The history of tobacco in Vietnam?
In Vietnam, women do not smoke and they do not drink alcohol. While betel quid is a female pleasure, the male pleasure is mainly tobacco, in the form of dried leaves, which are tapered and put into a pipe bowl. In ancient times, from kings and emperors to the lowest rungs of society, people smoked.
The art of smoking tobacco
When smoking cigarettes in the West requires only fire (Yang side), smoking in Vietnam is a real combination of water and fire, Yin and Yang. The bowl pipe consists of a ball pricked with two holes close together. The ball is filled with a third of the water. In the large hole, the stove is fixed and extended by a tube that plunges into the water and is smoked using a flexible hose applied to the small hole. Tobacco put in the stove burned (by fire). The air sucked in through the pipe enters through the stove and meets the water, before entering the body. Thus, tobacco smoke (Yang) passes through the liquid element (Ying) producing a sound noise before arriving in the smoker’s mouth and then impregnating every cell of his body. And smoking with all these accessories like pipes has become a passion. Couples of passionate lovers are said to be “say nhu dieu do”.
“Nho ai nhu nho thuoc lao
He chon dieu xuong, lai dao dieu len”
(I miss tobacco just like her
Yet I buried all my paraphernalia
But I dug it up for as long as I was worthwhile.
To be able to smoke even more beautiful)
