Different parts of the world are witnessing during the days of celebrating the Lunar or Chinese New Year, which will be the year of the rabbit, but the matter is different in Vietnam, which borders China from the southwest, which will celebrate the beginning of the year of the cat.
Streets throughout Vietnam are decorated with statues of cats, and shops are full of decorative supplies centered on these animals, and they are popularly requested gifts during the Vietnamese New Year called "Tet".
Vietnam and its neighbor China, which attach great importance to the Lunar New Year, share 10 of the 12 signs of the zodiac calendar, but the Vietnamese honor the cat instead of the rabbit, and the buffalo instead of the bull.
Chinese New Year will be the year of the rabbit (Anatolia)
According to Agence France-Presse, there are theories about why the Vietnamese chose cats, including rice fields that are strongly present in the lives of Vietnamese farmers, according to historian Nguyen Hue Tin, who told the agency that "the danger posed by mice to rice fields made cats (which they can hunt) one of the Vietnamese people's favorite pet.
And the expert believed that there is "another explanation is that the Vietnamese do not want to have two years with two similar animals. For them, there is a very close association between the mouse (which is also a symbol of the zodiac) and the rabbit."
According to a third theory, it is due to an error in translating the Chinese word "Mao", which means rabbit.
In Vietnamese, it sounds like "meo", meaning cat.
It is said among the owners of this calendar that the year of the cat brings good luck and guarantees a life without difficulties and problems.
Preparations for the Year of the Cat appear in the main streets and shops in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi (French)