Warding off plague, pestilence and parasites

A woman buys banh u tro at Tan Dinh Market in HCMC’s District 3 Saturday. The cake and com ruou (fermented sticky rice) are among popular food for the “Insect Killing Festival,” which falls today.  Held on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, which falls on June 8 this year, the festival of Tet Doan Ngo, also known as Doan Duong Tet or “The Insect-killing Festival,” is intended to ward off sickness and evil. 

The festival is also observed in China and corresponds to the summer solstice, which is thought to be an unhealthy time of the year, a time when plague stalks the land.

This is the time of year people believe intestinal worms will emerge and so it is the ideal time to eradicate them by eating green fruit and com ruou (fermented glutinous rice).

Another popular food for Tet Doan Ngo is banh u tro, a kind of cake made of glutinous rice flour dipped in lye and wrapped in bamboo leaves.

The cakes can be bought usually in lots of one dozen, with or without sweet green bean paste stuffing, and are best eaten with sugar.

Taking a therapeutic shower and rubbing the body with mint leaves is another common practice during this time, as is wearing silver bracelets to ward off evil spirits.

In many regions, people usually buy a bundle of different plants and hang it in front of the doors of their houses, believing it will ward off evil spirits during the rest of the year.

Tet Doan Ngo is also a day for praying that insects won’t destroy the crops.

In the countryside there is a strong belief that every tree embodies a spirit, so on this special day they make supplication to these spirits that the crops will thrive and yield an abundant harvest.

Usually a son will climb to the top of a tree and pretend to be an oracle, engaging in a theatrical dialogue with his father, who wields a huge knife and makes an incision in the bark, threatening the spirit with some phrase like “If you don’t give me a good crop, I will cut you down.”

If the farmers didn’t receive a good crop the previous year, then they revise the rituals and try again.

Reported by Thu Thuy