Festival Is Slice of a Most Eclectic Life

At Westminster’s Tet celebration Saturday, you could eat spring rolls and dried squid washed down with pearl milk tea. Or munch on nachos and Indian fry bread with a power drink on the side.

You could buy good luck wall hangings written in Vietnamese, decorative fans and Asian compact discs. Or pick up some wood shutters, auto parts and a Roth IRA.

The event marking the passing of the Year of the Dragon and the start of the Year of the Snake offered a window onto the eclectic cultural rhythms that define the Vietnamese experience in America.

Quoc Nguyen and Le Thanh offered another.

Both men strolled through the heart of the largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam. They had much--and at the same time very little--in common.

Nguyen, 34, grew up in America as a child of refugees. His parents are Buddhist and speak little English. Thanh is Lutheran and has a daughter who speaks no Vietnamese.

“As I get older, I’m trying to get some of my culture back by doing things like this,” he said.

Thanh was a lieutenant in the South Vietnamese Army, a survivor of labor camps and an escape by sea. At 50, he still lives with his family--his grandmother, mother and five sisters--under one roof in Santa Ana.

“In traditional Vietnamese culture, the family is always together,” he said.

On Saturday, families came together in a field behind the Westminster Civic Center to sample food, admire traditional music and dance and climb on carnival rides.

“Tet is like the western New Year, Christmas and Thanksgiving combined together,” said Neil Nguyen, an attorney in Orange who took his first name from Neil Diamond, who made a hit singing “America.”

As many as 60,000 people are expected to attend this year’s festival, which continues today from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tet events will continue in Little Saigon throughout the week.

Some came Saturday to ride the Ferris wheel, some for the firecrackers and the traditional Dragon Dance. A group of American and South Vietnamese veterans turned out to bless the site of a war memorial planned for construction later this year.

Others, like Mike and Norva Johnson of San Juan Capistrano, came simply to immerse themselves in a culture not their own.

“Fortunately, we grew up in homes without racism,” Mike Johnson said, his two blond children standing out in a crowd of mostly black hair. “We want our kids to be the same way.”