Pinatas and Poinsettias : Ethnic Stores, Restaurants See Holiday Business Surge

At the Hanil restaurant in Koreatown, employees strung twinkling lights through the bamboo stalks near the front doors and removed a booth to make way for the Christmas tree.

Jin Young Pack, owner of the Korean barbecue restaurant near Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, flipped through his reservations book to reveal the more than 50 Korean college alumni groups that had booked banquet rooms for traditional holiday reunions. “It’s the busiest time of the year,” Pack said.

Christmas--no matter what language you say it in--means business for the many immigrant merchants of Southern California. Besides Christmas shoppers, many merchants rely on customers who start preparing for such holidays as Chinese New Year or Tet--the three-day Vietnamese New Year’s celebration.

“I think it’s just as critical for them during the Christmas holiday season as it is for any retail operation,” said Wilfred Marshall, director of the mayor’s small business assistance office. The immigrant merchants may not be located in major malls, Marshall said, but “they speak the right language and their customers feel comfortable.”

Without Christmas sales, “we would just survive--that’s about all,” said Stanley Fujihara, an employee at Mikawaya, a Little Tokyo sweets shop where holiday shoppers take home nearly 1,000 boxes of assorted Japanese rice cookies and crackers.

At Fragrance King, a Monterey Park cosmetic and perfume shop catering to Chinese customers, Christmas shopping overshadows business for Chinese New Year. “Our Christmas business is definitely important,” said store manager Frank Ma, who estimated that December accounts for 60% of his annual sales.

The merchants, whether they be along Broadway in downtown Los Angeles or in the “Little Saigon” area of Orange County, operate in or near the neighborhoods that often serve as the first stop for recent Latin American and Asian immigrants.

As these immigrants and their families find their way to new neighborhoods and new life styles throughout Southern California, they are more likely to patronize nearby shopping centers and eat at local restaurants. Moon Hong, who co-owns Bobbie’s housewares shop in Koreatown, has noticed how children often adopt different shopping patterns from their parents. “They tend to shop less in Koreatown--they go to Westwood. They become more independent,” he said. “It’s the melting pot effect.”

But during the holidays, many immigrants who have moved to new communities often return to their old neighborhoods for special foods and gifts they cannot find elsewhere. “The people are going to be doing traditional feasts, and they are going to have to make a special trip to stores not in their neighborhood,” said Michael E. Robinson, an associate history professor at USC.

Immigrant merchants approach the holidays like most other retailers: Extra help is hired; store hours are extended, before and after Christmas sales are held. But as merchants meld American holiday traditions with native customs, products and language, the results are sights and sounds not found in your run-of-the-mill mall:

- At Maynila, a Filipino restaurant in Los Angeles, a Christmas tree and yards of green garland have been added to the rattan decor in preparation for holiday parties. Between 150 and 200 customers will pay $18 to attend the A Pasko Sa Amerika (Christmas in America) party featuring live entertainment and a meal of roast pork and rice cakes.

- In Echo Park, the local chamber of commerce and merchants have paid for street banners that read “Merry Christmas” and “Feliz Navidad.” But English and Spanish may not suffice: “One of our board members was upset because we didn’t have one in Chinese,” said Jackie Reed, president of the Echo Park Chamber of Commerce.

- At Little Tokyo Village Plaza, a Shogun Santa Claus--complete with flowing white beard and Japanese warrior helmet--listens to children read their Christmas wish lists.

Amid platters of Mexican pan dulce, green and red Christmas tree-shaped cookies occupy a prime spot next to the cash register at the Tijuana Bakery in Lynwood. The Mexican bakery sells about 600 of the cookies a day at 20 cents each.

- At the Yeo Wang Bong coffee shop, customers listened to a recording of “Angels We Have Heard on High”--sung in Korean. “I just started playing it this morning,” said Young Choi, owner of the Koreatown restaurant. “It gets them smiling.”

As has been the case with previous waves of immigrants, Americans have adopted some of the newcomers’ customs. For example, Latinos have seen pinatas --mannequins made of wire, paper and glue and stuffed with candy--adopted by Anglos and others.

Another Latin American holiday import is the poinsettia plant. Indigenous to an area south of Mexico City, the poinsettia was prized by the Aztecs and later used in Nativity processions by Franciscan missionaries. The poinsettia is named after the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Joel R. Poinsett, who introduced the plant to the United States in 1825.

And even mainstream retailers cater to immigrants by carrying special holiday items. For Latino holiday shoppers, Lucky supermarkets boosts its inventories of corn husks and corn meal--used to make tamales, a favorite Latino festival food -- and religious candles.

New Laws Affect Sales

In contrast with the hubbub at many stores during the holidays, Cambodian merchants along Anaheim Street near downtown Long Beach say that business remains rather calm. “It’s not like the rush at Sears or Montgomery Ward where you have lines all over,” said Nil Hul, executive director of the Cambodian Assn. of America.

Many Cambodians do give Christmas presents--often Pahmuong silk skirts and other fabrics imported from Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand. “But that’s just for American friends and sponsors,” Hul said. “We don’t send Christmas cards to each other.”

Merchants selling to Los Angeles’ Central American immigrants say Christmas has been less than cheery. The new immigration law, which seeks to reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the United States, has left many customers leery of drawing down their savings to buy gifts.

“People are saving their money to straighten out their (legal) papers or to organize their return to their own countries,” said Sandra Chavez, an immigrant from El Salvador who works as a sales assistant at El Loco, a women’s clothing store on Sixth Street in downtown Los Angeles. The store’s sales are half what they were last Christmas, said Kenny Han, the store’s owner.

But at the El Tigre Supermarket, customers are expected to buy nearly 2,000 pounds of banana leaves and about 6,000 pounds of masa between now and Dec. 24--a quantity equal to two months’ sales during the rest of the year, store manager Mike Serret said. Masa is a dough made from corn meal, water and lard, and is used to make tamales. Mexicans typically wrap their tamales with corn husks, while Salvadorans and Guatemalans use banana leaves.

Hammocks Popular

“The food is the best part of the celebration, along with the whole family being together,” said Nelson Jovel, a Los Angeles resident and busboy who plans to fly home to his family in San Salvador this Christmas.

Sales of pinatas are strong this winter at ADOC, a store at Sixth Street and Union Avenue in downtown Los Angeles that sells Salvadoran shoes and other imports.

Co-owner Vilma Monterrey, who in 1985 took a five-week pinata construction course in her native El Salvador, said she expects to sell 40 to 50 handmade pinatas--baby elephants and clowns are most popular--at $5 to $12 apiece this December. During other months, the store only sells about half a dozen of the two- to four-foot-high pinatas.

Hammocks and tiny clay figures are also popular Christmas gifts in El Salvador, said Efrain Monterrey, Vilma’s husband and store co-owner. About 60% of the store’s annual hammock sales come in December, he said.

In Koreatown, holiday shoppers prowl mini-mall stores stocked with a variety of wares, such as $30 silver-plated chopsticks, $300 West German blouses, $100-a-pair Italian-made shoes and $125-a-setting Royal Doulton dinner wear.

There are traditional Korean-made items on sale as well. The Nasung gift store stocks lacquer jewelry boxes inlaid with mother-of-pearl and Korean pottery. But, said store co-owner Soo Ai Cha, Koreans “buy the Oriental stuff usually to give to Americans.”

Murphy Yi, a heavy machine operator, makes an annual Christmas shopping pilgrimage to Koreatown from his home in Oxnard. “You can find some products here you won’t find at other places,” Yi said.

Korean Christmas and New Years celebrations are centered on family visits, even if it means traveling across the Pacific. “It’s very hard to get an airplane seat,” said Jay Chung, a travel agent at Shilla Travel and Tours Inc., of the Los Angeles-Seoul route before Christmas.

December is also a good month at Olympic Supermarket, where manager Yong W. Cho is preparing for brisk sales of gift-wrapped boxes of grapefruit-sized Korean pears. Cho has also ordered an extra 10,000 packages of rice cake patties used to make rice cake soup for New Year’s Eve celebrations. “We have to put a big display in front, and everybody buys two or three bags each.”

Tet Business Key

While holiday sales drop off after the first of the year for most merchants, shopkeepers in Little Saigon--a business district that stretches through Westminster and Garden Grove in Orange County--look forward to Tet in February. Christmas is a “very good season” for Vietnamese merchants, said Loc T. Nguyen, executive director of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce. “The only difference is that this is just the beginning. For the Vietnamese, it doesn’t culminate with Christmas . . . it culminates with Tet, in the middle of February.”

Nguyen estimates that the period stretching from the beginning of December to the middle of February accounts for close to half of the annual retail sales for most Vietnamese businesses.

“We tend to shop in American places (for Christmas goods),” Nguyen said. “What causes the Vietnamese places to experience an increase in business is sending gifts back home for Tet.”

From November through January, Air France ships between 250,000 and 300,000 pounds of merchandise--mostly from Little Saigon--to Vietnam from Los Angeles International Airport, said Joseph A. Miller, the airline’s Western regional cargo manager. During slower months, the airline ships an estimated 70,000 pounds.

Binh Danh, owner of Danh’s Pharmacy, TV, Radio, Video Center on the Bolsa Strip, said he has sold and shipped an estimated $200,000 worth of gifts back to Vietnam in the past two months alone, all for Tet holiday giving.

“I think everyone mails (goods) back,” said Danh, who does about 40% of his annual retail sales during the Christmas-Tet shopping period. “If they have relatives back there, they are concerned. People living under the Communists have nothing.”

At nearby Continental Trading, nostalgia and entertainment value join to make one Vietnamese videotape a big holiday item this season. Called “Thuy-nga Paris 4,” the tape is a variety show of popular Vietnamese music interspersed with background shots of Vietnam. The tape sells for $29.95, and half of the 400 sold annually leave the shop in the two months before Tet, said Tom Nguyen, a buyer for the store.

Television sets and videos aside, food is always one of the staple gift items during Tet and Christmas for friends and family in the United States. At Van’s Bakery in Westminster, the holidays blend together in the form of the confections display.

Moon cakes--made of bean flour with an egg yolk embedded in the center--are a holdover from traditional autumn Moon Festival. Christmas logs--thin cake rolled around chocolate, vanilla and mocha fillings--attest to the French influence on Vietnamese culture.

All that’s missing is banh chung , a square Tet pastry made of glutinous rice and filled with beans or pork.

“And they are coming in February,” baker David Loi said.