Van Cu is a village located along the Bo River (Huong Toan commune, Huong Tra town). In the past, in order to follow the elaborate rice noodle-making profession, the villagers had to work very hard and clunky with many tools, such as the pestle and mortar to pound rice noodle; mold to twist rice noodle; furnace to boil rice noodle; baskets...

As the COVID-19 pandemic is under control and travelling is more convenient, many families are able to gather together this year. Sticky rice, Dong leaves, mung beans, and meat are prepared for everyone to wrap banh chung, and being together in a cozy and beloved atmosphere on the last days of the year.

On these days, the Ngo Dong River and a festival flag bearing the words "The golden color of Tam Coc" ("Sắc vàng Tam Cốc"), which has an area of ​more than 10,000 square meters and is created from rice in a (rice) field, is as beautiful as a picturesque along the Ngo Dong River (Hoa Lu district, Ninh Binh province). They are attracting a large number of visitors to admire.

The New Rice Festival is a very important ritual in the life of the Cơ Tu ethnic group in Nam Dong district. The festival shows respect to the gods for blessing the village with a stable life, favorable weather, and bumper crops.

Facing less favourable weather in the days after Tet holiday, with their usual hard-working unyielding spirit, local farmers put their springtime activities on hold to go to the fields and take care of their rice. Their usual jobs are to transplant, fertilize, weed, and pump water for the irrigation system.

Eye-catching packages of Phuc linh cookies, banh chung (square-shaped wrapped sticky rice), banh tet (tube-shaped wrapped sticky rice), mut thanh-tra (sugar-crystallized thanh-tra peels), and the forgotten toy figurines are now available on FoodMap as Tet necessities.

The area of Thua Thien Hue passing through Huong Tra is truly a sequence of magical sites of heaven and earth. From low to high, the land starts from the sea, where the waves rumble, to the vast lagoon with the silver moon shining on the water, to the fertile plains of corn and rice, to the green midland at the foot of the mountain and the lush green hills ascending to high mountain peaks.

“Returning to Hue to Eat Rice” is Le Phi Tan’s third book, which has just been published in November. For me, books are always a precious present. More than that, books are sacred.

How delicious, how sweet! How they tug at our heartstrings! That is the feeling of the poet Vo Que in the concluding sentences of the introduction to the publication "The flavor of Hue cakes, steamed sticky rice and sweet soups" by Tran Nguyen Khanh Phong and Vu Thi My Ngoc. The book has just been licensed to be published by Thuan Hoa Publishing House at the end of October 2021.