Which translates from the Vietnamese as "happy new year," although I'm two days late. It is the dawning of a year of the rat, the first of 12 characters in the Chinese zodiac that govern the designations of years in the 12-year Chinese lunar calendar cycle.
According to tradition, when the Jade Emperor conducted a contest to see which creature would be first, the clever rat hitched a ride across the river on the back of the placid ox, then jumped down to race across the line first.
So those born in years of the rat are thought to be intelligent, clever and resourceful but lacking in courage and, perhaps, just a little manipulative. The "rats" of my generation would have been born between Feb. 10, 1948, and Jan. 18, 1949. Feel free to evaluate yourself.
In Vietnam, where I spent a little bit of 1969 and much of 1970, the lunar new year celebration is known as Tet --- in 1968 the season of the Tet offensive, launched on Jan. 30. On Feb. 18, MACV posted the highest U.S. casualty figures for a single week during the entire war: 543 killed and 2,547 wounded. The year was deadliest of the war for the US forces with 16,592 soldiers killed.
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