Blurb:

Vietnamese believe food is an intermediary between a person’s livelihood and fate. Eating, in other words, isn’t necessarily about sustenance so much as it is a set of quasi-ritual actions that have cosmic effects. Often accompanied by alcohol, friends or families feast on dishes commonly considered to induce misfortune at the end of the lunar month. By consuming ‘bad luck’, they believe their fortune will reset for the new month, bringing prosperity. This paper examines the feast of bad luck and how it has been villainised in Modern Vietnam.