Lunar's New Year: A Vietnamese American Traditions

I am a Vietnamese American whose parents were born and brought up in Vietnam. I, however, had little experience and knowledge about my country since I am raised in the U.S. It is common for an ethnic generation that is born in the Western society to lose its roots. Nevertheless, I understand how important it is to retain and value my culture. Therefore, I get why my parents teach me according to the Vietnamese standards, because they want to me to always remember my origin. Even though I am much more comfortable speaking in English, I try to have conversations with my family in Vietnamese. I am also taught to read and write the basis. I celebrate the holidays and learn about their meanings. When I was younger, my mom did not have time to cook

The following paper will discuss Vietnamese Americans and their journey to America. I will talk about how these incredible and resilient people fought to succeed it a world that seemed to hold the odds against them. The culture, beliefs, and challenges of Vietnamese people are a precise paradigm of their strength and perseverance.

With Vietnamese and American, the New Year festival gains different special significance. The Vietnamese New Year celebration is more complex and charged with more symbolic meanings than the American one. Vietnamese people strongly believe that the New Year demonstrates connections, renewals, thanksgivings and hopes. New Year traditions maintain linkages between people of living generations in the real world with the dead in the spiritual world. The connections for every family at this time are not only the gathering of all the relatives living far from the hometown but also the reunions with the spirit of ancestors. This belief presents a part of Vietnamese national identity and exerts considerable influence on many Vietnamese people. They usually return to their family during Tet. Some visit the graves of their parents and grandparents, removing weeds and worshiping to invoke the souls of the dead to visit the family home. American, however, does not take the New Year festival as serious as Vietnamese people. They regard this time as a public holiday bringing fireworks, parties, gifts and musical events and an occasion for family to hold special dinner.

First, Chinese Americans preserve their ethnic identities through holidays. One of the biggest holidays is the Chinese New Year. The Chinese New Year is different from the regular New Years in that it relies on the moon cycles instead of the western calendar, so it falls on different days each year. There is a lot of preparation that goes into the Chinese New Year. People start cleaning their houses and decorating them with spring couplets on the twentieth day of the twelfth moon. Spring couplets are short poems written on red scrolls of paper in black. A popular New Years tradition in the United States is the exchanging of red envelopes containing money, which are called hong-bao. Most families spend this holiday celebrating together because this holiday, above others, emphasizes family and family ties.

My family on the same car with my uncle, the other on the same car with Steven. The traffic congestion is common in Chicago. But, that was really bustling for newcomers. On the road, there was many dead animals like: deer, skunk, and raccoon. We got home at 7:00pm. This time in Vietnam, the sun had already set, but not here. “It will set at 9:00 pm” my uncle said. My first impression about that house was that is a big and smell good inside. The first Vietnamese American is Kim Nguyen, she cooked many Asian foods for us as chicken soup, chicken salad squeeze, Vietnamese salad… because she knows we could not eat American food on the first day. I was guided downstairs because I couldn’t eat or do something right now. A sleep will probably

This day was just another ordinary day in Vietnam. The UH-1 Helicopter crew consisted of the Pilot CW2 Baez, Co-Pilot WO1 Rawlinson, Crew Chief Martinez, and Door Gunner Kephart. They assigned them an “Ash and Trash” mission to resupply a unit 8 miles outside the village of Pleiku. The Ash and Trash missions, designed to resupply units with food, water, ammo, mail, clean clothing, and replacement troops along with taking trash and Soldiers going on R&R and sick call. When this crew woke up on April 1, 1967, they had no idea it would be an unforgettable day for all involved.

Vietnamese school culture deeply values maintaining social and academic impeccability. The struggle to appear competent and successful makes expressing vulnerability a taboo. In High School, this cultural expectation even influenced relationships with my parents and close friends - our interactions were formal and polite, yet indifferent. For example, although I would plunge myself into various social events and extracurricular activities, I was never truly present. Everything I did felt mechanical, to the point that I couldn’t laugh or smile without feeling like it was rehearsed. Over time, I became more closed off, my shell estranging me even from my grandparents – especially my grandfather, who adored me the most. From the beginning, my grandfather doted on me, always seeking opportunities to spend time with or send gifts to me. Naturally, my high school attitude was especially detrimental to our relationship.

Every year, people gather around to attend a traditional event that takes place only once a year and over the weekend. The Lunar New Year festival took place early February of 2016 and was open to the public in the fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. I was chosen as a volunteer as a cultural participant in the event and decided it was perfect opportunity to observe social behavior, since thousands of people gathered there. Being that I am Vietnamese and the festival was hosted by UVSA, an organization of Vietnamese students, I could assume that visitors would come up to me and possibly stereotype that I knew everything about my culture, given the fact that I also had to dress up in traditional costumes while volunteering. However, since it was a traditional cultural event, dressing outside the social norm inside the festival was considered normal. This meant that even though I would dress differently from others, mindlessness was less likely to occur since others would be dressed up as well. On the other hand, this could be due to my schema and past experience with others since I was confronted about my culture several times before. Although I have learned how to deal with those complications, I still felt that I had to prepare myself in order to prevent misunderstandings from happening.

I’ve always had an appreciation for other cultures and I find Southeastern Asian practices to be particularly fascinating. These cultures are deeply rooted in philosophies that have a beautiful aesthetic, one that’s fun to just observe and to also immerse yourself in. Although their medical practices are rooted in energy and herbal practices that are different from the pill prescribing ways of western medicine, I found the process to be very relaxing and I felt at ease in the medical shop. Vietnamese and Chinese culture is intricate and healing involves helping the whole body through the use of hot and cold foods, herbs, and spices, along with practices such as cupping and acupuncture (CDC 18). The Vietnamese culture is one that is beautiful

America has been nicknamed the melting pot. Many cultures have come together within the United States making it possible for American citizens to be able to participate in other cultures without leaving the United States. As a result of the diversity found in America, I have been able to experience a little bit of the Vietnamese culture through my friend, Kim. Kim has been a great source of insight regarding the leadership utilized within the Vietnamese culture.

This report is about the social customs in America, Vietnam and China. Social customs include actions and behaviors that are expected of a particular culture, and people could learn the particular culture via its social customs. We introduced four aspects in the report: dining etiquette, gift presenting etiquette, festival celebration and the wedding process. We tried to represent all three of these cultures in all of the aspects of the report. The Chinese and Vietnamese cultures are quite similar in these areas, but these two cultures differ greatly from the American culture. From these aspects, we can learn how different the American culture, Vietnamese culture and Chinese culture are. We used primary sources such as an interview, a survey, and our own personal experiences to form this report. We also used secondary sources such as the Web to help move our research along. Our goal is to inform our audience of the social customs of these cultures. We tried to show a contrast of the American culture against the two

People get so excited for Chinese New Year they will start the activities a few weeks before. On the week of the 23rd they will start cleaning their house and do all the shopping for the New Year. The Chinese clean their houses to sweep away old things and say goodbye to last year. The New Year’s shopping they do is to buy all the decorations for their house and new clothing. The Chinese are very gracious with their money; they will buy everyone new clothing for this very special holiday. The Chinese New Year eve is meant for a family, putting up decorations, staying up late with everyone and also giving red envelopes filled with “lucky money” to all the kids.

Chinese New Year is really just around the corner. The Chinese will definitely be busy running errands to make sure that the Chinese New Year celebration is well prepared. Some may choose to start as early as a month before the celebration which also means the last month in the Lunar Calendar. This way, they get to plan things they need to have for the celebration and slowly distributing the tasks among the family members and then carry them out.

Festivals and cultures have huge impact in everyone’s life. We believe what we are taught to do in our cultures and we follow those. Every culture are important to their follower. Every culture carries a wide variety of occasions all year around. Those cultures help us to know how it is celebrated, and what meaning it holds. Many cultural events are celebrated worldwide from various cultural groups. It is always better to put hands on hands and get to know each other and help each other out in need cause you can learn many things about that particular culture. Chinese New Year is very different from other culture and its unique significance draws people to it.

Chinese New Year is a meaningful way for the Chinese to start their calendar for a year.The most unique part of this festival is that it not only focused on bringing one’s own family good luck, but also the traditions that are passed down from one generation to the next that is followed every year that strengthens families’ bonds, such as the main feast/unity feast “团圆饭” and visiting relatives “拜年”. Unique because every tradition of this festival is meaningful, even cleaning and food, and had brought so much excitement, noise, greetings, love, unity to the