Tet Spirit Is Missing for Festivals

This year’s local festivities to usher in Tet, the lunar new year and the most important holiday in Vietnam, promise more fireworks than ever.

There are two major festivals in and near Little Saigon scheduled for the coming weekend. Organizers have accused one another of trying to undermine their events, which together are expected to draw about 250,000 people.

There’s also the matter of a lawsuit filed by a group of merchants in Little Saigon to block Westminster’s celebration on Bolsa Avenue, the tourist district’s major thoroughfare.

Adding to the tumult, someone tried to torch Westminster Councilman Tony Lam’s restaurant last week, prompting him to suggest that the culprit did it to protest Lam’s involvement in the city-backed festivities.

Welcome to the soap opera that Tet has become.

In the 15 years Tet has been celebrated in Orange County, home to the largest Vietnamese population outside of Southeast Asia, it has been observed as it is in Vietnam--as a joyous time to dwell on peace and harmony.

Now, “rumors are flying all over the place about who’s doing what to try to ruin the Tet’s atmosphere,” said Nhuan Do, a local businessman. “Why can’t we all celebrate in peace?”

A custom derived from the Chinese, Tet, which begins today, is the most important religious and cultural holiday for people of Vietnamese descent. It honors ancestors and is the traditional observance of the new harvest season. In Vietnam, business owners and farmers refrain from working for at least a week to celebrate.

This year’s two biggest festivals are sponsored by the city of Westminster and the Vietnamese Community of Southern California, a political and social service agency that says it represents the interests of the 300,000 emigres who live from San Diego to Ventura County.

The rival events will be a mile apart. Both will include food booths, cultural art exhibitions, singing and dance performances, beauty contests and parades.

The Westminster festival--the first sponsored by the city--will be a street fair to promote Little Saigon as a tourist mecca, with the proceeds financing a Little Saigon Heritage Center and Tourist Bureau and other municipal activities.

The celebration sponsored by the Vietnamese Community of Southern California will be at Garden Grove Park. Profits will pay for community events and agency expenses.

But in the days before the celebrations, people seem more concerned with what the competing festivals and rancor will mean to the community: The last thing the emigres need, many say, is another fissure in an already fractious community that carries little political weight because many community organizations, and leaders, won’t have anything to do with each other.

“If these groups would work together,” said Nghia Tran, who runs a social services group in Santa Ana, “the whole community would benefit.”

Merchants have packed Westminster City Hall the past two weeks to air their anger over the closure of parts of Bolsa Avenue to accommodate the festivities there, saying it will hurt their businesses. “The city doesn’t care,” said Thanh Tong, who owns a beauty supply shop on Bolsa.

Organizers of the celebration in Garden Grove accuse Westminster of trying to dampen their festival by having its street fair on the same weekend. “Lots of dirty politics going around,” said Hue Nguyen, coordinator of the Garden Grove festivities.

Westminster officials counter that the other side is trying to sabotage the city’s carnival by encouraging business owners in Little Saigon to sue for an injunction. A judge refused to grant it two weeks ago, but has given the merchants another chance to make their case Wednesday.

The mayor of Garden Grove, Bruce A. Broadwater, also has weighed in. He wrote “an open letter to the Vietnamese community,” criticizing his neighbor city for hosting its festival on Bolsa Avenue and inconveniencing the merchants and their potential customers.

In response, Westminster Mayor Charles V. Smith wrote an open letter “to clear up any possible misunderstandings caused by false information currently being circulated.” Go to Westminster’s festival, Smith urged, since it “promises to be the biggest and best one yet.”

Both mayors deemed the other’s letter “inappropriate.”