Amy Stocklein
Noj Tsiab, a harvest festival traditionally celebrated with family, was a community event this year.
American Thanksgiving, Jewish Sukkot, Gaelic Lughnasadh — most cultures have a harvest festival. Noj Tsiab (say “naw chia”) is the Hmong celebration — it translates as “feast.”
Like Thanksgiving, traditionally it’s a family event. This year, though, Noj Tsiab is being held as a lunchtime celebration to bring elders together after more than a year of isolation due to COVID-19. It’s incorporating some elements of the traditional New Year’s celebration too, because the pandemic has caused that event, usually held at Alliant Energy Center, to be canceled for a second year.
In the gymnasium at Life Center Madison, on Femrite Drive, the soul calling ceremony is coming to an end, explains Chueshee Xiong, a regular Wikipedia page of Hmong traditions who just happens to be standing next to me among the backbenchers at the rear of the gym.
Soul calling involves a chicken, eggs, and a certain amount of divination, according to Xiong. The soul caller might look at the chicken’s feet, for instance, and if the digits are positioned apart, it’s read as a warning to “be careful in the coming year.” Mainly, though, the soul caller’s job is to get “all souls lost to come home.”
The soul caller is usually the oldest person in the family. “We have a saying, ‘I have eaten more kernels of rice than you,’ and it is that person, who is most knowledgeable, the father or grandfather, who is the soul caller,” says Xiong.
This Noj Tsiab celebration involves a number of traditions meant to bring good luck. Everyone wears new clothes, embroidered with intricate designs, so they will have plenty of new clothes in the coming year. The garments often have coins sewn on them, to bring prosperity. The coins are silver because silver wards off evil. As participants move around, the room sounds as if it’s been filled with wind chimes.
Sticky rice is pounded in a hollowed-out log, like a trough, by two persons alternating swings with big wooden mallets. The rice is used to make mochi (rice pancakes), enough so that a household will not have to cook rice for the following three days — during which it’s seen as unwise to spend any money.
The event is open to the public and guests are invited to try their hand at pounding the sticky rice (tuav ncuav) themselves. “The first swing is hard,” says Lourdes Shanjani, who’s attending her first Noj Tsiab. “It was kind of a surprise. But once you get used to it, you develop a rhythm with the other person. The more you do it, the more energy you have.”
The mochi are traditionally dipped in sorghum, although today maple syrup is the Wisconsin substitute.
Food is being prepped in the adjacent kitchen — part of the tradition is “You eat new foods you have not yet had a chance to eat,” Xiong tells me. Trays of chicken and hard boiled eggs, eggrolls, pad thai, other noodle dishes, roast pork, and a dried meat topping that is like a finely shredded extra spicy beef jerky make for a long buffet. Although eating hot spicy peppers at the feast is seen as taboo because it means you will have a lot of arguments in the new year, there is plenty of spice in this spread. “That’s not a taboo we’re following,” I’m told when I inquire.
Peng Her, head of Madison’s Hmong Institute, which is sponsoring the Noj Tsiab, says it’s important to bring the community together to have fun and also involve non-Hmong in their traditions: “Hmong have been in Madison 46 years and we have to start sharing that more.” Reports of anti-Asian violence stemming in part from COVID are up nationally. Her says that locally older members of the Hmong community are “looking over their shoulders more, they’re afraid to go out after dark or walk in the neighborhood.” That’s why events like this one are increasingly important, he says, to invite family and friends to have a meal together, give thanks for the harvest and embrace diversity.
Before the program goes on to more post-luncheon games, there’s a special announcement from the stage: “Everyone, everyone, go back and eat again.”
Noj Tsiab by the numbers:
- Hmong population worldwide: 12 million
- Hmong in the United States: 727,000
- Hmong in Madison: 6,000
- Crash course in Hmong: How are you? = Koj nyob li cas (gaw nyaw lee cha); I’m happy = Kuv zoo siab (goo zhong shia)
- Number of eggrolls served at the Noj Tsiab: 400
- How you can order fresh pork or veggie eggrolls in a monthly fundraiser for the Hmong Institute: Email info@theHmongInstitute.org or call 608-695-4041; half-dozen $20, dozen $35
