Tet and Chinese New Year: related, not identical

Two New Years in a related tradition

Tet, fully Tết Nguyên Đán, is the Vietnamese New Year. Chinese New Year, also called the Spring Festival, opens the traditional Chinese year. Both bring relatives home, honour earlier generations and mark a fresh beginning through special meals, greetings and gifts. Their resemblance is especially clear in the family home: preparations clear away the old year, and the first gatherings express hopes for the next.

Vietnam's calendar developed through a long history of contact with Chinese calendrical traditions, including periods of shared calendar use and independent Vietnamese calculation. That shared background helps explain the resemblance between the festivals. Vietnamese households gave the turning year their own foods, flower displays and visiting customs, which remain central to Tet's identity.

When the festivals begin

Each festival begins on the first day of the first month in its own lunisolar calendar. These calendars follow the Moon for their months and use leap months to keep the year aligned with the seasons. Tet and Chinese New Year usually share a Gregorian date, but they need not do so.

The modern Vietnamese and Chinese calendars use reference times one hour apart. Near a date boundary, that difference can change the day assigned to a new moon or affect month numbering. Tet therefore follows the Vietnamese calendar; a Chinese New Year date does not by itself settle the Vietnamese date.

Reunion and a place for the ancestors

Tet preparations include cleaning the home, buying flowers and preparing food before the New Year arrives. In households with an ancestral altar, the altar is cleaned and arranged with incense, flowers, fruit and other offerings. A five-fruit display is familiar, although the fruits chosen differ. Remembering the dead gives the reunion a place for grandparents and earlier generations as well as relatives who can gather in person.

Chinese New Year also brings advance cleaning and the preparation of the family home. Its reunion dinner on New Year's Eve is a central gathering: relatives sit down to a generous meal before the old year ends. Families that maintain ancestral observances may present food and incense at an altar or before ancestral tablets. These offerings express gratitude and continuing family ties. Staying up into the New Year, known as shousui, extends the evening together.

What the festive foods express

Tet's best-known foods include bánh chưng, a square rice cake, and bánh tét, a cylindrical one. Familiar savoury versions enclose mung beans and pork in glutinous rice, wrapped in leaves and cooked for hours. Bánh chưng is especially associated with northern Vietnam, while bánh tét is prominent in central and southern celebrations. The cakes can be offered to ancestors, shared at meals and given to relatives. Wrapping and cooking them together is itself part of preparing for the holiday.

Other dishes give the meal its household and regional character. Braised pork with eggs is a familiar southern Tet dish. Candied fruits and other sweets are set out with tea for visitors, so hospitality continues between the larger family meals.

Chinese New Year foods likewise turn a meal into a set of wishes. In northern China, families often make jiaozi, filled dumplings whose shape recalls old metal ingots and suggests prosperity. Fish is served with wishes for abundance because the Chinese word for fish sounds like the word for surplus. Nian gao, New Year rice cake, carries a wish for rising year by year through the sound of its name. Preparations range from sweet cakes to savoury dishes. The exact festive menu is shaped by region and household.

Flowers, greetings and lucky money

Tet decorations bring growing things into the house. Pink peach blossoms are especially associated with northern celebrations, yellow ochna blossoms with the south, and fruit-laden kumquat trees with homes and businesses. Calligraphy and festive pictures add written wishes to the flowers and fruit.

Chinese New Year gives particular prominence to red paper decorations. Pairs of doorway couplets express wishes for the household, while the character fu (福), meaning good fortune, appears on doors and walls. Red lanterns and other ornaments make the renewal visible beyond the dinner table. Fresh flowers and fruit also belong to many Chinese celebrations, with choices shaped by local custom.

During Tet visits, younger relatives offer elders wishes for health and longevity. Lucky money, called lì xì, accompanies greetings, especially between adults and children. In Chinese New Year visiting, bainian means offering New Year greetings; children commonly receive money in red envelopes, often called hongbao. The money is part of an exchange of respect and blessings, alongside conversation, food and gifts brought to the household.

Even familiar animal decorations can differ. The Vietnamese zodiac has a cat in the position occupied by the rabbit in the Chinese sequence.

How the holiday unfolds

Tet's first days concentrate on family greetings and visits, then extend to other relatives, friends and teachers. Some households choose the first visitor to enter after the year begins, a custom known as xông đất. A person considered fortunate or well suited to the household is invited in the hope that the first visit will help set a favourable course for the year. This gives the opening encounter a significance beyond ordinary visiting.

Chinese New Year also moves from the reunion at home to a wider round of visits and celebrations. Its traditional season leads to the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month, with lantern viewing and round rice-flour dumplings among its familiar customs. Tet's main family visits are concentrated in its opening days, within a longer period of preparations and observances. Its sequence is not an identical fifteen-day programme: households move from welcoming the year and honouring ancestors to hosting and visiting the people with whom they share it.