It is the 1st of january, new-years day in Kon Tum, central Vietnam. This day the J´rai hill tribe has a big party, to celebrate the coming of the new year. The hole village takes part in the celebration and the main ingredient for this party is the jar wine. The J´rai prepare this wine in big ceramic jars and drink as much as possible of it to celebrate the new year.
The jar wine tastes as white wine and they place a twig with a little branch jutting down in the wine. You have to consume all the wine that surrounds the branch with a straw, before its the next's turn to drink.
With this comes dancing and singing and the J´jai had a band on sage in the main square. Everyone was welcome to take their turn to sing a tune and dance to the best ones. The kids in the village roams around mostly without supervision this day and gets free access to cake and sweets.
The J´rai is for the rest of the year an hard working tribe and they work mostly in agriculture and have some animals. When the french came to Vietnam under the colonial period some of the hill tribes converted to Catholicism. This J´rai tribe did so. The minority hill tribes in Vietnam has a history with discrimination and has had a hard time with the Vietnamese government. It is still a tense relationship.
