Preparation for
the Lunar New Year Celebration |
 The Lunar New Year--called Tet in Vietnam--is the most important celebration of the year for Chinese and Vietnamese people. This family has decorated their tire and battery store for the festival.
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 Visiting family and friends is an important part of the new year, and this vendor sells the gifts of oranges and other fruits and tins of biscuits that are given to those visited.
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 An important part of the celebration is the family reunion dinner on new year's eve. Roast pork is a traditional dish.
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Everything must be made new for the new year celebration. Houses are cleaned and painted; broken dishes are thrown away; people buy new clothes and get haircuts; traditional flowers and peach tree branches decorate the houses. And all of this at greatly inflated prices during the two weeks before the big celebration! |
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   There is a spiritual side to the New Year celebrations also. On new year's eve, throughout the city families burn stacks of imitation paper money for their deceased ancestors to use for whatever they need in the next life.
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The Year of the Dog begins on Sunday, 29 January 2006, supplanting the Year of the Rooster. Cambodia is ethnically distinct from China--the Khmer people are not Chinese--but a large number of Chinese people have settled in Cambodia over the centuries so that there is a sizable Khmer-Chinese population. And each year they are anxious to celebrate the beginning of the new lunar year, usually in February.