Eating in Vietnamese culture

Vietnam in the medival period had never been a rich country. Agricultural Economics made it always look like a huge village. This is the very fundamental meaning to the culture, especially in cultural behavior. We can indentify this matter with the consideration of Vietnamese concepts in “eating culture”.

The ancestors of nowaday Vietnamese residents were fastened with a self-sufficing economy which is often very seriously in need for food. That is always in their inner feelings. The famous idiom “Get food get ethics” shows us the very important meaning of eating since it’s the condition for the mental activities.

It can be hard to find in this world another country which brings the eating matter into its culture so that it becomes an obsession. Eating behavior is also raised up to cultural rituals in Vietnam.

When Vietnamese people meet each other, except for greetings and health questions, they often ask the other if he/she had meal or eaten yet. In their mind, God also has to control his anger when someone is eating (God has to wait until the meal ends).

Three of the very important gods in indigenous Vietnamese culture are the Gods of  Kitchen, who keep the fire burnt all the time. They are the gods who maintain the warm fire which represents wealth of a family. A wealthy family is the one that has enough food with the subsidiary of these gods. They also have a special day to be worshiped: December 23th, 7 days before Tet, the new year day in lunar calendar.

Arccoding to a famous legend, the prince was chosen by the first king of Vietnam to succeed the throne was a great chef who discovered two unique dishes which became indispensable food items represented as Heaven and Earth, in Tet - the traditional festival of Vietnam.

In a fairy tale, the love of a girl began with the meal she prepared to distinguish the two brothers to find the one she wanted to marry, and ends with the birth of a customary marriage related to this deadly love story: chewing betel.

Among many Vietnamese folksy ritual customs, the highest recommended and the most popular one is worshiping ancestors (include the funeral after one’s death and some memorial days after his/her death in the first 3 years and then every year), and gods belong to indigenous beliefs. In addition, there are some other festivals such as the full moon days in lunar calendar in January and July (which is also known as Vu Lan - Mother’s day), and in August (which is also called Children festival or mid- Autumn festival). July is also the month to worship ghosts with a so- called “Ghost Festival”. There is also a day of  festival for farmers in May, on which people stop working to relax and call it “Insecticide Day”.

In their opinion, the dead and gods also need food, even more and better food than the living. In these special days, people make a lot of delicious food, then invite relatives and neighbors to enjoy. That is not only the way they tribute ancestors and pray for grace from them and gods, but also some opportunities for people who get bored with simple and poor menu consisting mainly many kinds of vegetables to enjoy rare sumptuous banquets with a lot of special dishes processed from any kind of meat.

(As for vegetables,this is the indispensable kind of food in Vietnamese meals. They say: “A meal without vegetable is like fighting without screaming.”)

Wedding is also an apportunity to show someone’s wealth through the number of luxurious dishes. The more expensive food, the more highly appreciated the wedding.

People who come to join this kind of parties are called “dining guests”.

Morever, when friends or relatives come to visit or come back to a family, host/hostess often show their hospitality by making delicious meals. Unexpected guests also are invited to join the meal. Inviting those guests to join a meal, even that meal is meager or exuberant, is not only important for describing the host’s generosity but also a necessary conduct.  If a guest leaves with an empty stomach, that will mean the host/hostess has made a serious mistake in his/her behavior manner. And if someone visits a family at the meal time, he/she should join the meal, otherwwise he/she will makes the host/hostess confused.

Hences eating is highly appreciated and became permanent in Vietnamese people’s mind. Because people try to find reasons to held parties for eating, the word “eat” has become a popular word which is used in many cases so that many things not related to eating may still be associated with that word. In Vietnamese dictionanry, “eat” is a very special word which is able to be combined with hundreds of words to create new ones. We writers tried doing a statistic through the Great Vietnamese Dictionary and found 551 entries which are related to the word "eat" [1]. Thus, unlike Westerners those just consider eating as a necessary condition, as a mean to work, (as Western philosophy reminds us, "People eat to live, not live to eat"), but for the Vietnamese "eating is culture" [2]. Except for a number of words related to eating, a large number of the rest do not merely mean the action bringing food to mouth, but hiddening exuberant cultural features of lifestyle, behaviors, point of view, etc.

Many idioms and proverbs have used the word “eat” to describe precisely and floridly the ethical views of Vietnamese people. You live the way you eat.

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[Because of difficulties in translating idioms, we have to limit our topic here now :D.]

Eating is a common topic in Vietnamese people’s life. It is easy to understand why the word “eat” became popular in our cultural classic references and living.

[1] Nguyễn Như Ý (chủ biên), Đại Từ điển tiếng Việt, Nxb. Văn hóa Thông tin, 1999, tr. 45-58.

[2] Trần Ngọc Thêm, Tìm về bản sắc văn hóa Việt Nam, Nxb. Tổng hợp Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, 2004, tr. 342-343.