Two birthdays for a Chinese-Vietnamese kid

I was born ethnic Chinese — my mother is from Ben Tre and my father is the oldest son of two miserable souls who fled the destitute life in Guangdong, China (my grandfather and grandmother).

If Vietnamese people are influenced by Chinese culture, then my family — and my father's side especially — live inside it. That's why I have two birthdays a year. One is the date on my government registration, the one my friends and relatives use: March 31. The other is the one my parents, aunts and uncles, older siblings, and my grandmother have always used to celebrate my birthday — and that's today: the 29th of the second month, lunar calendar.

(If ba hadn't brought it up I wouldn't have remembered either — thank you, ba.)