250,000 Expected for Little Saigon’s 3-Day Tet Festival

With only 6 days left before the beginning of the Tet festival celebrating the lunar new year, the offices of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce in Orange County’s Little Saigon resemble a war room.

Gone are the sedate pictures of lakes and scenic countryside that adorned the walls. In their place, Tet festival coordinator Tony Lam has hung maps, bulletin boards, flow charts and the names of an army of volunteers.

A telephone rings, and Lam answers it: “Hello? Hello? Yes, this is Tony Lam. Yes, yes, I know the bunting was the wrong color. Yes, I agree, the lettering doesn’t show up enough. But what am I to do? They’re up already! We’re doing all we can.”

“Next year,” he mutters to himself, after putting the telephone down. “Next year, we’re going to start organizing right after Tet. None of this 3-month stuff. It’s killing me.”

More than 250,000 people are expected to visit Little Saigon during a 3-day Tet festival that will begin Friday to usher in the Year of the Snake. Although Feb. 6 actually is the first day of the lunar new year, the celebrations begin days in advance.

After months of bickering about which Vietnamese organization would coordinate Tet activities, a tug-of-war ended with the chamber winning because it was backed by the Vietnamese business community of Westminster’s Little Saigon, said Westminster Mayor Charles V. Smith.

For many Westminster officials, it was their first taste of ethnic rivalry. But for the most part, Smith said, “we only acted as intermediaries after complaints came in from different agencies wanting to take over and control the festival.”

Now that the plum assignment has gone to the Vietnamese chamber’s festival committee, it has had to ensure the festival’s success by borrowing more than $150,000 to help pay for a performance stage, parking shuttles, security, lighting and special shows.

‘A Little Nervous’

“We’re confident we can pay the bank back, but it has made us a little nervous,” said Chuoc Vo-Ta, the chamber’s executive director.

“After all,” Lam added, “it is bad luck if you still owe people money on the first day of the new year.”

Bolsa Avenue will be cordoned off from Moran Street almost to Magnolia Street for the festival. Events will take place within a fenced area, and admission will be charged to help reduce costs, Lam said.

Admission is $3 for adults, and $1 for children ages 3 to 10. Children under 3 are free.

The area is where the chamber’s office is located and where Lam and 150 volunteers have planned what is expected to be the largest Tet celebration since the first wave of Southeast Asian refugees arrived in Orange County in 1975.

In Westminster, Vietnamese businessmen took over an aging commercial strip on Bolsa Avenue and revitalized the area with new shopping malls housing grocery markets, fabric shops, bookstores and restaurants.

“For our city, it’s meant an improved tax base,” Mayor Smith said.

“What is significant about Little Saigon is that the businessmen built the area on their own, independent of the city,” he said.

There are more than 320,000 Vietnamese in California, about 120,000 of them in Orange County. Vietnamese neighborhoods have started in Central Los Angeles, Cerritos and upscale areas of Costa Mesa. But nowhere are they more visible than in Orange County’s Little Saigon.

In the past 14 years, the commercial area along Bolsa Avenue in Westminster and Garden Grove--designated a tourist zone in 1988--has gained a reputation as the center of Vietnamese business and culture.

For many Vietnamese residents, the eve of the new year will be traditionally spent giving offerings to the God of Prosperity.

The area’s Buddhist temples will be open, and many Buddhists have altars at home and customarily prepare a bounty of food for their ancestors or deceased family members so that they can share in the new year’s prosperity, Lam said.

The Chinese lunar calender has a 12-year cycle. The 20th Century, according to the cycle, opened with the Year of the Rat. The Rat was replaced by the Ox, then the Tiger, the Hare, the Dragon, the Snake, the Horse, the Sheep, the Monkey, the Rooster, the Dog and the Wild Boar. Each of the 12 animals supposedly has both positive and negative qualities.

The Vietnamese New Year festival begins at the first new moon after the sun enters Aquarius. The day may fall between Jan. 21 and Feb. 19.

“With each new year,” Lam said, “we believe that life is a continuing hope. My father’s hope, for instance, is to see my brother and my sister being able to get out of Vietnam next year.”

But some families, such as that of Dr. Co Pham, a Fountain Valley surgeon, plan a less traditional Tet, one more oriented to the children.

“For us, and other professionals, it’s a chance for our children to see where our roots began,” Pham said. “Although my children are able to speak a little Vietnamese, they’re growing up in a Western culture. They need to see and hear Vietnamese customs like Tet.”

Parade With Bands

Bakeries will be busy making such traditional foods as banh chung, a square gelatinous cake made of rice, mung beans and pork, wrapped in banana leaves, and a type of Vietnamese fruitcake called mut.

New this year, organizers said, is a parade with marching bands, shuttle buses to ease parking problems, Vietnamese string bands and several entertainment shows directed by Hoang Thi Tho, who was well-known in South Vietnam’s entertainment industry before the Communists took over the country in 1975.

“In our first year of organizing Tet, we only had one martial arts group. Now we have four. And in addition, we will have Buddhist and Catholic folk dances. But this year, more than any other, we’ve made room for many different ethnic communities,” said Lam, noting that Koreans, Cambodians, Latinos, Chinese and Anglos will be represented in the parade or other activities.

“For us, it’s a proud time to be Vietnamese,” Lam said.

Related story: Part I, Page 1.