Tet Away From Home: How Vietnamese Students Rebuild New Year in Moscow
There’s a moment every Vietnamese student abroad knows too well: you check the calendar, realize Tết is close, and your body remembers before your brain does. Suddenly, you crave the smell of incense, the sound of relatives calling your name from the kitchen, the sticky warmth of bánh chưng just taken off the stove, the familiar chaos of cleaning the house “one last time.”
But outside your window is Moscow winter—quiet, gray, and freezing. The streets are not filled with peach blossoms or the bright noise of motorbikes. There are no neighborhood loudspeakers counting down to the holiday. Instead, there is snow. There is distance. And there is the strange feeling that New Year can arrive even when you’re thousands of kilometers away from home.
Still, Vietnamese students have a special talent: we know how to carry home with us. When we can’t go back, we build it again—through food, shared traditions, and community. And at HSE, that rebuilding has a name many of us look forward to every year: Tết Sum Vầy—a celebration created not just to keep our culture alive, but to invite others into it.
What Tết Means When You’re Not There
Back in Vietnam, Tết is not only a holiday. It is a national rhythm. Weeks before the first day of the lunar year, the city begins to transform. Markets become brighter, families start stocking up, and conversations shift into a familiar checklist: Have you bought gifts yet? Did you clean the house? What are you cooking? When are you going back to your hometown?
At home, Tết is about reunion—sum vầy—the idea that the year only truly turns when everyone gathers under one roof. People return to the place they came from, even if they’ve built new lives elsewhere. It’s a cultural reset: apologize, forgive, start fresh, and wish each other luck.
When you’re abroad, that reset becomes more complicated. You may still be studying, working, or sitting in a dorm room with deadlines that do not respect lunar calendars. Your relatives might be celebrating while you’re waking up for class. And the simplest traditions—like visiting grandparents or lighting incense at the family altar—suddenly feel impossible.
So Vietnamese students adapt. We scale down the rituals, but we protect the meaning. Tết abroad becomes less about the perfect holiday and more about the effort to remember: to keep the thread connected.
The “Tết Preparation” That Happens in Group Chats
If you want to see how Vietnamese people organize, don’t look at official posters—look at group chats.
A few weeks before Tết, messages start arriving:
- “Who has a big pot?”
- “Where can we buy sticky rice?”
- “Does anyone know a place for lá dong (bánh chưng leaves)?”
- “Can we book a room at the university for the event?”
- “Who’s bringing red envelopes?”
This is one of the most beautiful parts of celebrating far from home: Tết becomes a collective project. People who might not talk much during the semester suddenly cooperate like relatives. Someone knows a Vietnamese store across the city. Someone has speakers for music. Someone can design a poster. Someone volunteers to cook—even if they’ve never cooked in Vietnam—because the feeling matters more than the technique.
In Vietnam, Tết preparation is family labor. In Moscow, it becomes community labor.
Food: The Shortcut Back to Home
If there is one thing strong enough to defeat homesickness, it’s Vietnamese food.
At home, Tết flavors are everywhere: thịt kho (caramelized pork), pickled onions, giò chả, candied fruit, seeds and snacks for guests, and of course bánh chưng or bánh tét—the legendary sticky rice cake that takes hours to prepare and even longer to explain to foreigners.
Abroad, we rarely manage to recreate everything exactly. Ingredients are different, kitchens are smaller, time is limited, and sometimes we’re cooking next to someone making instant noodles at 2 a.m. But we always try. Because cooking Tết food is not just cooking—it’s storytelling.
Bánh chưng deserves its own paragraph. It’s heavy, square, wrapped in green leaves, tied with string, and boiled for hours. In Vietnam, it’s connected to the legend of Prince Lang Liêu and the idea that the cake represents the earth—simple ingredients, deep meaning. In Moscow, making bánh chưng is like making a promise: “Even here, we will not forget.”
Sometimes the cakes come out imperfect. Maybe the shape is a bit strange. Maybe the rice is not as sticky as it should be. But when you cut it open and smell that combination of rice, mung bean, and pork, you understand why people insist on doing it. It tastes like belonging.
And then there’s the dorm version of Tết snacks: mandarins, tea, sunflower seeds, homemade spring rolls, anything that can turn a cold evening into something warmer. Even a small shared meal becomes a ritual: we sit together, talk about home, and for a while, Moscow feels less distant.
Small Rituals That Still Matter
Not every tradition survives abroad, but many do—just in new forms.
- Cleaning: In Vietnam, cleaning the house before Tết is almost spiritual. Abroad, students may not have a “house,” but you’ll still see people cleaning their rooms, changing bedsheets, organizing shelves, and joking that they’re “sweeping away bad luck.”
- New clothes: Wearing something new on the first day of the year symbolizes a fresh start. In Moscow, that might mean an áo dài worn over tights (winter always wins), or simply dressing up nicely for a gathering because we want the day to feel special.
- Lì xì (lucky money): Even when money is tight, people still prepare red envelopes. Sometimes it’s symbolic—just a small amount. Sometimes it’s candies, a handwritten note, or a silly “voucher” for bubble tea. The point is not the value; it’s the blessing.
- New Year wishes: Vietnamese wishes have a special music to them: An khang thịnh vượng (peace and prosperity), Vạn sự như ý (may everything go as you wish), Sức khỏe dồi dào (abundant health). Abroad, we keep saying them—because saying them is a way of protecting each other.
- Video calls: This might be the most modern Tết ritual. Many students call home right at the moment Vietnam enters the new year, even if it’s a different time zone. You watch your family’s living room through a screen. You hear the firecrackers on someone else’s street. You smile and pretend you’re not homesick. Then you hang up and realize you need community even more.
Tết Sum Vầy at HSE: A Reunion We Build Ourselves
This is where Tết Sum Vầy becomes more than an event. It becomes a solution.
Organized annually by Vietnamese students at HSE, Tết Sum Vầy is our way of turning the university into a temporary home—one filled with music, laughter, and the very specific kind of happiness that comes from celebrating together.
The name matters: “Sum Vầy” means reunion. It’s what everyone in Vietnam hopes for during Tết: that no one celebrates alone.
At HSE, Tết Sum Vầy often feels like a bridge between worlds. Vietnamese students come for comfort, memory, and pride. International students come out of curiosity—and leave with something warmer: connection.
Even for those who are not Vietnamese, the event is easy to understand because its message is universal: this is our New Year; please celebrate with us.
What Happens at a Vietnamese Tết Celebration (and Why It’s So Fun)
For international students, Vietnamese Tết can be surprising. It’s not only a quiet, reflective holiday. It’s also playful, loud, colorful, and full of movement.
A typical Tết gathering like Tết Sum Vầy may include:
- Performances: Traditional dances, modern Vietnamese songs, maybe even a playful skit. Performances are not just entertainment—they’re a way of saying, “We are here, and our culture is alive.”
- Food corner: This is usually the center of gravity. People line up for Vietnamese dishes, ask questions, compare flavors, and take pictures. Food becomes the easiest language when vocabulary fails.
- Games and interactive traditions: Guests might try simple Vietnamese games, learn a few phrases, or participate in activities that feel like Tết at home—writing wishes, receiving a small red envelope, taking photos with festive props.
- Cultural explanation without lecturing: The best part is that people learn naturally. Someone asks what lì xì means. Someone else explains why red is important. Someone tries bánh chưng for the first time and makes a face like they’ve discovered a new planet. In that moment, culture becomes friendship.
For Vietnamese students, watching international friends enjoy Tết is a special kind of joy. It turns our nostalgia into something productive. It reminds us that being far away doesn’t have to mean being isolated. We can share, not just miss.
Why This Celebration Matters More Than It Seems
It’s easy to think of Tết Sum Vầy as “just a holiday event.” But for many Vietnamese students, it’s a form of emotional support.
Studying abroad can be lonely even when you’re surrounded by people. Holidays intensify that loneliness because they highlight what you don’t have: family dinners, familiar streets, childhood routines.
A community event changes the story. Instead of sitting alone scrolling through photos of home, you show up somewhere warm. You hear Vietnamese spoken around you. You eat food that tastes like memory. You laugh at jokes that only make sense to people who grew up the same way. And you realize: you’re not the only one carrying this homesickness.
At the same time, opening the celebration to international students transforms it into something bigger than comfort. It becomes cultural diplomacy at the student level—friendly, informal, genuine. No official speeches needed. Just people sharing food, music, and time.
The Most Vietnamese Ending: Hope
In Vietnam, Tết is a time for hope. Even people who don’t believe in luck still want to start the year with good words, good meals, and good energy. We clean, we decorate, we gather—not because it changes fate, but because it changes us. It makes us feel ready.
For Vietnamese students in Moscow, Tết carries an extra layer of meaning: it’s proof that we can survive distance without losing ourselves. We can build home with friendships. We can turn a campus room into a reunion. We can bring international friends into our traditions and feel proud instead of lonely.
Tết away from home will never be identical to Tết in Vietnam. Nothing can replace the exact sound of your mother calling you to eat, or the feeling of stepping into your childhood house after a long year.
But celebrations like Tết Sum Vầy at HSE remind us that the heart of Tết—reunion, gratitude, and fresh beginnings—can travel.
And maybe that’s the real New Year wish we learn abroad:
Wherever we are, may we find our people.
May we not celebrate alone.
And may every winter, no matter how cold, still contain a little warmth from home.
Shared by
Тхэ Ань Фам
