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The Hanoitimes – In the first working day after a long holiday, customers often have high demand to open or withdraw money from saving accounts.

Banks in Vietnam return to operation with promotion programs for customers in the first working day [February 17] after a week long Tet holiday.

Customers at a branch of NBC Bank in Hanoi. Photo: Pham Hung.

“I keep coming back to the banks after Tet, partly thanks to their attractive offers and gifts,” said Hoang Anh, a customer from Hai Ba Trung district.

At Nam A Bank, in the first three days after Ter from February 17-19, first customers coming to the bank would receive a lucky money worth VND100,000 (US$4.31).

From February 12-21, customers who complete financial transactions worth at least VND200,000 (US$8.62) via online banking methods such as Open Banking, Mobile Banking, could also receive the lucky money.

In celebration of a new Lunar Year, the Vietnam Maritime Commercial Bank (MSB) offered more than 20,000 gifts to customers opening new bank account or carrying out transactions from now on until March 28.

Once completing transactions worth from VND100,000 (US$4.31) via e-banking, customers would have an opportunity to receive random words that form into meaningful wish in Tet and win lucky money up to VND100,000 (US$4.31).

Lucky money is also offered at Vietcombank, BIDV in the first week after Tet, while Sacombank offers customers a chance of winning prizes worth up to VND6 billion (US$258,583), including a Toyota Fortuner model 2021 of VND1.3 billion (US$56,000) and other prizes.

A bank employee said in the first working day after a long holiday, customers often have high demand to open or withdraw money from saving accounts.

“The number of customers, however, was less than last years,” he said, adding in addition to the Covid-19 impacts, the fact that customers are entitled for bonus when doing online transactions is also a main reason for the fewer number of clients going to bank branches.

The Hanoitimes – Kitchen God farewell ritual is a very old custom in Vietnam. On the 23rd day of the December in the Lunar Calendar, Land Genie and the Kitchen God ride carps to Heaven to deliver an annual report on the household’s activities to the Jade Emperor.

The “Ong Cong – Ong Tao” (Land Genie and Kitchen God) or the “Kitchen God” farewell ritual which falls on 4 February this year, is one of the most important  for the Vietnamese people in a new Lunar Year, which kick off the Tet celebration in the country.

The offerings for Kitchen God farewell ritual. Photo: To Hung Giang

Traditionally, the kitchen god farewell ritual is usually observed on the 23rd day of the last month of the lunar year. Legend has it that Land Genie and the Kitchen God are sent down to earth by the God of Heaven for monitoring and recording all the good or bad manners of the human during the year.

Then, on the 23rd day of the twelve months in the Lunar Calendar, they ride carps to Heaven to deliver an annual report on the household’s activities to the Jade Emperor.

According to this report, the Jade Emperor will decide to bless or punish that family in the next year. Also, he will forward the household prayer for a prosperous and peaceful Lunar Year to the Supreme.

Kitchen God farewell ritual is a very old custom in Vietnam. According to legend, Land Genie is the god who governs the land in the house, and Kitchen God is a trinity of a wife and her two husbands who take care of the kitchen. Both of them take care of ensuring the family’s happiness and well-being.

Each family in each region throughout Vietnam has their own ways of preparing offerings for the Kitchen Gods. Photo: Ngo Phuong Lan

On this day, every family is busy staging a ceremony to see off the Land Genie and the Kitchen God of the household who will embark on their yearly journey to Heaven.

Preparing a hearty worshiping tray filled with abundant of votive offers, somehow, is the way that Vietnamese families show their thankfulness to the deities. At the same time, they also wish that the Land Genie and the Kitchen God will tell the good things about them to the Jade Emperor, as well as asking, on their behalf, for a peaceful and prosperous coming New Year.

Each family in each region throughout Vietnam has their own ways of preparing offerings for the Kitchen Gods. Common offerings include incense, flowers, fruit, betel and areca nuts, sticky rice, chicken, pork paste, spring rolls, and bamboo shoot soup.

Indispensable offerings for the ritual are votive paper shoes, robes, mandarin bonnets, and paper or alive carps, which the Kitchen Gods can ride to Heaven.

The Kitchen God farewell ritual kicks off the Tet celebration in the country. Photo: Dau Tra Mi.

In the north, households usually prepare three little alive carps or goldfishes on a small bowl, placing next to the offering tray on the altar.

In addition, the image of carp also conveyed the aspiration of “Carp transforms to Dragon”, which implies sublimation, persistent spirit to conquer knowledge and success.

In the Central region, it is common to worship paper horses with full harnesses. In the South, only paper horses and hats are prepared.

After the ritual, the paper tents are burned, live tents are released into the nearby lake or rivers, which is considered a kind act to pray for good luck, then the most famous Vietnamese festival officially starts, the Tet.

The Hanoitimes – Open data access from satellites and smartphones will build record of environmental change.

The Mekong River’s murky brown water has never hidden the threats from climate change, upstream hydropower dams, sediment starvation, and water level flows. But now a new Mekong Dams Monitor (MDM), bolstered by the Stimson Center’s Mekong Infrastructure Tracker, promises to add needed transparency to observe these ecological problems.

Mekong River: Source: James Borton and Nguyen Minh Quang

For nearly three decades, China has been building dams at breakneck speed on the upper Mekong reaches, alarming countries downstream over the threat of Beijing’s control of the water flow.

These open-access database tools offer data visibility and operations monitoring in present and future development projects, especially focused on China’s hydropower dams, enabling the US government and its think tank partners the ability to pinpoint potential Chinese security threats and changes in foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. For sure, 2020 has brought not only Covid-19 but also record droughts, posing a downstream humanitarian crisis.

The newly announced Monitor underscores the urgency for the adoption of science and technology in the form of remote sensing and satellite imagery directed at the reservoir levels at 13 dams along the river and an additional 15 tributary dams on the lower reaches. The collaborative project originates from the Stimson Center’s program Eyes on Earth Inc. a US research water consultancy and partly funded by the US State Department.

“Data and outputs published on Mekong Dam Monitor complement the ongoing research efforts of organizations in the Mekong, We hope to eventually pass leadership of the platform to collaborative partners in the region and establish lines of official collaboration with the Mekong River Commission,” claims Brian Eyler, a senior fellow at the Washington DC-based Stimson Center and author of Last Days of the Mighty Mekong .

The message behind these open-access database tools is that the US is encouraging the rise of voices and roles from civil society, i.e. grassroots geopolitical agents, who have the capacity and are able to peacefully, yet profoundly, undermine or challenge problematic foreign-owned development projects.

In addition, under the forces of today’s globalization 4.0, data and information appear to outweigh the non-renewable resources. The MDM, MIT and other Western-backed open-data platforms available in the Mekong region shed some light on how the U.S. and its partners are building diverse open sources of information that might constitute a bottom-up and true multi-stakeholder culture in the Mekong region. One question some may ask is in what ways the US agencies and think tanks use and assist international and local actors in employing these open-data platforms and for what purposes?

Broadly speaking, observation and promoting data visibility and transparency informs a localization policy – as part of the recent US Mekong policy. The key aim of this policy is to localize the US influence by supporting local actors to be proactive, more vocal and confident through “data visibility” and “training”. This is a non-confrontational approach that is highlighted in recent cooperation initiatives, including the Mekong-US Partnership.

A field trip to Mekong River. Source: James Borton and Nguyen Minh Quang

It is too early to evaluate the impacts of MDM, and other data-driven platforms in the Mekong region. However, these tools are believed to have a few weaknesses. First, given the traditional notion that state leads and all should follow, the accessibility to information in Mekong societies is different from the Western ones. Second, how to translate information from these data tools into simple languages understandable and interesting to the general audience and local peoples throughout the region remains unsettled. Third, data sources contributing to the tools might be questionable. Finally, as long as the information and dataset are widely recognized, they are not a reliable reference sources for policy-planning in the riparian governments.

Downstream in the Lower Mekong Delta, the Mekong Environment Forum in Can Tho, Vietnam has been engaging local farmers in citizen science or community-based science programs. The growth of grassroots participation in environmental issues, and in scientific research in general, has raised both local and international awareness of the transboundary ecosystem dangers.

MEF offers workshops that provide training in open access software for use in smartphones to address upstream environmental challenges. This is urgently needed since current science studies reveal that upstream dams are causing irreparable damage to the delta, altering fragile ecosystems and wrecking the livelihoods of the 2.3 million residents who farm along the Mekong river and the canals in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

The internet and new technologies, such as mobile apps for gathering data in the field and cloud storage tools, have made it possible for non-scientists to participate in the production of data and scientific knowledge. Open Development Mekong, a project of the Washington D.C.-based East West Management Institute, as well as the Mekong Water Data Initiative (Mekong Water.org), a program under the umbrella of the U.S.-backed Lower Mekong initiative, are among a few citizen-science platforms working to increase public awareness of the transboundary impacts of Mekong hydropower dams and other environmental challenges.

Science studies, coupled with grassroots participation, empowers communities and provincial government officials with data highlights that upstream hydro-infrastructure developments impact basin flow regime biology, bed and bank stability, biodiversity, fish productivity and sediment and nutrient transport.

The short-term impact of MDM and other data platforms could encourage increasing voices and involvement of non-state actors, such as NGO and grassroots movements, in local green politics. They are on-the-ground sources of information contributing data to the platforms, and change agents representing the US influence. The recent cancelation of some Chinese-backed development projects in Thailand and Myanmar is a visible example of this impact.

It’s encouraging that across the Mekong region more citizen scientists are working to contribute field-based datasets back to various platforms and introducing new policy recommendations and initiatives for a better Mekong future.

With the rising tide of public access to science information and data transparency, the launch of MDM could facilitate the enabling environment of participatory culture in the Mekong sub region where local voices are heard and have the potential to challenge foreign-owned controversial projects.

James Borton is a senior writer who has reported Southeast Asia for several decades and is co-founder of the Mekong Environment Forum. Nguyen Minh Quang is a Lecturer at Can Tho University and a co-founder of the Mekong Environment Forum.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by James Borton and Nguyen Minh Quang are of their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Hanoitimes.