Ant egg season
In autumn, the mornings begin to be shrouded in thick mist, the mountains seem to be enveloped in an ethereal haze, and the sun rises from the mountaintops in a deep red hue, usually around the eighth lunar month.
In over a month, people will harvest the rice, and after that, another month later, they'll celebrate Tet (Vietnamese New Year). It's called harvesting because people in the forest areas are used to growing rice in irrigation ditches. They only cut each ripe rice stalk individually using a small, compact tool with a prongs that fits comfortably in their hand, which they call a "hep." The harvested rice is stored in a "lắc" (a type of shed). Those with more rice store it in a "lạu" (a type of hut). The "lắc" is like a small shed, the "lạu" like a small hut, with a thatched roof and bamboo slats to protect against rain and sun. While waiting for the rice in the fields to ripen, people go digging for wild roots and collecting ant eggs. The black ant eggs are brought back and cooked in soup with banana leaves and broken rice. The ant egg season is in early autumn, with the sun turning a vibrant red at sunrise and sunset, hence the folk song.
People in the lowlands call the days of leisure after each harvest season "agricultural leisure time." People in the mountains also have their days of leisure. Searching for ant eggs is one of their favorite pastimes. Instead of sitting at home chatting, some drinking, others carrying children, ethnic women prefer to gather in groups and go into the forest to find black ant nests clinging to tree trunks to collect the eggs. Their only tools are a hunting knife and a winnowing basket. That's it. Once they find branches with ant nests, they cut them down. Then the ant eggs are removed and placed in the winnowing baskets. The ants, whose nests have been disturbed, will fight back fiercely. They scatter, biting the legs and arms to try and force the people to give up, while others help to move the eggs. At this point, the winnowing baskets serve to separate the ants, leaving only the eggs.
Once they had gathered enough ants to make a decent bowl of soup for the whole family for dinner, the women discussed leaving. No one wanted to stay long or joke around with these small but brave warrior ants. Ants and bees were perhaps the most formidable creatures in the forest, everyone thought.
For them, that's enough.
Many autumns have passed, yet the forest remains green. The ant egg season also comes and goes with each autumn. This afternoon, I suddenly looked towards the western horizon and realized the sun had turned a deep red. I remembered my grandmother's folk song. Let's call it the ant egg season folk song.
Pham Thi Nhung
