It’s New Year’s in Little Saigon, and Business Has Been Booming

All along Bolsa Avenue, merchants are handling a flood of customers hunting at the last minute for traditional foods and gifts for the new year.

Open-air stalls set up in shopping center parking lots are piled high with red cellophane-wrapped gift sets, traditional sweets of coconut strips, ginger and lotus seeds, and pots of orchid blossoms.

It’s not quite like in Vietnam, where the country stops for a three-day celebration, but Vietnamese Americans have adapted the holiday to their new home, complete with the same shopping frenzy in the final days leading up to Tet, which begins today.

Asians throughout Southern California will be celebrating the coming of the Year of the Tiger during the most important holiday in Asian cultures. Local Korean, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese communities are expected to usher in the new year with flair at local festivities, where crowds swell to 250,000.

“It’s Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter all combined into one holiday,” said Giao Bui, vice president of marketing for the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce.

According to informal surveys of Vietnamese-American-owned businesses in Orange County, retail sales this time of year can pick up as much as 20% to 25%. While 10,000 vehicles travel through Little Saigon most days, during Tet, as many as 90,000 may pass through, Bui said.

Travel agencies, florists and restaurants in Little Saigon, which contains some 1,500 businesses, typically cash in on the holiday season.

“We see more tourists coming in, people who wouldn’t normally be here,” said Trang Tran, manager of Song Long restaurant and bakery.

Nicole Nguyen of Washington, D.C., is one of the thousands of visitors who travel to Orange County every year to attend New Year’s celebrations, adding to the economic boom as well as the local traffic.

“It’s so festive and pretty. Almost like Vietnam, but with lots of cars instead of motorcycles and bikes,” she said, surveying the crush of cars in the brightly decorated New Saigon Mall parking lot.

It’s also the time of year for seasonal vendors, who peddle everything from traditional foods like banh chung, sticky rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves, to flowers such as orchids and chrysanthemums.

The procrastination of last-minute Christmas shoppers is one that crosses cultures, said vendor Nancy Nghe. Her open-air stall, which operates only during the two weeks surrounding Tet, specializes in traditional gift sets of jasmine tea, dried nuts and fruits.

“Usually, people will wait until the very end to buy something,” she said Tuesday. “This is New Year’s Eve, and so many people are out here.”

Even though it’s not an official holiday, many Vietnamese Americans still manage to take the day off to celebrate with friends and family. And local companies have learned to accommodate them.

Bruce Speer, general manager at Sunset Ford in Westminster, says he has several Vietnamese American employees, and the company generally gives them the time off.

“I know that some of them do take the day off and we fully support that,” he said. “I know I might want to take the day off for the Fourth of July if I was in another country.”