Sung Van Tay's family in Yeng Hamlet, Hung Loi Commune, Yen Son District preparing a ceremony to welcome the new rice season.

The rice spirit worshipping ceremony is often staged between late in the eleventh and early in the twelfth lunar months of the year. On the first harvest day, the house owner heads to the field earlier than the others, carrying a bamboo tube. After chanting mantras, he has to walk around the rice field and picks a few ripe rice ears to put into his tube. He then seals the mouth of the tube and put it in the tent which hosts the worship ritual.

When the harvest is finished, people bring home the last bundle of rice as well as the rice ears in the tube, and place them under their ancestor's altar. The rice spirit worship ceremony is staged that night or the next morning. After the ceremony, the rice is stored in the rice barn in the house.

From the fourth to the fifth lunar months of the next year, the stored rice is dried, peeled, pounded and then winnowed until the husk is removed to cook at home (if it is sticky rice, people will make it into round sticky rice cakes). The Dao ethnic people believe that the rice will help adults become healthier, children grow faster, and the elderly live longer. Only family members can have the rice and cakes, which cannot be given to outsiders as it will make the family's rice soul fade away.