious trade secrets to their husbands' families.

According to an old man in Xuan La Village, the recipe for success in making to he lies in the preparation of the dough. The craftsman first grinds rice into fine powder, then pours water into the powder and mixes it until he achieves a sticky lump. He places the lump in a pot of water, brings the water to a boil, and cooks the paste for an hour. When the lump rises to the water's surface, dips, and rises again, the craftsman removes it from the pot. Then he applies seven colours: white, black, green, yellow, violet, pink, and red. Miraculously, the different colours never stain one another when he assembles the parts of a to he figurine.

Many generations of Vietnamese children have been overjoyed when their mothers return from market with a 10 he. Children can even eat 10 he after playing with them. Each Xuan La craftsman embarking on the 10 he trade learns to humour customers, especially children. The lesson of humanity is the first one every Xuan La villager bears in mind. "If we love people, they will surely come to us," 10 he makers say.Making to he doesn't bring much profit. The materials rice paste, bamboo-stick holders, colourings  are inexpensive and locally available. A craftsman only charges customers for his patience and care. A to he in a rural market costs between VND 500 and VND 1,000 (US$.03 -$.07). Makers who travel farther afield to the larger cities can sell a to he for between VND 2,000 to VND 3,000 (US$.13 - $.20).
Customers can place their orders, watch the craftsman mould the toy, and be pleased with the results in minutes. A to he can depict a person, a famous general, a folk-tale character, an animal, or a flower. The makers remember the characteristics of every subject. They are experts in using exactly the right amount of paste to form each separate part of each kind of toy, as if these skills were an inborn talent.

Mr. Dang Van TO, who is eighty-two, is the oldest 16 he maker in Xuan La. He talks proudly about his life and career. Mr. TO's family has been making to he for ten generations. He learned the trade when he was six and is nationally known. The Ministry of Culture and Information often asks him to demonstrate to he making at festivals. Mr. T6's passion and skill have not lessened despite his age. He can make every kind of to he, from kings and mandarins with elaborate imperial costumes to complicated dragons. He can finish an image of King Quang Trung.
Mr. To also likes to teach children about the underlying meaning of 16 he. He explains that the lifeline of the to he trade is people's joy, not money. For example, as Mr. TO creates a 16 he rat, he explains that rats have pointed noses and long tails, that they destroy farmers' crops, and that the children should help get rid of rats. The children are fascinated to listen to Mr. TO as they watch the 16 he emerge in his hands.

Today, plastic and electronic toys flood city and countryside markets. Although to he cannot compete, Xuan La villagers still struggle to maintain their traditional trade. At present, about 300 villagers make to he. Chu Van Ng4, a war veteran who is sixty-seven, still pursues the craft. His four-year-old granddaughter has asked him to teach her to make 16 he. Nowadays, many women assist their husbands and families in preserving the village trade. Everyday, Xuan La villagers travel to different corners of the countryside — from hamlets to markets to parks — selling 16 he to children and 16 he lovers.
Xuan La villagers take pride that, nowadays, 16 he makers can be found nationwide and even abroad in China, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. This proves that the craft has not entirely disappeared. Although a to he is small, it embodies a lot of the sentiment, honour, and industry that began with Xuan La villagers long, long ago.

What are the most popular dishes eaten during he Mid-Autumn Festival?

Moon cakes (Banh Trung Thu).

These are a sweet specialty found throughout Viet Nam in Mid-Autumn. If a cake is perfectly ade, one can finish the entire treat without feeling bloated. If not, then even one slice can seem too much. The recipe determines how delicious, rich, or soft a cake is and how long it will last without spoiling.

Moon cakes are made with a variety of tastes, old and new. According to the manager of the Long uang Bakery in District 5, H6 Chi Minh City, Chinese people living around Cho Lan made the first moon cakes. A traditional Chinese moon cake should taste sweet and fatty and should smell of therapeutic herbs. Some experienced bakers make the filling of these cakes with Chinese dried sausage, roast lean pork, and fish fins. They mix the ingredients with herbs and spices, especially dried ginger, in a special formula that offers both salty and sweet tastes.

Moon cakes made in northern Viet Nam are also sweet but less rich than those from the south. Their fillings often smell of lemon leaves and mandarin-orange and grapefruit peels. Deo (soft) moon cakes made in Ha NOi are especially delicious. The fragrance of grapefruit flowers emerges as soon as you bite into the coating of sticky-rice paste.

Some moon-cake producers in Ho Chi Minh City  such as Kinh DO, Dong Khanh, Ai Hue, Hy Lam Mon  also add mixtures of coconut and milk, taro root and milk, durian, green bean, and cocoa or hazelnuts. A few local bakers add whisky to give their cakes' filling a special taste. Thanh Long in Ho Chi Minh City even makes diet moon cakes that are cholesterol-free and taste less sweet.

Other cakes bear influences from beyond Viet Nam. The Equatorial Hotel makes Malaysian-style cakes from red beans and sesame oil, or lotus seeds and sweet-smelling leaves. They cover the cakes with a coating of chocolate. Hong Kong's Saint Honore Cakes also come in many flavours, including soybeans with orange flavour, white lotus, black beans, and lotus seeds with tea.

Most moon cakes are either round or square. However, some are shaped like pigs or fish. Moon cakes can be eaten right after they are made, but they definitely taste better when eaten at the right time. Traditionally, a moon cake is served three days after baking so that the oil in the filling can seep into the coating, making it soft and creating a delicious, rich taste. Newly baked cakes tend to be dry and hard. Today, however, according to Ltru Lap Chanh, owner of Hy Lam Mon Bakery in H6 Chi Minh City, modern technology and new recipes allow the oil to seep into the coating in just twelve hours, although this makes the cakes less tasty than the traditional three-day method.

Moon cakes are often packed with sugar and calories. According to the Kinh DO Confectionery Company in H6 Chi Minh City, a 200-gram cake filled with green beans contains as many as 700 kilocalories, whereas an adult needs about 2,000 kilocalories a day for basic health. A moon cake has all the ingredients for putting on weight: starch, fat, and sugar. Sugar accounts for between 40% and 60% of a cake's weight. Thus, an average 200-gram cake may contain more than 100 grams of sugar. Cakes that are high in sugar, roast pork, fatty meat, and oily fillings provide even more calories.

Moon cakes are easy to keep. Durir,,, normal weather conditions they can last fifteen dais. Some vacuum-packed cakes, those packed in airtight boxes with humidity or oxygen absorbers, and those treated with ultraviolet rays may last longer, but they still should be eaten within one month. Consumers should be careful about cakes that are kept in normal conditions yet seem to last several months; the producer may have used an anti-mold agent, which is believed to be harmful to health.

What does young rice (com) mean for Vietnamese?

When autumn comes, you may notice on a gentle breeze the pleasant scent of new rice as you walk along a quiet street of Ha Noi. Look across the street, and you'll see a woman vendor shouldering a pole with two baskets covered with large lotus leaves. The young green rice (com) she is selling refreshes the air with countryside fragrance. What bliss after a hot, humid and dusty summer!

For centuries, Com has been part of autumn in the Red River Delta, with the sound of pestles heard pounding young green rice day and night. Mothers present coin in large lotus leaves to their children, who watch to make sure their shares are equal.

Alexandre de Rhodes, the first French Jesuit missionary to visit Viet Nam, included con] as an entry in his Dictionarium Annannticum LusitanumLatinum (Vietnamese Portuguese-Latin Dictionary) published in Rome in 1651, though he defined Com only as "pounded green rice." However, the process requires a skill (and sometimes even an art) that has been perfected over generations.

Making Com is a family secret, which parents teach only their sons and daughters-in-law but never their daughters. They fear that married daughters will reveal the secret to their husbands' families and create competition.

Making Com demands a high level of skill. First, the artisan must select the perfect rice. A special kind of sticky rice, nep hoa vang, is best because its grains are smaller and rounder than other varieties. The artisan plucks grains in the paddy and gently bites them to check for ripeness. If the taste is as sweet as milk, the rice is ready for making Com.

Harvesters hand pluck the grains (ordinary threshing would impair quality) and winnow them with a flat bamboo basket. They roast the rice, stirring the grains in a hot pan over a gentle fire fueled by wood. They then pound the grains in a mortar while stirring them from bottom to top and add colouring extracted from crushed young rice plants to make the rice greener. The final product is com flat, soft, and fragrant rice grains that are a delicate green.

Com is eaten fresh, a pinch at a time, so the gentle sweetness can penetrate. Persimmons and bananas add subtlety to the taste.

Even the kings and queens of the past enjoyed con. 'During the nineteenth century, residents of Tong Village in the Ha Noi suburbs offered coin to the Nguyen kings. The royal capital was in Hue then, and trains and motorised vehicles were not yet available; poor peasants from northern Viet Nam walked ten days to deliver the delicacy. They devised a special method to keep Com fresh and tasty. Using a shoulder pole, each porter carried a pair of bamboo baskets with a tin tray of thinly spread comin each basket. A small earthen stove under the tray heated a vessel of water to create steam, which kept the Con fresh.

Although a perfect dish, Comhas a disadvantage: It must be eaten within twenty-four hours or its subtle taste will be lost. What if you want to enjoy it later? Don't worry! Vietnamese make other Com dishes coin nen, banh Com, Com xao, che com, kem Com, Com hoc, and Com dep  for just that purpose.

Com nen is Com stir-fried in sugary water and wrapped with banana leaves. It becomes banh com when the cook adds a filling of finely-pounded mung bean, sugar, and coconut and shapes a square cake, which is wrapped in banana leaves and tied with pink bamboo strings. Vietnamese use banh coim as special gifts since the cakes can keep for a week. Children working away from home send bcinh com to their parents; the groom's family offers them to the bride's family; relatives and close friends give banh com to each other during Tat, the Lunar New Year.

Com xao is dried cdm fried with sugar and oil; however, this dish does not have the original flavour of cdm. A lighter dish is the com, which is an opaque, watery plodding dotted with co'm grains. It is often eaten as a dessert to lighten the heaviness of a large meal. che com is an ordinary meat pie mixed with corn grains to reduce the fatty taste. Kern com is ice-cream made from com, a refreshment unique to Viet Nam.

Cơm học of Binh Thuận Province in southern Việt Nam is popped sticky rice mixed with sugar and shaped into a square cake. Co'm dep, a specialty of the Khmer people in Soc Trang Province, is made by roasting ripe sticky-rice grains, removing the husks, and then mixing the rice with coconut milk, coconut meat, and groundnuts.

Vietnamese born before the First Indochina War (1945-1954) have a special nostalgia for Com. They grew up singing such folk ballads as:

Com from Vong, rice from Me Tri,

Soya sauce from Ban, mints from Lang can anything be tastier?

or

I did not know that you had married 

And that my Com had grown moldy.

 HA Noi has two well-known specialties: phd (noodle soup) and cdm. If the two are compared, some will say that phd is delicious but not noble. However, com is both delicious and noble. Hanoians may enjoy eating phd, but they never set it as an offering on their ancestral altars. However, some HA Noi families do offer their ancestors in the other world cdm at the beginning of autumn before they themselves enjoy this treat.

In the Oriental balance of yin and yang, green Com represents yin or the female principle. Eaten with red persimmon, which denotes yang or the male principle, Com gives one the feeling of perfect harmony with the universe. Perhaps for this reason, cdm continues to be a delicacy held dear by Vietnamese wherever they are, whether in Viet Nam or abroad.