Đám Giổ

Wikipedia, you've failed me, and you shall be punished. I came to you for information about the Vietnamese death anniversary. You told me the event is called giổ, and Wiki-cited compound words include: ngày giỗ, or day of the death; đám giỗ, or death anniversary ceremony; and bữa giỗ, or death anniversary feast. But you are wrong, Wiki. I just talked with Lữ, and she said the lone term giỗ means to console, not death anniversary, as you have so erroneously claimed. She said the term for the death anniversary is đám giổ, and Wiki is fail. That's okay, you reader-edited encyclopedia, you're not the only fail. The modern day omniscient oracle, Google, translated đám giổ to mean feast. Not death anniversary feast--just plain ol' piles-of-food feast. Google, go stand in the corner next to Wikipedia. Update: we just found out that the word for console is not giỗ, but dỗ, and the two words sound the same when spoken with a southern accent. The bottom line is: no one ever says giỗ for the death anniversary. Everyone says the words đám and giỗ together.

On Sunday morning, Lữ's cousins held a đám giổ at their house to honor the late mother of the husband. As far as the Wiki compound words go, the đám giổ truly was a celebration. More than sixty guests showed up. Ironically, I was told that it was a small gathering, and not a lot of people had been invited. And with a team of serious cooks working overtime to make a mountain of food, it truly was a feast.

Bánh bò nướng

On each table were plates that spilled over with golden, crispy bánh xèo crepes stuffed with clams, shrimp, and beansprouts; bowls of simmered chicken and curried beef with carrots cut like flowers; roasted pork with caramel-colored crackling skin; stacks of white, scissor-cut rice noodles; green leafy veggies and fragrant mint basil by the pile; loaves of sliced baquettes; wheels of red watermelon; leaf-wrapped rounds of yellow and maroon bánh tét slices; and one of my all time favorites: bánh bò nướng, a baked white sugar cake with a moist spongy texture and a fermented fruit flavor, which to Mike's and my surprise was supposed to be eaten with bites of roast pork. This repast of epic proportions was served at 10 a.m., just in time for second breakfast.

There is an order to service. The first to be served were the spirits of the ancestors. The cousin's husband placed the most attractive plates, one of each dish, onto the altar. Then he poured wine into cups and set them next to the dishes. And he lit incense. Whispy coils rose as it burned, and its smoke filled the breezy, sun-drenched room with a scent of reverence and remembrance. Meanwhile, Dì Tư's husband went through the tables, lighting more incense and pouring wine three times into a glass on each table. Ater the spirits were given enough time to eat their fill, the plates were taken down and placed on one of half a dozen tables.

Second to eat are (almost) everyone else. The tables filled in, hands cracked open cans of root beer and poured it over ice, and mouthfuls of glorious food traveled from serving dish to bowl to mouth, while occasionally making a brief stop at a dipping plate for a splash of soy sauce with garlic and chili, or for a dash of nước mắm. The men shouted and pointed and grabbed select bits of food and dropped them in Mike's and my bowls. In particular, the Vietnamese get a kick out of serving the steamed and dressed heads of chicken to folks like Mike and me. And Mike and I get a kick out of letting folks, like our tablemates, watch us eat chicken heads.

The middle age men at our table drank wine while they ate. The oldest men teetotaled, which may explain how they were able to live so long. During the meal, a man who wasn't exactly eating with us hovered over our table, cracked jokes, poured lots of unfiltered rice wine from a plastic pitcher, and passed the glasses around the table. The wine was served in the same shot-sized glasses in which tea was served before the meal. Nobody had their own glass--they were shared. The last person to have a drink passed the refilled glass off to the next person, who typically downed the wine in a gulp. Mike lifted a communal glass to eye level and said hey, alcohol kills germs, right?

After everyone else had eaten, the women who had made all the food in the first place finally sat down to put what was left of the food into their bellies. To me, Lữ's cousin seemed the lead cook in this whole affair. But she never even had a single bite of her own food. Nearly everything that came out of her kitchen, besides bread, noodles, or rice, had some sort of meat in it, and she's vegetarian this month. This happens to be the seventh month in the lunar calendar. In addition to the days when the moon is new or full, practicing Buddhists take the seventh month to eat vegetarian, an act which invests in good karma for the spirits of ancestors.

Which brings us back to the issue of not accepting whatever "fact" you read on the internet. In a post a couple days ago, I said we're currently in the sixth month. Sorry. I miscalculated and reported an error, based on a previous error from July. Now, Riffing Indochina is going to stand over there in the corner with Wikipedia and Google.