Floating Cakes of Hat Mon

If someone offers a person from Hát Môn a bánh trôi in the first months of the year, that person will say thank you, then politely decline. It is not that they dislike the cake, or that they are full. Bánh trôi are small, round cakes made of rice, and the name means floating cakes. For the people of Hát Môn, the first bánh trôi of the year must wait for one particular morning.

From Tết until the morning of the sixth day of the third lunar month, the whole village goes without bánh trôi. Tết is the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. No household makes them or eats them. Wherever they live, near the village or far from it, the people of Hát Môn wait until the offering day has passed. Many other places already eat bánh trôi early in the third month, while Hát Môn quietly waits a few more days, until the sixth.

The village lies in Hanoi, on the Hát River. The river is also called the Đáy. To reach the temple, people follow the dike that runs along the river, to the mouth of the Hát River. There, on a stretch of high ground of about three hectares, stands the temple of the Trưng Sisters. Inside the grounds is a main worship hall of five bays, where the throne and the statues of the two sisters sit. Overhead, the roof beams are densely carved.

In the year 40, when the country was under the rule of the Eastern Han, the Trưng Sisters led an uprising. The Eastern Han was the dynasty then ruling China. Three years later, facing a stronger army, the sisters drew their forces back to the land beside the Hát River. The people here built a temple to honor them. The sixth day of the third lunar month is the sisters' memorial day and the main day of the temple festival. Since 2016, that festival has been part of the national intangible cultural heritage.

By village custom handed down, the sisters receive bánh trôi three times a year. One offering comes in the ninth month, when the village remembers the day the sisters held a feast for the soldiers who followed them. Another comes at the very end of the lunar year, for the day they bathed and made ready to take the throne as queen. But the biggest one, the great bánh trôi feast of the year, is still the sixth day of the third month.

The cakes for the sisters are made with great care, step by step. Not every household may take on that task. Only chosen families, called whole and complete households, may prepare the offering cakes. Such a family must live in harmony, must not be in mourning, and must meet many other conditions.

The chief officiant of the rites oversees every step of the cake making. The pounding and the shaping belong to the elderly men of the Ban Tu lễ, the temple's ritual committee. They take care at every stage, from choosing and pounding the rice to resting the flour.

Batch after batch, the elders pound the rice into flour. The two middle batches, the third and the fourth, give the finest flour. That flour is set apart for the cakes offered to the sisters. The first, second and fifth batches go into cakes for the officers who followed the sisters, who are also honored in the temple.

On the night before the memorial day, the children of the village are all asleep. At exactly midnight, the sixth day begins. The elder who keeps the temple carries the flour from the third and fourth batches out to the offerings house. There he pounds it again with the elderly men. The pestles rise and fall. As they pound, the temple keeper sprinkles water over the flour. A little pounding, then a sprinkle of water, then pounding again.

This work needs experienced hands. If the flour is too mushy, the cakes cannot be shaped. If it is too dry, the cakes will break. Little by little, the flour turns soft, smooth and supple.

There is a reason the offering is bánh trôi, and not some other cake.

Legend has it that in the sisters' hardest days beside the Hát River, when their position was in danger, they stopped at a food stall. The stall sold bánh trôi. The sisters sat down and ate the cakes it sold. The villagers never forgot that meal, and since then the village has offered bánh trôi to the sisters on festival day.

In the middle of the night, the pestles keep their steady beat, slow and sure.

Another legend has it that Quán Tiên was once a stall that sold bánh trôi. When the sisters' forces gathered at đàn Thề, the Oath Altar, the woman who kept the stall offered her whole shoulder load of cakes. She wanted the sisters to eat before they went into battle. Later, the villagers built that little stall in remembrance, and the bánh trôi custom of the festival began there.

When the flour feels just right, the elders shape the cakes. They do not roll the cakes between their palms, the way people usually do at home. The offering cakes are rounded with the fingertips, carefully, one by one. Each ball of dough turns between a few fingertips, rounder and rounder, until it is perfectly round.

As day breaks, the main festival day arrives. Early in the morning, the hamlets of the commune carry bánh trôi in procession up to the temple to offer incense. One procession has about 50 people, who lift trays of cakes up to the sisters. The cakes are round, white, soft and fragrant.

During the great ceremony, two plates of bánh trôi, shaped from the flour pounded at midnight, are raised up to the sisters. After the rites, the people who run the temple ceremonies invite guests from far and wide to share the blessing. They are called the Ban Khánh tiết. Each guest receives a share of the offered cakes. The families go home and set bánh trôi on their ancestral altars.

On the afternoon of the sixth, the whole village seems changed. At the temple by the Hát River, Quán Tiên still stands. In the village, families hold a great feast, the biggest bánh trôi feast of the year for the people of Hát Môn. This time, it is the villagers who do the inviting. One house invites guests, then the next, and every invitation is an invitation to eat bánh trôi.