In the lead up to Lunar New Year — one of the most important holidays in Vietnam, China and other Asian countries — Annie Le prepares offerings for the spirit of her late father-in-law at a modest altar in her home in Coburg, in Melbourne's north.

Most Vietnamese families have altars at home for worshipping and remembering their ancestors. Le's is a pair of white floating shelves — a departure from the traditional carved wooden tables commonly used. A framed photo of her father-in-law sits below a Quan Am ("lady Buddha") statuette, together with a cluster of gold lotus-shaped lights, incense pots and fresh flowers.

She carefully lays out vegetarian rice dishes, fruit and jasmine tea. But while some Vietnamese offer beer or rice wine, Le's father-in-law has different preferences. "I always put lollies next to him, because he always likes lollies," Le, 37, says. "If he was to come through to this house, it makes me feel at ease that there's something on his altar that he can just grab." 

Having a home altar — a shrine where Le and her husband can burn incense, communicate with and pay respects to their ancestors and Quan Am — gives them a sense of protection and calm, and a place for her father-in-law to come home to.

She has positioned her altar up high, facing a window at the front of the house, so her father-in-law can see what's happening outside. "I always [tell] him to look out for the kids and my husband, keep our home safe and [make sure that] whoever enters enters with love, harmony, happiness, and there's no violence, or hate or jealousy."

Not that Le has always been comfortable with the idea. "It took me a while to be open to it because, to be honest with you, I used to be shit scared," she says. "I was scared of ma [ghosts]." 

A fading ancient custom

Traditionally, ancestor worshipping was a significant part of life for all Vietnamese people, providing a sense of belonging, purpose and comfort after a loved one had passed. But for many migrant families in Australia, the ancient custom seems to be fading, and young people who embrace it — like Le — are increasingly rare. 

For some experts, it's a worrying trend: ancestor altars have a rich history of patriarchy, war, migration and a buried Vietnamese creation story that they say is at risk of being lost — along with the opportunity for Vietnamese-Australians to connect with their heritage and sense of "home" in Australia. 

In Vietnamese culture, ancestor worship is based on the belief that the spirits of the dead still exist alongside the living, and are protecting or haunting their descendants, says Tess Do, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne who specialises in Vietnamese diasporic culture. "We are forever indebted to our ancestors, both at familial and national levels, because they are our roots, and we have to remember them."

There are strict rules around altars, such as how they should be arranged in the home and when rituals should be performed — death anniversaries, New Year and other lunar calendar events, weddings and daily prayer. Traditionally, the eldest son would look after their parents' altar. 

As altars often conjure images of incense smoke wafting past pedestalled Buddha statuettes, some wrongly presume the custom is Buddhist. However, "The tradition of ancestor worship was deeply ingrained in Vietnamese culture well before Confucianism, Taoism and then Mahayana Buddhism were introduced to Vietnam from China," Dr Do says.

"Because ancestor worship is an expression of respect and gratitude to one's parents, it blended well with Buddhism and Confucianism around the principle of hiếu and báo hiếu — reinforcing your duty of care towards your parents when they are alive and after they have passed away."

That duty was (and still is) important especially for people who don't have a good social welfare system to support them in their old age, Dr Do says. The elderly relied on their children to look after them — thus the need to reinforce this kind of obedience.

'It's about respect'

This history is why Buddhists sometimes have very different spiritual beliefs about ancestor altars.

"I don't have a bàn thờ [altar] so that the spirit has a place to be," says Trinh Nguyen, 40, a Vietnamese Buddhist who has an altar at home. 

Growing up, Nguyen observed her family offering food to her ancestors at their altar and has continued the custom herself. But she doesn't do it to communicate with or feed her late father, she says — his spirit is no longer with them. "It's more like respect," Nguyen says. "We eat, and we offer it to them before ourselves."

According to Dr Do, ancestor worshipping is rooted in "ancient folk beliefs" about respecting family elders, "and the continuity of their spirits after death". "At a national level, it is expressed through the worship of the Hùng Kings — founders and fathers of the Vietnamese people, descendants of the legendary Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ," she says.

In the popular version of this creation story, the dragon sea king Lạc Long Quân married the mountain-dwelling fairy Âu Cơ, who laid 100 eggs that hatched into 100 sons. But they soon realised they were incompatible and separated. Fifty sons — including the eldest, Hùng Vương, who would become the king — followed the dragon southward via the sea and the rest lived with the fairy in the mountains of northern Vietnam.

"[They are] supposed to be our Vietnamese ancestors," Dr Do says. "That's why the Vietnamese call each other đồng bào. Đồng is 'common', and bào is 'placenta', so we come from the same womb, the same mother. That's why we are a big family."

In Vietnam, it is not uncommon for families to place a photo of Ho Chi Minh on their altars as a "national ancestor", a sentiment that would likely divide the Vietnamese diaspora.

"It's more symbolic," Dr Do says. In paying tribute to national ancestors, "we commemorate their heroic achievements in the founding of the nation and protecting it against invaders — and we vow to them that we'd follow their footsteps in defending our country when necessary."

For some, ancestor worship is spooky or painful

But the culture of ancestor worshipping has changed significantly in recent decades.

New communist rule in Vietnam discouraged religious and spiritual activities from the mid 1950s as they were considered superstitious and a threat to the atheist party. It was not until the economic reform of Đổi Mới in 1986 that this view started to shift, and such practices were slowly reintroduced.

Although ancestor worship in Vietnam has undergone a revival since the 1990s, today few worshippers follow the traditional blueprint for maintaining an altar, and people's individual altar rituals are as diverse as what it means to be Vietnamese. 

In some families, ancestor worshipping has shifted from home altars to big altars at Buddhist temples, where people donate money to the sangha for the monks to conduct rituals and prayers, and the temple assistants to prepare food offerings for death anniversaries.

But there are myriad reasons why many Vietnamese people don't worship their ancestors, including lingering perceptions that it is superstitious, spooky and too time-consuming to maintain an altar. Researchers have also found that some migrants choose not to share traditional cultures and rituals with their children. 

"It's inevitable that the young Vietnamese [diaspora] would find it increasingly harder to connect to the ancestor worship rituals and keep them alive," Dr Do says.

"Younger generations who grow up away from a Vietnamese cultural context, who often lead a more secure and independent life in the West, may not feel the need for spiritual guidance and protection from their ancestors." Many simply don't believe that adverse life events occur because their ancestors are hungry or their altars are not well kept.

The tradition also may have been broken as families have separated and spread across the world ("How can you connect to your grandparents if you don't know them?" Dr Do asks). For others, the thought that unburied ancestors may be wandering the earth can be distressing, and an ancestor altar can be a painful reminder of the trauma of loss.

Broken connections

But Dr Do worries that reluctance to talk about difficult memories might leave some in the Vietnamese diaspora feeling even more displaced. 

"If you don't talk about the past [to children who grow up in Australia], if you don't talk about Vietnam and your lineage because of one reason or another ... then they don't grow up with a deep understanding of their roots, nor could they take pride in them," says Dr Do, who has personally wrestled with these feelings.

"I am still processing my past and it's painful ... I have reached a certain age, but I still don't know who I really am and what my true life purpose is. I'm just floating. Because of that, I feel that I don't have anything to pass on."

Thinking about Indigenous Australians and their connection with their creation stories, Dr Do says she also worries about the lack of connection some Vietnamese may feel with their ancestral land. "I once asked some Aboriginal friends, 'Can migrants like me [who] live for decades in this country develop an intimate bond with Australia?'

"I really love the Victorian countryside. I feel connected to the gum trees. It took me a long, long time, but it warms my heart when I see this unique Australian landscape. And they said, 'All migrants can have a meaningful relationship with the land, but you would never have ... the same spiritual bond that we have with our land'. So that really saddens me, because no matter how much I try to connect with it, this land is not mine."

Vietnam no longer feels like her homeland, Dr Do says — although she still holds onto an imaginary Vietnam as her ancestral land. It's why she feels a sense of comfort when she meets new Vietnamese people. "I fantasise that everyone who's Vietnamese shares the same ancestors, wherever we are. Hence, I am your đồng bào, that's why I feel and I seek a connection with you."

Annie Le says her parents' generation just want to look ahead to the future, not back at painful memories, which she feels limits her ability to connect with her family story. "I really wish that my parents [had] spoken to me more about my great great grandparents," she says. "And that's sad because people like us are very curious and we'd love to embrace who our [ancestors] were."

'I'm coming home to those I love'

For those who still embrace ancestor worshipping, even if the tradition has changed around the edges, one thread remains: the love and gratitude for family.

"It's comforting to have his photo there, because it's a way of remembering him. You're gone, but your presence is still here," Le says of her father-in-law's spirit. "I hope that when I die, it would be nice if I also have my face there too."

Trinh Nguyen feels similarly. She doesn't wasn't to lose the sense of connection to her family she hopes younger generations will hold onto. "I want my kids to remember Ông Ngoại [maternal grandfather], so seeing photos and then talking about him [is important]," she says.

"To have the Buddha altar and the ancestor altar at home, it does make me feel some sort of belonging. When I come home, I'm coming home to those I love. It's a warm atmosphere."