Hanoi (VNA)– A “Mam Ngu Qua” or five-fruit tray is indispensable foreach Vietnamese family as among the numerous offerings that are required todecorate ancestral altars during the traditional Lunar New Year (Tet) festival.

The tray symbolizes the wholeheartedness and gratitude of the presentgeneration towards their ancestors and the Genie of the Land during Tet.

Like other popular rituals, the preparation of a five‑fruit tray for Tet hasbecome an established convention.

During the few days just before Tet, the Vietnamese begin to buy the necessaryfruits for this purpose.

A five‑fruit tray is usually composed of a hand of green bananas, a ripe pomelo(or a Buddha's hand, a shaddock), oranges, persimmons, sapodilla plums, a bunchof kumquat, and in recent years, one can add mangoes and grapes from southernVietnam, or apples and pears from China. Although it is called a five‑fruittray, it does not necessarily contain exactly five kinds of fruit.

Arranging fruits on the crimson, hourglass‑shaped wooden tray is really an art.One has to combine the colours and shapes of the different fruits in arrangingthem on the tray to make it look like a still life picture.

To ensure balance on the tray, the hand of bananas is usually put in the middlewith the bananas pointing upright and the pomelo on the concave surface of thehand of bananas. Then the oranges, sapodilla plums, apples are added in thegaps between the bananas and the pomelo.

The last little gaps are filled in with little kumquats to create a full,compact tray of fruits.

In colours, the fruit‑tray presents a harmonious combination of the differentcolours of fruits: dark green of banana, light yellow of pomelo, deep red ofpersimmon, reddish yellow of orange and kumquat, light green of apple, and darkbrown of sapodilla plum. To complete the picture, the fruit tray will becovered here and there with some small, fresh leaves of kumquat.

The five-fruit tray, together with horizontal lacquered boards engraved withChinese characters, parallel sentences written on red paper, ornamental kumquatand peach trees, and popular Hang Trong and Dong Ho pictures, has transcendedits material value to become a spiritual symbol, an original national productin the spiritual life of the Vietnamese.

At present, while many of the ancient spiritual values have sunk into oblivion,the custom of arranging the five‑fruit tray on the altar during the lunar NewYear days is being jealously preserved as a fine legacy of Vietnam'straditional culture.

The “Mam Ngu Qua” in Tet Festival represent thequintessence that Heaven and Earth bless humans. This is one of the generalperceptions of life of the Vietnamese, which is “An qua nho ke trong cay” (Whentaking fruit, you should think of the grower).-VNA