Family elders across Vietnam are making traditional, labor-intensive Tết cakes ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday. But as the country modernizes, it's unclear whether the next generation will be willing to spend the 12 hours required to make this festive staple.
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00:00Nguyen Thuy Tue Hung unwraps the last of five sticky rice cakes, a traditional Vietnamese
00:05Lunar New Year dish known as Ban Trung in the North and Ban Tet in the South.
00:11This century's old holiday staple is filled with glutinous rice, green beans and pork
00:15belly and they took her 12 hours to cook over a wood fire.
00:19In Vietnam, a country renowned for its food and Confucian traditions, these cakes are placed
00:42on altars as offerings to ancestors.
00:45While many families no longer make them from scratch, those who maintain the tradition
00:49usually leave the cooking to the elders.
00:52Hung's 23-year-old son, Nguyen Dao Anh Khoi, is already worried about taking on the responsibility
00:57of preparing the dish.
01:15This process of having the younger generation take on the task of cooking a cake is reflected
01:20in Vietnam's folklore.
01:22Legend has it that the Ban Trung recipe was first created thousands of years ago by a
01:26prince hoping to impress his father and win the throne.
01:30In the end, he was rewarded for his efforts.
01:44As Tet nears, the tradition of making Ban Trung at home faces decline, even with people
01:50like Nguyen Dao Anh Khoi willing to spend half the day required to make the cakes.
01:54Still, with the rising prominence of mass-produced versions, Ban Trung or Ban Tet, a food from
02:00Vietnam's past, is assured a place in its future.
02:04Patrick Chen and Bryn Thomas for Taiwan Plus.