It is late afternoon, an hour or two before daylight fades into twilight. A young Lahu woman picks up firewood and places it in a basket. Rising to her feet, she feels a hint of a chill in the air, for it is December after all. She is used to having to dress warmer to deal with the cold inside the house, and so are her mother and father. But it is her baby brother that she fears for. Thus she bends down to fetch more firewood, just in case.

Inside the house, the young woman’s mother is cleaning grains of rice with water. After such a hard day of work in the poppy field, she decides to add another bowl of rice to the pot. Following her husband’s advice, she lets go of her worry about how much rice they will have left by the time New Year comes around. Merely weeks away, the Lahu New Year celebration never fails to excite her, but a little part of her dreads the upcoming hours of making rice cakes to serve as gifts for visitors. Yet, perhaps that is a small price to pay for seven days of communal gathering, dancing and feasting.

Meanwhile, the family’s father takes the basket of firewood from their daughter and squats down to start the fire. The young woman sits down near her baby brother’s crib as she begins to prepare the other ingredients for tonight’s dinner. Once the rice is well cooked, the father sets it aside, making room for other pots to cook vegetables, onion, garlic, chilli paste, and to the mother’s delight – a small amount of red meat shared with them by a hunting party who returned a couple of days prior.

As the family gathers around the fire with their hungry bellies, the mother gives the dishes a quick taste. As a final touch she adds a little bit of salt, and an indulgent amount of ajinomoto (MSG) – and dinner is served.