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While most Asian countries and diasporas welcomed the Lunar New Year celebrating the rabbit, Vietnam, which celebrates the equivalent Tết Nguyên Đán, honored a different animal: the cat.
Vietnam shares 10 of the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac calendar, with the differences being the rabbit and the ox, which are replaced by the cat and the ox in the Vietnamese calendar.
The distraction is explained by several theories: One, linguistically based, claims that at some point in history, the Chinese word for rabbit was “mao”. misinterpreted as “meo”, the Vietnamese word for cat.
However, according to Doan Thanh Loc, a cultural consultant at the Southern Jade Pavilion Cultural Center in Vietnam, this “misinterpretation” is not entirely correct. Instead, Loc argued that it had to do with symbols used to represent “heavenly stems” and “earthly branches” corresponding to each year in the Chinese lunar calendar on which Tết is based.
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“Mao doesn’t necessarily mean cat or rabbit. These are just symbols that we used to code the Earth branches,” Loc told NPR.
Another explanation comes from the Chinese and Vietnamese versions of a Legend about a race that determined the list of zodiac animals.
In the Chinese version, the rat and cat were both on the ox when the rat pushed the cat into the water, resulting in its loss. Meanwhile, the rock-hopping rabbit luckily landed on a floating log that quickly brought it to shore and helped it finish fourth.
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On the other hand, the Vietnamese version was missing a rabbit by default. His cat could also swim, a skill that helped him finish fourth in the race.
Other theories focus on a more direct reverence for the cat.
Nguyen Hieu Tin, an expert on traditional Vietnamese culture, said it depends on which animal helps produce food.
The story goes on
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“Rice is a big part of Vietnamese agriculture but with the threat of many rats in the fields, the cats [that hunt them] are a favorite animal of the Vietnamese,” Tin told AFP.
“Another explanation is that the Vietnamese do not want to observe two years with a similar animal. They see the mouse and the rabbit as closely related,” he added.
A slight variation makes a connection to geography: While the Chinese originally lived in the savannas and grew close to rabbits, the Vietnamese lived in the lowlands and preferred cats.
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“The people of the savanna prefer a nomadic life close to the wild, and they chose the rabbit as an animal that lived in the wild fields,” UCLA lecturer Quyen Di told NPR.
Vietnamese, on the other hand, consider rabbits “animals used for food” while cats are “friends who live in their home.”
Still others say that the cat simply exudes more power than the rabbit.
“I think the cat deserves more because the rabbit is too soft. It doesn’t have the power of a cat. I was also born in the year of the cat and I’m very proud of that,” a Vietnamese native said, according to Inside Edition.
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