1 Avieli, Nir, ‘Vietnamese New Year rice cakes: Iconic festive dishes and contested national identity’, Ethnology, 44, 2 (2005): 167–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Văn Huy, Nguyễn, ‘Tết holidays: Ancestral visits and spring journeys’, in Vietnam: Journeys of body, mind and spirit, ed. Văn Huy, Nguyễn and Kendall, Laurel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 71–91Google Scholar; Nguyễn, Xuân Hiền, ‘Glutinous rice, kinship and the Tết festival in Vietnam’, in Kinship and food in South East Asia, ed. Janowski, Monica and Kerlogue, Fiona (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press, 2007), p. 248Google Scholar.

2 For example, see Ngọc, Hữu and Cohen, Barbara, Tết: The Vietnamese lunar New Year (Hanoi: Thế Giới, 1997), p. 15Google Scholar.

3 Taylor, Philip, ‘Modernity and re-enchantment in post-revolutionary Vietnam’, in Modernity and re-enchantment: Religion in post-revolutionary Vietnam, ed. Taylor, Philip (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007), pp. 1–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Malarney, Sean K., ‘Festivals and the dynamics of the exceptional dead in northern Vietnam’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 38, 3 (2007): 515–40Google Scholar; Lương, Hy V., ‘Structure, practice and history: Contemporary anthropological research on Vietnam’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 1, 1–2 (2006): 371–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Văn Huy, Nguyễn, ‘Tết holidays’; Chi B. Nguyễn, ‘A study on traditional festivals in Vietnam’, Viet Nam Social Sciences, 87, 2 (2002): 79–88Google Scholar; Tề, Huỳnh Đinh, ‘New Year's day in Vietnamese life and literature’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies (Melbourne), 1, 2 (1989): 17–24Google Scholar; Xuân Hiền Nguyễn, ‘Glutinous rice’, pp. 248–63.

5 Only the first and the last months in the lunar calendar are named. The others are simply known by their numbers, e.g. tháng hai (second month), tháng ba (third month), etc. Vietnamese also commonly use the Western month names.

6 The cây nêu is a bamboo pole decorated with various items deemed to bring good fortune and ward off evil.

7 Nhà Văn Hóa Thanh Niên, on Phạm Ngọc Thạch Street, District 1.

8 Norris, Pippa and Inglehart, Ronald, Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 3–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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10 Low, Setha M., ‘Spatializing culture: The social production and social construction of public space in Costa Rica’, in Theorizing the city: The new urban anthropology reader, ed. Low, Setha M. (Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 1999), pp. 111–37Google Scholar; The anthropology of space and place: Locating culture, ed. Low, Setha M. and Lawrence-Zuniga, Denise (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), p. 20Google Scholar.

11 Nguyễn Văn Huy, ‘Tết holidays’; Hữu Ngọc and Cohen, Tết.

12 The word nhà (cái nhà, ngôi nhà or nhà) can refer to a building or a house, but also to the concept of a ‘home’ occupied by a family (gia đình, nhà). It can also mean ‘wife’. It is distinct from the notion of natal or original home (quê hương).

13 Ingold, Tim, ‘Building, dwelling, living: How animals and people make themselves at home in the world’, in Shifting contexts, ed. Strathern, Marilyn (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 57–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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16 Urban imaginaries: Locating the modern city, ed. Avel Çinar and Thomas Bender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), p. 25.

17 Austin, John L., How to do things with words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 4, 109Google Scholar.

18 Low and Lawrence-Zuniga, The anthropology of space and place, p. 20.

19 Ingold, The perception of the environment, p. 192.

20 This applies only to a minority. The majority of homes in HCMC purchase their festive rice cakes at markets and supermarkets.

21 The aim of ‘star worship’ is primarily to offset the bad luck thought to befall people born under certain stars in the particular year being ushered in. It is also called cúng sao giải hạn — ‘worship stars to drive away bad luck’. Some informants point out that it is directed not at these stars themselves, but at the mystical beings associated with them.

22 The five fruits bowl often consists of custard apple or sour sop (mãng cầu), coconut (dừa), papaya (đu đủ), mango (xoài) and wild fig (cây sung) or another fruit such as dragon fruit (thanh long). These symbolise the desired quality of life in the New Year, since the names of these fruits when strung together form an expression in Vietnamese that translates as ‘pray to have enough money to spend’ or ‘pray for happiness and to have enough money to spend’, depending on which fruits are included.

23 Xuân Hiền Nguyễn, ‘Glutinous rice’.

24 Hilda Kuper, ‘The language of sites in the politics of space’, in The anthropology of space and place, pp. 247–63.

25 Tết diaries were kept for me by high school and university students, in which their Tết activities are detailed. In most cases these were followed up with interviews to enable the students to elaborate on what they had written. Young people, in particular, are likely to move about within and experience the urban landscape during Tết, but their diaries also detail the movements made by their elders and by whole families.

26 Political and civic authorities commonly take advantage of the festive period to honour war dead and pay homage to those who served in the armed forces in the past.

27 Ông Táo is three persons (or three deities) in one but is normally referred to in the singular.

28 Monks in Mahayana pagodas say that they do not hold such a service because praying for the dead is a normal part of everyday worship. Nevertheless, Tết is one of the festive periods during which prayer services for the dead are held in these pagodas most frequently, due to popular demand.

29 This is termed cúng tất niên (worship for finishing the old year); also rước ông bà (welcome the ancestors).

30 This practice is known in Sino Vietnamese as thập tự văn cảnh — literally ‘10 pagoda sights’, or hành hương thập tự — ‘10 pagoda pilgrimage’. The number varies; it might be 9, 10, or 13 different pagodas. These excursions or pilgrimages (hành hương) are also often organised by individual pagodas. They offer an opportunity for worship and instruction but also for enjoyment and sociability. A similar practice in the Hanoi area has been described by Soucy, Alex, ‘Pilgrims and pleasure seekers’, in Consuming urban culture in contemporary Vietnam, ed. Drummond, Lisa B.W. and Thomas, M. (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), pp. 125–37Google Scholar. A general analysis of pilgrimage in southern Vietnam is provided by Taylor, Philip, Goddess on the rise: Pilgrimage and popular religion in Vietnam (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

31 Religious practices in Vietnam cannot be categorised as simply urban or rural, and most of those who patronise famous and popular rural religious sites are from outside the local area; see Taylor, Goddess on the rise, pp. 114–15.

32 Taylor, Goddess on the rise, p. 50.

33 The translation is taken from Taylor, Goddess on the rise, p. 78. A simpler rendering might be ‘Sir's tomb’.

34 Xin xăm (meaning ‘choose a lot’ or ‘ask the oracle’) at Lăng Ông involves shaking a container full of numbered sticks until one of them eases itself out of the bunch and falls to the ground. The number and colour on the lot thus chosen corresponds with a particular prediction of the future which can then be obtained in printed form from a nearby counter. If more than one falls out and there is uncertainty about which one to count, or if there is an issue that the client wishes to confirm in a yes/no manner, xin keo (a pair of wooden blocks, yin [âm] and yang [dương], one white and one red) is consulted; here Lê Văn Duyệt, referred to as ‘God’ (Thần Linh), provides the answer by causing the blocks to appear in a particular way when they are thrown to the ground, a yin and yang combination being confirmation.

35 In the case of homes where the ancestors are not sent away, they are simply informed that there will be no more special meals for them.

36 Bakhtin, Mikhail, ‘Forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel’, in The dialogic imagination: Four essays, ed. Holquist, Michael (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 84–258Google Scholar.

37 Ingold, The perception of the environment, p. 200.

38 Some say that this altar is also for the ‘homeless ghosts’ who wander the streets, to keep them placated and ensure that they will not trouble the business.

39 Professor Trần Hồng Liên, personal communication.

40 Thần Tài and Ông Địa figures in the home/shop are purchased from specialist dealers and taken to the local pagoda (but not Theravada pagodas) where they are sanctified, before being placed in the home, but this happens at any time of the year.

41 Lovell, Nadia, ‘Introduction’, in Locality and belonging, ed. Lovell, Nadia (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 6Google Scholar.

42 The name of the festival refers to the festive rice cake associated with the South, called bánh tét, but this tét (literally meaning to cut or split) should not be confused with Tết, the lunar New Year, from which it is diacritically distinguished.

43 It is possible that this manipulation of space and the production of spectacle provide an image that helps to establish the legitimacy of the People's Committee, and, by extension, the Vietnamese Communist Party, as the provider of entertainment and pleasure for citizens. Handelman, Don, Models and mirrors: Towards an anthropology of public events (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 41–8Google Scholar.

44 According to Vietnamese legend, the original square version of the festive Tết rice cake, bánh chưng, which is associated with the North, was the creation of Prince Lăng Liễu, 18th son of King Hùng VII, an invention that was inspired by a dream in which a deity provided a recipe, and which earned him the right to be the next ruler.

45 At home: An anthropology of domestic space, ed. Cieraad, Irene (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999), p. 3Google Scholar.

46 Saldanha, Arun, ‘Heterotopia and structuralism’, Environment and Planning, 40 (2008): 2080–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Foucault, Michel, ‘Of other spaces’, trans. Miskowiec, Jay, Diacritics, 16, 1 (1986): 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Ibid., p. 26.

49 Hetherington, Kevin, The badlands of modernity: Heterotopia and social ordering (Routledge: London, 1997), p. ix, cited in Saldanha, ‘Heterotopia and structuralism’, p. 2091CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Lovell, ‘Introduction’, pp. 6–8.

51 Turner, Victor W., The forest of symbols: Aspects of Ndembu ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 28Google Scholar.

52 De Certeau, The practice of everyday life, p. 117.

53 Ibid., pp. 93, 119, 196.