Overseas market grows for Tet products

HCM CITY — Many enterprises are making good on rising overseas Vietnamese -driven demand for traditional Tet (Lunar New Year) dishes like the banh chung (glutinous rice cake) and dua hanh (pickled spring onions).

In fact they say they are more concerned about the availability of raw materials to make several products than about finding customers to buy them.

As the Lunar New Year approaches, similar to Viet Nam, markets in Europe, America and other places where the Vietnamese diaspora is concentrated tend to carry many of the traditional Tet foods like glutinous rice cakes, lotus seeds, melon seeds, tropical fruits and jams that are stocked by Vietnamese families to serve guests during the Tet holidays.

Vietnamese enterprises are cashing on this demand for authentic Tet specialities by introducing their products at international trade fairs. Though they are small manufactures, they have already built websites to introduce their products.

Tran Thanh Toan said that his glutinous rice cake company was building a website to introduce products with a Tet flavour.

Toan said his company has exported 30 tonnes of banh chung and banh tet (cylindric glutinous rice cake) to France and the US for this Tet season, adding orders have doubled compared with last year. They can only deal with orders which are placed a month in advance, he said.

This month, he has to call on hundreds of locals to finish the task in time for shipping many kinds of foodstuff including pickled spring onions, fish-sauce and rice paper, Toan said.

Pham Thi Ngoc Lien, owner of a food company in HCM City, said she has exported three containers of similar products to the US. She said there has been a huge demand for such products in foreign countries.

The enterprises predict the food export volume will soar at least 25 – 30 per cent this month compared with the previous months and prices will increase by 10 per cent against last year.

Some exporters say they now have regular spaces in supermarkets and groceries in foreign markets. They are no longer confined to small shops run by overseas Vietnamese. —VNS

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Tinges Of Rural Life

In the very heart of this biggest city of Vietnam, several thingsare reminiscent of rural lifestyle

Several rural products can easily be found in Saigon. Bambooware and rattanware—such as baskets of all shapes and sizes—are on sale on the sidewalk or push carts. They are also sedge mats, bamboo venetian blinds, and a great variety of brooms carried on bicycles to virtually every door inside alleys in the inner city.

These rural products can also be baskets of small guavas, bình bát (wild sweetsop – Annona reticulata), cm dp (green rice flakes) and rau càng cua (Herba peperomiae), many of which have been embedded in urban children’s childhood memories. Favorite sweet soups in the countryside, especially in the Mekong Delta, have invaded many quarters of Saigon, particularly where the poor live.

At the market, in addition to vegetables which are universally accepted by urban Vietnamese are several ones specific to rural areas—rau lang (leaves and branches of sweet potato), bông súng (India red water lily), bông iên in (Sesbania), to name just a few.

They all make the urban meal more delicious because of their unusual taste. In fact, they can prompt a city dweller to feel a tinge of rural smell or taste although he or she is in the middle of the city.

It is these rural products transported by unsophisticated means that are sources of income for many families, keeping alive their children’s hope for a better future. The modern urban lifestyle can do away with these rural products. However, without them, that lifestyle would become dull and lack the taste and flavor of the native land. The predecessors of generations of today’s city dwellers came from the countryside where the above rural products were part of their daily life.

So, every time the Lunar New Year festival comes, Nguyen Hue Boulevard has a chance to turn into a street of flowers. On the boulevard, many visitors stop at the exhibits reminiscent of the countryside. That can be a scarecrow made of hay, a terra-cotta vase containing rainwater, a lift net, a small wooden boat or a clump of bamboo standing next to a cluster of banana trees.

To the Saigonese who have gained first-hand experience of rural life, images of a specific rural product may signify something. A small bamboo basket with a coat of red-brown varnish may depict a grandfather at work when he made baskets at the front yard. A man selling rural products door to door on his push cart may remind somebody of his or her father who made his living hawking around markets in the delta. A woman carrying a bamboo pole on the shoulders laden with two heavy baskets at the two ends reminisces about a mother in the countryside coming home with her baskets full of sweet potatoes, cassava and dried fish. In this regard, rural products are not only something to taste or use but also a way to revive sweet memories.

Stop for a moment to taste or touch these rural products in the hustle and bustle of the urban life. Take the chance as you may no longer be able to do so in the future when the current of urbanization will wash them all away.

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