We are approaching the sacred moment of transition—the moment of reunion for families, for the harmony of yin and yang in the universe, for ancestors and their descendants. Has your family already performed the ritual of inviting your ancestors home to celebrate Tết together? And if you belong to Gen Z, does the sound of firecrackers on New Year’s Eve—a memory that still stirs deep emotions in many older Vietnamese—feel unfamiliar to you?

When Nguyễn Du described the spiritual encounter between Kiều and Đạm Tiên, he wrote: "Ào ào đổ lộc rung cây, Ở trong dường có hương bay ít nhiều." (The wind rustled, showering buds and shaking trees, And faintly, the scent of incense wafted through the air.) That drifting fragrance lingers on the threshold between the phenomenal and the non-phenomenal, gliding between the realms of the living and the dead, wandering freely between the visible and the invisible worlds. Perhaps that is why people use incense to communicate with those persons and realms that words can barely touch? No one can say for sure. What we do know is that, for a long time, the custom of burning incense has been deeply rooted in Vietnamese Tết traditions. Incense offered to ancestors becomes a sacred "scent of time," allowing us to "see" the fleeting shadows of the boundless past in our finite present.

In the first episode of the Tết Podcast series, Bán Nguyệt Tâm Thư Khố is delighted to bring you an excerpt from the story of the Kitchen Gods, titled "Two Men, One Woman – That’s Where the Trouble Began," from the book Tết of All Vietnam. Join host Tuyết Nhi (an intern at the Fulbright Library) and guest Quách Minh Phát (a fourth-year Vietnam Studies major at Fulbright University) as they revisit the tale of the Kitchen Gods and share some year-end reflections.