Sharing a Vision of Life : Immigrants: Hmong families in Orange County hold onto the past and grasp for the future.

Thirty years and a lifetime ago, Chue Chang stole his Hmong bride from her parents’ home in the highlands of Laos.

Her father would not consent to their marriage, so in keeping with Hmong custom, Chang, aided by friends and relatives, spirited her away.

“Once the (would-be) father-in-law says no, then you must take her,” explained their son, 20-year-old John Chang. “Then you arrange everything later.”

Today, the Changs live in a Santa Ana subdivision, send their children to suburban schools and universities and do not allow them to date.

“Date?” said John, a biology major at UC Irvine. “That’s the forbidden word around here.”

For the Changs, as for other new immigrants, the Southern California lifestyle throws traditional values, customs and family ties into sharp relief. But for the Chang family, and for about 600 other Hmong in Orange County, there is a unique sense of community nurtured not only by ties to one of Southeast Asia’s most specific cultures, but by a shared passion for education.

The Hmong of Orange County, natives or descendants of the highland people of northern Laos, are few in number (according to the 1980 census, there are more than twice as many Guamanians in the county, for instance) but one of the county’s most prominent Laotian immigrants said he expects them to become far more visible within a decade.

“In another 10 years you’ll see so many professionals among the Hmong,” said Kamchong Luangpraseut. “They’ve always understood the importance of education.”

Luangpraseut, the supervisor of Indochinese programs for the Santa Ana Unified School District, said the key to the success of the second generation of Hmong in the United States lies in the traditional adaptability of their parents.

Himself a Lao, or lowland Laotian, Luangpraseut said the Hmong “don’t have a country they can really call a Hmong country. They’re spread all over. And because of that, they have an ability to adapt to their situation better than many other ethnic groups.”

The Hmong (the h is silent) originated in central China but resettled in southern China after years of bloody repression by the Imperial Chinese. In the early 19th Century, many Hmong migrated to northern Laos and a lesser number to northern Vietnam and Thailand.

The Laotian Hmong suffered further persecution in the mid-1970s by the Communist Pathet Lao regime, which accused many Hmong of complicity with the CIA in Laos. Tens of thousands fled to the United States.

The Changs were among them. Chue Chang grew up in a village of 15 families, four days’ walk from the nearest town. His family grew corn and rice on land that was so plentiful and uninhabited that there was no system of ownership.

The Chang family fled Laos after the Communist takeover in 1975, lived a while in a Thai refugee camp and finally settled in Santa Ana in 1978. Now, Chue Chang works in a shipping company and spends weekends patiently cleaning his car. In the garage, he ferments a home brew of medicinal herbs and vodka, which he says is good for aches, pains and fatigue.

He is among a relatively small percentage of Hmong who settled in the county who did not move away by the early 1980s, for while Orange County remains a center of Hmong culture in California, it is Fresno that has seen the greatest migration of the former hill people, said Luangpraseut.

Most Hmong immigrants were farmers, said Luangpraseut, and found greater opportunity to continue what they knew--as well as a climate that was similar to their Laotian homeland--in

Fresno. When word of the successes of the first Hmong farmers in Fresno spread, others quickly followed.

By 1987, there were nearly 20,000 Hmong living in Fresno, their leaders estimated. Because of a second migration from inside the United States and a burgeoning second generation, that number has jumped to 40,000 today.

Among the first Hmong immigrants who remained in Orange County, prosperity has been checkered, said Luangpraseut. While some have found jobs with electronics companies, schools and public agencies, others have been unable to find employment that would pay more than they would receive on welfare, he said.

“There’s a very high rate of dependency,” he said, “but it’s not from lack of trying. If they have four or five kids in the family, they find they may be better off on welfare than taking a low-paying job. Still, they know education is the way to go.”

Which is why Chue Chang insists that all his children graduate from college.

“I need them to go, if they can go,” he explained. “If they cannot, I don’t know how I can help them.”

The oldest of the seven Chang children graduated from Pomona College and is now an electrical engineer in Oxnard.

“That’s quite an achievement,” said Luangpraseut. “None of the family ever had school before, and now here’s a son who does this.”

The other Chang children have also shown the Hmong ability to assimilate well into their surroundings. Stacy, a high school sophomore, listens to the bands Metallica and Suicidal Tendencies and drums on her schoolbooks. The youngest is 11-year-old Cali--short for California because he is the only one of the Chang children born here.

Still, Chang requires his children to speak only Hmong at home. Because there is no system for writing the Hmong language, he has taught all of them to read and write Laotian. Even his wife did not learn to write until she came to the United States.

Such a cross-cultural life will probably bring about a fundamental change in the Hmong population in this generation, said Luangpraseut. As greater opportunity for the young appears, ties to home and tradition will become less binding.

“With new opportunities, they will not be able to stay close to their families,” he said. “The oldest of Chang’s children, for instance. He can knock on doors in any one of the 50 states and get a job, but he remembers how his mother and father cared for him, so he’s torn. By the time (Chang’s) youngest grows up, it’ll be ‘I love you very much, but I have to go where the best job is.’ ”

“Things will change, but if you don’t adjust you’ll never survive. If your life is too full of the old traditions, there will be no room for change.”

Still, Hmong culture is far from invisible in Orange County, particularly during the lunar new year, which is widely celebrated among the Hmong population. It is one of the best opportunities to see the White Hmong in their traditional black pants and colorful tops and the Blue Hmong women with their characteristic bright skirts (the designations White and Blue refer not only to the dominant color of dress, but to differences in language between the two peoples). And, said Luangpraseut, “you see a lot of silver on the costumes, pounds of it.”

During the new year celebration, even the small Hmong children wear traditional costumes to school, Luangpraseut said.

But the children of the newest generation of Hmong in Orange County may experience far less of such traditions.

Despite strong parental influence, the Chang children say the whirl of their daily activity makes it difficult to keep family ties intact. There are five cars parked in the Chang driveway. Their father rises at 5 a.m., and in the evening the children are gone at school, at sports, rehearsing for talent shows. They no longer eat together.

And ties with the older generation are fraying. The children’s grandmother died last year and they visit a great-aunt less frequently. But the children continue to try to hold to the best of their old and new lives.

“It’s so difficult,” said John Chang. “We talk, but it’s very shallow talk. I lack the sophisticated Hmong vocabulary. I can communicate, but I can’t have a deep talk.”

Seng Chang, 18 and a Cal State Fullerton freshman, stroked her mother’s ponytail as she spoke. She said she no longer has the desire to distance herself from her heritage.

“I don’t want to lose that Hmong touch,” she said. “It makes you plain, it makes you dull if you don’t keep your culture.”

Patrick Mott contributed to this story.