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.
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A flower market on Hang Luoc Street (Hanoi) |
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.
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Diverse varieties of orchids for sale at Quang An flower market in Hanoi. |
At the flower markets all kinds of flowers are sold, meeting the demands of connoisseurs. For the northern people, peach blossoms symbolize spring. These flowers are diverse in colours, white, pink, red, etc. According to an old story, a twig of peach blossoms placed in the house during Tet can chase away evil spirits, making them prevalent in homes during the traditional New Year Festival, especially in the north. Connoisseurs know how to select a beautiful twig of peach blossoms which has both a nice shape and many buds that will bloom throughout a month. They also know how to prepare the twig so its blooms will open on the first day of the New Year. The villages of Nhat Tan and Nghi Tam around Hanoi are renowned for the peach trees they grow. For southern people, apricot flowers symbolize spring. There are many kinds of apricot flowers with different colours, such as Ochna, Spicy jatropha, Prunus mume sieb et zuce with hues of white and pink, Hoang mai with yellow colour, Mai chieu thuy with a pearly white colour and Song mai with its more solid white colour. The most popular is yellow apricot flower.
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Kumquat gardens in Tu Lien (Hanoi) |
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.