Concerns of PROVIDENT PEOPLE – Concerns for MARKETING – Section 1

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HUNG NGUYEN MANH ¹

     One of HENRI OGER’s sketches shows a corner of a big market though it is not a Tết Market. The market pillar is inscribed with the artist’s name and his native place: “Gia Lộc district, Thạch Khôii village, Thanh Liễu commune – Nguyễn Văn Đảng”. To the right are stalls for fish and vegetables and vendors who deal in soy sauce or other things and to the left are stalls for pork and beef, earthernware, combs and rice vermicelli…

    During year end days when the urban streets become ever more animated and bustling the markets grow ever more crowded. A folk saying goes: “Crowded like a Tết market !”. It is not an exaggeration! However the animation of the Tết atmosphere is not only found in adults but also among children. Children of different ages follow one another in groups toward Teát markets on year end days.

    If the month end market is normally held on the 26th and 27th days then at this time it will last until the 30th day especially for children who will go shopping for paintings, firecrackers, other toys and cinnamon (Fig.1) This practice has also made the Tết atmosphere ever more exciting.

 There have been different kinds of market: open market which is held daily and full of shoppers, special market which is held only on festivals or midmonths and even once a year. The Hanoi flower market, which is said to have taken shape since either early this century or at the end of the Lê and the beginning of the Nguyễn dynasties, is also organized once a year. That market lasts for weeks but it becomes most bustling from early morning to late night in the last week until the new year eve. On sale are all sorts of flowers and ornamental plants and decorative articles including kumquat and gold fish. However, Hanoians are accustomed to call it the peach market. The market is held traditionally along the Hàng Lược street, former bed of the Tô Lịch River: “ When will the Tô river run dry ? How can you count peach blossoms on both sides of the flower market ? ”

    Rural market is held six times a month in some localities. Villages follow an agreed upon schedule: Market is organized in this village on the 1st and 6th days, in that village on the 2d and 7th day, in another, village on the 3^rd and 8th days, and in another one on the 4th and 9th days, and so on.

    If a market is usually held on the 1st and 6th days then the earliest day it opens for the Tết season will be on the 26th day of the 12th month. If a market is held on the 4th, 9th or 5th and 10th days, its Tết session will fall on the last day of the lunar year, i.e. the 30th day or the 29th day (in a 29 day month) of the twelfth month.

    At the Tết market, shop keepers wish to sell all their goods to customers. However, the Tết market is not only a place for trading or goods exchange and barter, but also for contacts and information exchange, especially in mountainous regions.

    Market days were days for economic, cultural and festive activities… for a change of atmosphere when one temporarily forgets the hardships in ricefields and on milpa. Markets in low-lying regions were not really the rendezvous for girls and boys as was the case with highland markets where are seen traditional costumes, umbrellas and folk dances of ethnic minorities such as the Thái and Mèo. However, a touch of this can be detected through a folksong:

“During the Yên Quang mid month market day.

As a flower lover, I’ll wait to buy flowers only from her”…

    Village markets in the old days were often held around ponds or lakes at hamlet ends or at the village gate or on a vast open ground. Sometimes they were arranged beneath rows of big shade trees or at a boat landing stage. May be that’s why it was called “Chợ búa” (chợ: market and búa : landing stage for boats, in the ancient Vietnamese language).¹

    In any case, markets remain the places for selling and buying, Henri Oger supplies us with a picture of an elder peasant going shopping (Fig.2). Attention should be paid not to the umbrella which he holds under his armpit but to his hands now carrying a lot of things… And next to him was a peasant couple who bought only some small things (Fig.2).

    Among the people who go to the market on Tết days, there are those who just take a stroll to enjoy the happy scenes or to carry on idle comments and conversations, but most of the other people have to worry about shopping. Depending on each family, on the financial situation and on the social stratum, as well as on the age or sex, the shopping may vary.

    The old women, besides visiting the market and sounding prices would buy betel (Fig.3), areca nut, joss sticks, flowers, cakes and joss things. With regard to the old men, the first thing they care for is their stately manners when clad in their tunic, their blued white pants with straight creases, their turbans, and when wearing a pair of Gia Định shoes which we shall have an opportunity to look at later. Not like the old women, the old men worry about a new pair of distich scrolls, a sweet and fragrant bottle of sticky rice alcohol, a package of lotus flavoured tea, and a pair of sugar-canes with tops to be used as the “ancestor’s stick” and to be displayed on the altar.

    With regard to the young girls, while quietly visiting the smallware shops, they would buy a mirror, a comb, a kerchief or a piece of silk to be used as a belt, and most particularly, a silver snake like chain. They would not forget to buy some coriander leaves and some “hương bài” (a kind of incense) roots to take a year end bath. As for the children the noisiest elements – they are just like a swarm of bees leaving their hive.

    Accompanying their grandparents or parents they talk, laugh, asking for one thing or the other, mostly sweets and cakes or toys. When given a coloured rice paste toy animal with a reed that makes a pleasing and happy sound of bugle, they would play with it for a moment then at a certain time would simply swallow it. At times, they endeavor to ask for some porcelain items as a pot, a stove, a turtle or a simpleton…

    They may also ask for pictures, firecrackers or cinnamon twigs as we have mentioned before. Interspersed with the crowd are the quiet, wellconcealed, and modest brown clothes of the bonzes. The modesty of such brown clothes seems like reaching timidity. With these bonzes, the things they need are joss papers, joss sticks, sugared truncated cone of sticky rice, sticky rice, peanut, sesame, vegetables, oil, salt …

    Besides, there still is a class of male persons, both old and young having serious manners and being clad in solemn tunics and pants who only attend shops selling items reserved for Confucian students or scholars and only buy things such as some good pads of tissue paper, some flowered lettered paper, some paper… along with a few brushes and some sticks of Indian ink.

    However, the commodities displayed and sold on this occasion to meet the requirements of people celebrating the feast are not limited to only the ones mentioned above, as there still are all kinds of foodstuffs. Starting with the green maranta leaves displayed everywhere along the roadside. Next come all kinds of rice, from large size glutinous rice, small-size glutinous rice, to all kinds of ordinary rice such as tenth-month rice, seasonal “du huong” (variety of incensed rice)… but people usually pay attention to the large-size glutinous rice with its yellow flower and its fat rice grain, as for the small size glutinous rice, not many people think of buying it.

… be continued in section 2 …

NOTE:
¹ Associate Professor HUNG NGUYEN MANH, Doctor of Phylosophy in History.
² According to TRẦN QUỐC VƯỢNG – LÊ VĂN HÀO – DƯƠNG TẤT TỐ – Vietnamese historians – (Spring and Vietnamese traditional practices) – Hanoi, Culture Publishing House, 1976, pp. 95-98.

BAN TU THU
01 /2020

NOTE:
◊  Source: Vietnamese Lunar New Year – Major Festival – Asso. Prof. HUNG NGUYEN MANH, Doctor of Phylosophy in History.
◊  Bold text and sepia images has been set by Ban Tu Thu – thanhdiavietnamhoc.com

SEE ALSO:
◊  From Sketches in early 20th century to traditional rituals and festival.
◊  Signification of the term “Tết”
◊  Lunar New Year Festival
◊  Concerns of PROVIDENT PEOPLE – Concerns for KITCHEN and CAKES – Section 2
◊  Vietnam Lunar New Year – vi-VersiGoo
◊  etc.