 For the New Year’s Festival, people not only prepare traditional dishes and fruit as offering to ancestors and but also buy flowers and ornamental plants to decorate their houses. The atmosphere of Tet is clearly shown by the early flower markets.
A Vietnamese pastime on the occasion of Tet in spring is to visit the gardens specializing in growing kumquat, apricot and peach trees or to the Spring flower festivals to contemplate and buy flowers, twigs of peach blossoms, apricots and kumquat trees to display in the house during the festive time. These flower markets usually take place from the 23rd of December until New Year’s Eve of the lunar calendar and are busy from early morning to late at night.
The kumquat tree is also popular in the flower markets. This kind of tree grows in an ornamental pot and is trimmed into small layers and canopies. Kumquat trees grown in Van Giang (Hung Yen Province), Nhat Tan and Quang Ba (Hanoi) are the most beautiful. The golden colour of the kumquat fruit symbolizes luck and prosperity, therefore the kumquat trees are much sought after. Other kinds of flowers which are usually displayed at home during Tet include daisies, narcissi, gladioli, gerberas, dahlias, etc., creating a brightly colourful painting of the flower markets.
(Source: Vietnam Pictorial) |
