Vietnamese communities celebrate Tet abroad

Overseas Vietnamese in the Macau Special Administrative Region, China, gathered to welcome the 2014 Lunar New Year (Tet) at a meeting hosted by the Vietnamese Consulate General in Hong Kong and Macau.

Overseas Vietnamese in the Macau Special Administrative Region, China, gathered to welcome the 2014 Lunar New Year (Tet) at a meeting hosted by the Vietnamese Consulate General in Hong Kong and Macau on February 1.

Overseas Vietnamese people in Australia make "Banh Chung" (square glutinous rice cake) ( Photo:VNA)

A representative of the office expressed hope that the Vietnamese community there will continue to make more contributions to the development of the ties between Vietnam and Macau.

The diplomat also spoke highly of their achievements in the community.

Currently, about 12,000 Vietnamese people are working in Macau.

Meanwhile, overseas Vietnamese people living in Australia have held many celebratory activities, such as wrapping chung rice cakes and visiting each other on the occasion of Tet, helping preserve the nation’s traditional customs.

Vietnamese students at the University of New South Wales have gathered to celebrate the country’s biggest festival with the presence of Consul General in Sydney Mai Phuoc Dung.

Dung asked the students to establish a Vietnamese student association in New South Wales to prepare for starting a similar organisation on a national level.

On February 1, nearly 100 pupils and their parents at the first Vietnamese language teaching school in Tokyo, Japan, held a celebration for Tet.

The school’s first classes started on January 18 with the aim to not only teach the Vietnamese language to the students but also organise extra-curricular activities to help them understand the culture of their homeland.

Ambassador Doan Xuan Hung said he believed that the model of the school will be expanded in Japan in a near future.

In 2013, the number of Vietnamese people in Japan exceeded 60,000, a rise of 30 percent over 2012, according to the Japanese Ministry of Justice.

To mark the 84 th founding anniversary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (February 3) and Tet holiday, a football-badminton competition for Vietnamese students opened in Moscow, Russia, on February 1.

The event, which attracted nearly 200 athletes from 21 institutions, will last until February 7.