Buying Salt at New Year

In the old days, on the Bắc Bộ delta in the north, people bought salt on the first morning of the year. In the last days of the year, they bought lime.

Anyone hearing this for the first time finds it backward. The new year is such a joyful time, yet the thing bought to open it is an ordinary item found in every kitchen. The thing bought to see the year out never goes into a pot. It is even tied to an old reproach: as faithless as lime. Both ideas sit inside one saying that the grandparents of old all knew by heart: buy salt at the start of the year, buy lime at the end.

The salt bought at the start of the year has a name of its own: muối lộc, lucky salt. Some families bought it right after the midnight that opens the new year. Others waited until the morning of the first day of Tết, the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam.

On that first morning, long ago, in the villages of the north and the center, the air was still cool. At first light, the lanes were almost empty, apart from the salt sellers. They carried their salt on a shoulder pole, from one lane to the next. In Hanoi, the call that morning was short: "Who will buy lucky salt?"

Back when packets were rare, the seller set the pole down and scooped salt from a large basket into a bowl for each buyer. The salt filled the bowl to the rim, and still more was heaped on, into a small peak. The seller never leveled it off. Beside a load of new year salt, nobody haggled. The buyer was happy, and so was the seller.

One person who grew up in low-lying rice country still remembers salt wrapped in banana leaves, sweet potato leaves or dong leaves. Now it comes in small bags, sometimes in a red envelope. In Hanoi, one salt seller heads into the lanes as soon as midnight passes. At first, each portion came with a box of matches, and later with a lighter. Salt traveling with fire, people say, is a bit of warmth that never goes out.

The people who sold salt were often the people who made it. In Diễn Châu, in Nghệ An province, there is a seaside hamlet of salt makers. At Tết, some families there took their own salt out to sell, starting at first light on the first day of the year. From the coast, they carried it up into the hills, to places such as Thanh Chương and Tân Kỳ. They went to Quỳ Hợp and Nghĩa Đàn as well. They once rode bicycles, and later mostly motorbikes. They left in the morning and got home at dusk.

Up in the hills, the bowls were heaped just as full as down on the plain. The buyers there rarely haggled, and some added a little extra as a new year gift. One seller from the hamlet said selling salt at Tết felt like visiting a close friend. Further back, some families traded salt for rice and sweet potatoes from the people of the hills.

People give different reasons for choosing salt. Some believe salt drives away bad things and brings good luck into the house.

Others say the value lies in the salty taste. Salt means depth of flavor, and things that last. For them, buying salt at the new year is a wish for husband and wife to live in harmony, for children and grandchildren to gather close, for the household to hold together. An old folk verse about husband and wife goes:

Our hands lift a cup of salt and a dish of ginger.

Ginger is hot and salt is salty, so let us never forget each other.

Still others see it more simply. Every kitchen needs salt, so buying it at the new year is a wish to have enough to eat all year.

The lime, though, waits for the end of the year. Some hear the whole saying as parents' advice to their children. Spend carefully at the start of the year and save little by little, so that by the end there is money for lime to repair the house.

People say the end of the year is dry, good for building and repairs. In the old days, lime was also the main material for building a house. A family that was not building would still scrub the walls and give them a fresh coat of whitewash for Tết.

The adults mixed the lime and brushed it onto the walls. Wherever the brush went, the wall turned white. Lime stings the skin and hurts the eyes, so this was work for adults. Some compare the fresh coat to a cleansing. The bad luck of the old year is wiped away, and the house seems to begin again.

At Tết long ago, lime was not only on the walls. More than a hundred years ago, Phan Kế Bính, a writer who recorded Vietnamese customs, described pictures drawn in lime. At Tết, some families scattered powdered lime across the yard and out into the lane. The adults did this, drawing a chessboard, a bow, or a crossbow. People in the old days believed this kept evil spirits from troubling the house in the new year. In some places, people also drew circles, and bows with arrows pointing toward the gate.

Indoors, one small object also waited for lime at the end of the year: the pot that held lime for chewing betel. Betel is an evergreen vine, and areca is a tall, slender palm whose nut is chewed wrapped in a betel leaf. People did not call this a pot. They gave it a title, Mister Lime Pot, as they would address an elder in the family.

Mister Lime Pot was round, sometimes a little elongated, with one small mouth and one curved handle. Adults took the lime out with a small stick called the lime key. The lime in the pot also stings, so only adults held the key. Year after year, lime built up around the mouth and hardened into what people called lime flowers. The neck grew thicker and thicker, until one day it was too thick to use.

When guests came, there was always a quid of betel to offer. The grandparents liked to say a quid of betel is where a conversation begins. The host smeared a little lime on a betel leaf and folded it around a piece of areca nut. Chewing betel was for grown-ups.

At the end of the year, people bought lime to fill the pot, so that guests bringing new year greetings could be offered betel at once. A person who quickly forgot a kindness was scorned as faithless as lime. So people avoided adding lime at the start of the year, not wanting that word to cling to the house. They kept lime in the pot at all times, a quiet wish that their home would have enough, year after year.

In the north and the center, in the old days, a lime pot too old to use was not thrown away. People set it at the foot of an ancient tree in the village. Sometimes it was a banyan, sometimes the spot beside a small shrine.

One researcher of Vietnamese villages thinks that at first, the saying was only a reminder to buy everything needed for Tết, salt and lime among them. Over time, he says, people added their beliefs to it, and doing it every year made it a custom.

Another cultural researcher sees salt and lime differently. Salt is for holding together. Lime is for washing clean and making new. This researcher believes the Vietnamese of old saw time as a circle. The end of the year was for washing clean, the start for beginning again.

Seen through that circle, the old saying no longer sounds backward. The white lime sees the old year off clean, and the white salt welcomes the new year to last. Two white powders stand at the two doors of a single year.

On the first morning of the year, behind the buyer, there is sometimes a wall whitewashed just before Tết, still fresh and white. The bowl of salt is already full, and the seller scoops in a little more, like a wish for a full year. The salt rises above the rim, and the seller leaves it just as it is, without leveling off a single grain.