Betel and Areca Tray
The betel and areca tray is the lacquered brass container that carries betel leaves, areca nut, and lime, the essential offering of Vietnamese hospitality, courtship, and marriage ritual. In the founding legend two twin brothers, Cao and Lang, loved the same woman; when the woman married Cao, Lang wandered away and died by a stream, and Cao, grieving, drowned himself; the woman then died too. The gods transformed the brothers into the areca tree and the betel vine that climbs it, and the woman into the limestone that binds their flavour, so that the chewing of betel and areca joins the three t