Fireworks and Rice Wine

The island empties as Tet draws near- the Lunar New Year ranks here at the same level of importance as Christmas or Thanksgiving at home, albeit celebrated for a solid month. Tour operators shut down as locals head home to their families on the mainland. Busses stop running regularly, restaurants close, and chain-style minimarts stock themselves to bursting– there will be no resupply shipments during the holiday.

Red plastic streamers line the town’s streets, holding huge banners proclaiming “Chuc Mung Lam Moi:” Happy New Year! Paper lanterns hang beneath a series of wire arches covering the main pier, which have been strung with lights. The waterfront has been transformed, as well: bright white Christmas lights wrap tree trunks, transitioning to multicolored drapes tangled over branches that end in what can only be described as gigantic fake icicles.

The entire blinding get-up flashes at random intervals, every string of lights independent of the next. That no one’s been pushed into a seizure is nothing short of a miracle.

Tet itself proves a spectacle, on a small-island scale. Anyone left on the island swarms onto the waterfront, where a large (and largely unused) stage has been cleared. I imagine the majority of Ben Beo’s floating fishing village is also present. Along the sidewalks ladies hand out tall bamboo stalks, grasses twisted into hearts and fastened with red ribbon bows. Police (or perhaps army; it’s hard to tell the difference…) have emerged by the dozens for the evening (although the most drastic measure I notice is the confiscation of a water bottle from a kid sitting in the front row, intent on obliterating it into the ground).

Our plan to watch festivities from the Good Bar (located directly above our office, with a perfect view of the stage) gets duped when my coworker Nick runs up to pass on the Minister of Tourism’s invitation to watch the show from VIP seating. When we push through the crowd and arrive in front of the stage, he realizes he hasn’t set aside enough seats. The minister proceeds to kick out a bunch of very official-looking men in suits from their fancy chairs (completely with tables, water bottles and flower bouquets) to make room. Half of us end up sitting straight in the front row.

We fight to stay attentive through the next three hours. A pair of red and yellow Chinese dragons makes way for lengthy speeches interspersed with fairly terrible dancing and singing acts. The martial arts demonstrations prove mesmerizing and hilarious: a four-year-old runs flawless, flowing forms, a group of ten girls presents the most graceful and precise fan form I’ve ever seen, and their master makes an appearance at the end to lean into the points of two massive bamboo spears pressed into his neck, walking away unharmed.

The same can’t be said for the weapons and kicking demonstrations: the poor kid holding (absurdly flimsy) boards for his classmates to break looses his grip on the first, before getting nailed in the nose when his buddy misses the target on the second attempt. The fake guns end up on the wrong side of the stage, so a slender girl “disarms” and throws a kid pointing a finger at her face in front of the entire crowd.

Finally (finally!) we hit midnight. To my coworkers’ vast amusement, I spend the next thirty minutes cowering in the front row every time a ball of light explodes over our heads. (Although we count ourselves lucky that the fireworks are in fact exploding in the sky, since I’m told recent years have seen them misaimed straight into the Good Bar.)

Five minutes after the fireworks conclude, the waterfront is empty once more. We as a group walk down to a restaurant owned by a friend of ours. Truc Lam Man (none of us actually know his name) sets fresh sangria in front of every person before bringing out a who roasted duck (the brain is the best part, he tells us), a plate of mushroom and pork molded by a jelly-like substance, and a huge bowl of rice. We stay long enough for Truc Lam Man to set multiple rounds of rice wine in front of each of us as his wife prays in the New Year before a makeshift shrine erected in front of the restaurant, piled high with offerings as she calls their ancestors back to join them for the holiday.

As most of the company heads home, a few of us hop onto motorbikes and wind our way up off the waterfront, ducking into an alley in the more local area of town to Quang’s house.

Quang can only be described as King of the Mountain. Quang owns the two boats we use for all of our daily trips, as well as several other large junk boats. He organizes our logistics and meals on the daily and charters boats without notice (how on earth he convinced a lady to make a speedboat run after dark during Tet when a guy wandered into the shop with a monkey bite through his thumb is anyone’s guess). He buys motorbikes and “lets us use them for a very large fee,” since it’s illegal for westerners to own vehicles here, and he helps negotiate terms with the batty landlady of the new hotel. (Did I mention that the man speaks perfect English?)

Quang is nothing short of a miracle man.

Tonight, upon entering his house and exchanging lucky money, we find four generations occupying his front room. Quang has gathered his entire family for the holidays. His parents and their siblings fill two couches set along the walls. Quang and his brothers sit in a circle in front of the couches, while their wives, children and grandchildren have squeezed together in another circle near the door around a large silver bowl of nuts and candy.

Quang presses shot after shot of rice wine into our hands, and the room rings as a chorus of voices chant, “Mot, Hai, Ba, Vo!” (“One, Two, Three, In!”) Rice wine makes way for high-quality whiskey as my manager asks Quang’s son – home from school in Europe for the Holiday– whether he has a girlfriend on Cat Ba. Not in Cat Ba, he replies, but he knows a girl in Hai Phong.

Quang cuts in to inform us that Cat Ba is sadly lacking in pretty girls.

I sincerely hope his wife isn’t originally from the island.

The next evening we head to Butterfly Valley for a New Year’s Party with our trekking guide and his family in their small restaurant. Toan, Trinh and Nga live in Lien Minh, the oldest farming village on Cat Ba, nestled into what I believe was once a gargantuan sink hole. Their orchards brim with papayas and oranges, the trees around their restaurant hum with honey bees and a trail cutting through their pasture full of happy cows and buffalo leads to our largest crag– also on their land.

The family lays a feast before us: we sit down to jellyfish salad, breaded and fried oysters, pork, chicken and egg wrapped in lettuce, spring rolls, squid, rice and heaping plates of veggies. Food and toasts make way for karaoke, which makes way for dancing as Toan switches out CDs, and we eventually find ourselves gathered around a blazing bonfire.

Feasts and absurd quantities of rice wine and whiskey carry through the next week. My grandmother would be proud; she never missed a chance to celebrate.