Happy New Year from BenBangs Dot Com!! t’s that time of year again -- Tết – the Vietnamese lunar new year.  Like Christmas, Thanksgiving and Halloween all rolled into one, it’s a holiday like no other, a week-long excuse to party, give and get cash in red and yellow envelopes and predict your future according to the exotic and fascinating horoscope system of ancient China.  Like everything else Chinese, the Vietnamese have dressed it up in their own clothes.  To prepare you for your next mixed-race cocktail party, here’s a quick rundown. In the old days China recognized five cosmic elements: earth, wood, metal, fire and water.  Absolutely everything could be related to these in some way, and was also either yin or yang (âm or dương in Vietnamese).  They also recognized twelve animal signs: rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, serpent, horse, goat, monkey, cock, dog and pig.  Mind you, they couldn’t just use the ordinary names for these things – that would be way too easy!  Nor were traditional Chinese festivals fixed according to the sun.  Instead, Tết falls in late January or early February, and is the same as Chinese new year, complete with dancing dragons, firecrackers and all kinds of good luck-seeking traditions, games and more than a little bit of what we call “ancestor worship,” but Asian people just think of as a proper emphasis on family.  At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve (lúc giao thừa in Vietnamese) winter turns into spring and one twelfth of the Vietnamese population comes into their own for the next twelve (or sometimes thirteen) lunar months. If you want to know your sign in Vietnamese, memorize the order of the list of animals above.  Things aren’t quite that easy, though.  In ancient China advanced age started at sixty, and years had two-part names instead of numbers.  Any given year could thus only come around once every sixty years, but your sign’s special year would arrive once every twelve.  Every astrologer, feng shui (phong thủy) expert or government official used to have to know this stuff.  Today the animal names are all that matter to most people; the first part of the names for the years have lost their original significance – a fascinating distinction between the elements water, fire, wood, metal and earth (in that order) in latent as against cultivated or controlled state.  These elemental names come first, then the animal – like this:   gíap             water in nature ất                 water in irrigated fields  bính            latent fire (potential energy) đinh             visible fire mậu             wood in the wild kỳ                kindling canh            metal tâm              precious metal nhâm           virgin land qúy              cultivated fields These aren’t the normal Chinese (much less Vietnamese) words for these elements, and you’ll see them noplace else besides on lunar calendars, in dates on historical documents and in texts discussing this system.  This list cycles, as does the next list; the name of the year is the combination of the two:       1.     Tý               Rat 2.     Sửu             Ox 3.     Dần             Tiger 4.     Mão            Hare 5.     Thìn            Dragon (a good, heroic animal) 6.     Tỵ               Serpent 7.     Ngọ             Horse 8.     Mùi             Goat 9.     Thân            Monkey (my sign) 10. Dậu             Cock 11. Tuất            Dog (this year’s animal) 12. Hợi              Pig Whatever year you were born in, you’ll have to wait exactly sixty (lunar) years for it to come around again.  At that point you are officially a village elder, no longer obliged to bow down before the king and encouraged by everybody with any class) to head straight for the head of the line.  Instead of having your sign come around one month a year, you get a whole year once every twelve years.  As with us, certain animals make better mates than others (interspecies dating being easier to take than interracial dating sometimes!).  A person’s personality is said to be the same as the observed behavior of the animal in question in the real world.  And certain years, months and even hours are said to be luckier than others for activities as diverse as opening a business, having sex and sweeping the kitchen.  No smart king would conduct matters of state without his court astrologer’s opinion, one which rested on interplay and permutations of these elements now almost completely lost.  I was born in the year of the Tết Offensive – “Mậu Thân – the year of the monkey, 1968.  And this is the year of the dog: Bính Tuất, 2006.  Memorizing the order of both lists above will tell you what next year will be called: Đinh Dậu – the year of the rooster, 2007.  Oh, and one more thing: strictly speaking, whatever year you’re born in, on the first day of the following lunar year, you get one year older.  You’re also one year old when you’re born, having had plenty of life experience in the only partially protected world of your mother’s womb.  It’s still correct, though, to calculate your sign from what Gregorian (Western) year you were born in.  Just count forward or back to figure out what sign your friends, family and significant other are.  And with that special someone, take note of what their sign says they (and you) should be like so you can iron out your differences instead of breaking up (as the village matchmaker would probably advise you to). In the end, Tết is about as “exotic” as our own New Year’s Eve – not at all.  The whole Far East doesn’t come to a standstill for a month anymore, though the two weeks on either side and the week of the changeover remain a challenge for travelers.  In the west, Vietnamese communities have fun and flashy Tết festivals, and you’ll hear all the main “Tết carols” over and over again, and get just as sick of them as you do at Christmastime.  It’s a time to forgive (or repay) old debts, let go of the past and turn toward the future – a future fate will influence, but that you’re ultimately responsible for creating.  Don’t pay anybody a fortune to tell you your fortune; you can almost read your own horoscope now – or at least understand what the Vietnamese are talking about when they do it for you.  It’s a fun and informative look into another culture, and a reminder of how different concepts of time and seasons can be in different cultures.  After all, “mừng một Tết” (the first day of the new year) is also the first day of spring to the Vietnamese.  Try to remember that as you pull your scarf tighter around your head and zip up your coat against the bitter winter wind.  And if you don’t like your life now, wait a year or two.  Your time – or at least your sign – may be coming sooner than you think! Chúc Mừng Năm Mới everybody