Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival

The Lunar New Year actually officially begins this weekend, but the Vietnamese Community of Georgia got a head-start on Lunar New Year festivities last Sunday in Norcross. Vietnatmese Lunar New Year celebrations are called Tet in Vietnamese. Here is an interesting website with more information about the history, customs, and importance of the Lunar New Year in Vietnam.

The festival was held inside what was once an Office Depot (right next to the Hong Kong Market shopping center, if you're familiar with Norcross). The facility was decorated with painting, lanterns, and flowers. If I am identifying them correctly, the flowers pictured here (with the tall branches) are called Hoa Mai and are often used in traditional Tet decorations

I think my favorite part of the festival was the feeling that I really was traveling

in a foreign country. I could probably count on one hand the number of non-Vietnamese people at the event. I love being thrown out of my comfort zone, not understanding what people are saying around me, not knowing what the performers are stage are talking about, reverting to smiles and gestures to order food, all while not even really knowing what I'm ordering!

I actually ran into my Vietnamese colleague, so she took me around a bit and told me about the food, customs, etc. It turns out the food I ordered was homemade, not from a restaurant, and so is probably about as authentique of Vietnamese food as you can get! (Saigon Basil also had a booth set up, but I opted for the table with handwritten signs/menus). The menu was written entirely in Vietnamese, so I had no idea what was ordering, and just pointed to what looked good. (Well, it actually ALL looked good, I just picked something that looked especially delicious!) After I ran into my colleague, I had her go back to the food table with me and find out the name and ingredients of what I ate. Turns out what I thought was beef was actually goat meat. It was delicious! It was cooked with onions and basil and served with baguette-style bread. I don't know much about Vietnamese cuisine; I wonder if the French colonial history has influenced their cuisine...

The first event I saw on stage was a fashion show of sorts with college-age girls. As I mentioned,

there was no English spoken at the event, but I did hear the words "Miss America" during the introduction of the event, so I suppose it was modeled after a Miss America-style pageant, complete with judges and all.

After the pageant, there was a Loto event with a charming MC who sang a catchy song while the numbers were being selected. I made a movie of it; will try to post it soon.

After exploring the festival for awhile, we went next door and explored the Hong Kong Market. I'll do a separate post on it later this week, since this post is already fairly lengthy!

There are more Lunar New Year events going on this weekend, so if you missed the event yesterday, you still have a chance to celebrate! (See my last post for details!)