Voyage to Vietnam with the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh’s young adventurers are promised a treat this weekend, when the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh will open its new exhibit, Voyage to Vietnam: Celebrating the Tet Festival.

Tểt is the most important festival in the Vietnamese calendar, celebrating the Vietnamese Lunar New Year and, with it, the homecoming of families and friends. Although this year Tểt fell on February 19th, the exhibition has yearlong significance, as the the values that the festival celebrates—family, home, community—are crucial to Vietnamese culture. “I hope the take-away for families and friends would be to learn and experience together as a family a tradition and a country that’s all about family,” says Bill Schlageter, director of marketing at the Children’s Museum.

The full name of Tểt is translated as “feast of the first morning of the first day,” and food is a central component of the gatherings that take place at this age-old festival. Typically, families begin their preparations for Tểt two or three weeks in advance. Those who have moved away return to their families, and together people honor their ancestors while they look forward to the year ahead. The festival also includes a number of traditional games, which guests can learn and play at the Children’s Museum exhibit.

Voyage to Vietnam is a traveling exhibit, and part of the Freeman Foundation Asian Culture Exhibit Series, administered by the Association of Children’s Museums. It comes to Pittsburgh from San Jose, where it premiered earlier this year at the San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum.

The exhibit is directed at 5 to 10 year-olds and their families, and offers interactive displays that convey the diverse components of the Tểt festival. Visitors can buy and sell model versions of indigenous fruit at an outdoor market, relax at a street café and put on a traditional fireworks show. Kids can try on traditional Vietnamese dress and have their family pictures taken before an altar that pays homage to personal ancestors – an important Tểt tradition.

The Vietnamese celebrate the Lunar New Year with water puppet shows and Lion Dances, and visitors to the Children’s Museum have the opportunity both to watch and to create their own performances. They can also try out Vietnamese musical instruments – a bamboo flute, monochord, moon lute and zither – and discover Vietnam’s unique calligraphic traditions.

Kids can try their hand at a version of bầu cua cá cọp, a gambling game traditionally played at Tểt – although in the children’s edition, no money will change hands. And they can play the bridge game, in which Vietnamese children challenge each other to cross a rope bridge without holding on to the sides.

The Museum’s Saturday Cook It program will also feature a demonstration and discussion of a ritual dish that has great significance for the Tểt festival: the five fruit tray. Great care goes into the composition of the tray, which contains fruit with personal or public significance. Unripe bananas, for instance, represent spring, while the Buddha’s hand signifies happiness and luck for the new year. Visitors will have the opportunity to taste these and savor a selection of exotic and familiar experiences.

Featured photo courtesy of The Children’s Discovery Museum, San Jose, Calif.