Though shorter and smaller than me, the seasoned local shoppers jostle and maneuver their way better through the markets and to barrels of salty-sweet tamarind candy, bundles of red and gold incense sticks, and candied ginger slices. In the dusty street, a young girl smiles weakly at me, her small body overwhelmed by the weight of a towering bamboo pole. She tries to sell airy flowers fashioned from colorful tissue paper. Near her, an older man with a white beard steadies himself on a bicycle, grasping the handlebars with one hand, balancing an enormous cherry-blossom branch in the other. I shuffle my way to the front of one vendor and bargain for a bundle of bright red gladioli.
Shoppers bargain fiercely, neither customer nor vendor letting up.
The Tet treats I buy end up on one of three altars my grandmother keeps for her husband, her sister and her grandfather. Vietnamese households of all beliefs maintain ancestral altars linked to the belief that the dead continue to live in another realm. At midnight, families pray to the ancestors at these altars, asking the dead to watch over the living. They also burn paper money for good luck. Almost everyone has an altar, even the poorest families have makeshift ones, offerings teetering on shaky wooden stands like flimsy birdhouses.