Acrimony Over Project Called ‘Harmony’

It was supposed to be called “Harmony,” but the pedestrian bridge proposed for the heart of Little Saigon has brought anything but.

In a community not often known for its unanimity or consensus, the latest sounds of discord involve a developer who wants to erect the bridge as a landmark for Little Saigon and those who fear such a symbol could obliterate the community’s identity.

“We don’t want for our beloved Little Saigon to be turned into a Chinatown,” said Mai Cong, president of a nonprofit social service agency who, with her husband, has formed a 200-member ad hoc committee to oppose the planned design of Harmony Bridge. “The architecture of the proposed bridge is in the style and characteristic of Chinese. The Vietnamese have our own culture, our own architecture. We want this to stay as Little Saigon for the benefit of all who come here.”

The debate is expected to continue tonight, when the Westminster City Council is to vote on whether the bridge’s construction can start in July. The council in April approved financing for the structure through a $3-million tax-assessment district. The city will issue municipal bonds and the developer of the bridge--not city taxpayers--will repay the loan over 30 years.

Last week, when the city’s Planning Commission unanimously approved the bridge after an emotional, four-hour hearing, commission Chairwoman Jo Porter declared: “This will truly be a landmark of Little Saigon. It will be there when we’re all gone. It will truly be the best that it can be. . . . I believe the bridge is for all the people.”

To appease critics, however, the commissioners gave them 30 days to come up with a bridge design that would be agreeable to all.

“I believe the 30 days would cleanse the soul, [and] I do encourage everybody to please get united,” Porter said.

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As currently proposed, the 30-foot-wide, 500-foot-long structure would connect the Asian Garden Mall and the Asian Village shopping centers, two centerpieces on Bolsa Avenue owned by Bridgecreek, which will also finance construction of the bridge.

In the original artist’s rendering, Harmony Bridge is topped by an ornate, pagoda-style green-tile roof. Prominently imprinted in the center of the structure is “Welcome to Little Saigon, Westminster.” Two golden dragons decorate either side of the message.

As soon as the design was submitted for public viewing in April, there was criticism about its Chinese influence.

Traditionally, critics said, Vietnamese pagoda roofs are red, not green. Furthermore, the curving ends of a Vietnamese roof are thinner and tend to “fly up in the sky,” and are not rounded as in the artist’s rendering, said Dinh Le, Cong’s husband and co-founder of the Ad Hoc Committee to Safeguard Little Saigon. In the proposed design, the curvatures are too “heavy,” he said.

To understand the concerns of the emigres about a bridge that would feature Chinese motifs, Cong, Le and other critics said, one would need to understand the history between the Vietnamese and the Chinese, whose rulers dominated Vietnam on-and-off for 1,000 years.

Every day that the emigres have to look at the bridge, those opposing the design said, is a day that they would be reminded of their country’s subjugation for a millennium.

“The history of the Vietnamese people go back 4,000 years, the majority of which has been dominated by the Chinese,” Steven L. Krongold, an attorney retained by the ad hoc committee to address its concerns, told the Planning Commission last week. “You could not ask for a worse example of how to insult the identity of a people.”

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In a scathing newsletter circulated among the emigres, Cong, who also heads the Santa Ana-based social service agency Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc., accused the bridge developers of “inciting ethnic strife and divisiveness with their provocations.”

The newsletter, written by Le, contended that Little Saigon has been “quietly and gradually” losing its Vietnamese ambience through subtle changes over the last few years. It cited as examples Bridgecreek-owned buildings in the district whose names have the word “Asian” in them as opposed to being specifically Vietnamese-influenced.

Frank Jao, Bridgecreek’s chief executive officer, countered that Cong, Le and others are clouding the issue by “using the racial issue to promote an emotional effect.”

“All these people have done so far is to attack on the racial divisiveness issue and throw a lot of misrepresentation into the project and misleading the public by using radio, television and printed material,” said Jao, a Vietnam-born ethnic Chinese who emigrated to California in 1975.

Jao, whose company is also overseeing the construction of an expansion project at Asian Village shopping center, said the current bridge design is not written in stone. He doesn’t dispute the Chinese influence, but he said it wasn’t planned to provoke the community. He said he is willing to alter the design of the bridge if the changes meet the city’s codes and specifications.

This is not the first time Jao and community leaders have had explosive differences regarding the development of Little Saigon. In 1988, Jao spearheaded a movement to have the district be named “Asiantown,” reasoning that it would draw a more diverse group of visitors. Jao’s effort was shelved when people in the community united to protest his plans.

Now, Cong and others contend, Jao is attempting to once again impose his vision of diversifying the district at the expense of Little Saigon’s identity.

“Prove it,” Jao said. “Is it so wrong . . . to have a primary goal [of doing] business in a multicultural society?”

The developer accused Cong and Le of trying to use Harmony Bridge to flex their political muscle within the Vietnamese community. “Whoever is the author of the bridge, in [his] mind,” Jao said, “is the one to control the politics of Little Saigon.”

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Politics, said Cong and Le, have nothing to do with the issue. What’s at stake, they said, is the integrity of a future landmark in the community, one that is recognized as being distinctively Vietnamese, not Chinese or generically Asian.

“People come to Little Saigon because they want to be in Little Saigon,” said Cong, who, like Jao, emigrated to Orange County in 1975 when what is now Little Saigon was only acres of strawberry fields and industrial warehouses. “It’s the uniqueness that attracts tourists to come, not diversity, [which] is boring.”

Sharp disagreement is nothing new in Little Saigon. Most often it involves the politics of activists, observed Yen Do, publisher of Nguoi Viet, the largest Vietnamese-language daily newspaper in the United States.

“It is undisputed,” said Do. “In all issues having to do with the community, we are usually divided, with people wanting to be leaders of something or other.”

The community was deeply divided over President Clinton’s decision to lift the economic embargo against Vietnam in 1994. The rifts among different factions were just as bitter a year later when the two countries established diplomatic relations.

There still exists a debate as to who is the de facto leader of the community: Tony Lam, Westminster city council member and the country’s only elected public official of Vietnamese descent, or any of a handful of leaders of organizations claiming to represent the interest of Vietnamese Americans in the Southland.

Even Tet, the Chinese New Year, traditionally a time of celebration and community harmony, came with bickering this year when two competing festivals were held at the same time in Orange County. Four months later, organizers are still arguing as to which was the larger one.

“So you see,” said Do, “we don’t often agree on too many things.”

Some city officials have said they don’t want to interfere in community differences, opting instead to let Jao and those opposing the design of the bridge to work out their own differences.

“What the people want is a Vietnamese bridge, we understand that,” said Councilman Frank Fry Jr. “Whatever the people want, they’ll get.”

Lam has already started the process of getting the divergent sides to work together. At tonight’s meeting, he said, he will announce plans for a brainstorming session, to be attended by council members, planning commissioners, Bridgecreek architects, as well as artists from the Vietnamese community, and representatives of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Safeguard of Little Saigon.

That meeting will take place later this week, Lam said, and participants will be encouraged to come up with a compromise design for the bridge.

“This is a last-ditch effort to try to find some way to alleviate tensions and emotional conflicts,” said Lam, who has hosted two town-hall meetings in April and May to gauge the Vietnamese community reaction to Harmony Bridge.

He maintains a compromise can be reached.

In the meantime, Lam said, he plans to vote for construction of the bridge at tonight’s meeting. However, he added that he would ask his fellow council members to consider removing--if only temporarily--the name of the structure.

Why?

“Because,” he said, “we don’t have any harmony yet.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Bridge Work

Of the eight designs being considered for Harmony Bridge, this version is one of the most popular and controversial. Some community members argue that the roof ornamentation is more representative of Chinese than Vietnamese architecture--that the ornamental curvatures are too bulky. In Vietnam, these upturned corners are thinner and longer.

Source: City of Westminster