Little Saigon, Orange County

Coordinates: 33°44′42″N 117°57′49″W / 33.74500°N 117.96361°W / 33.74500; -117.96361
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Little Saigon
Neighborhood
Welcome sign marking the entrance to Little Saigon in Garden Grove, California
Welcome sign marking the entrance to Little Saigon in Garden Grove, California
Coordinates: 33°44′42″N 117°57′49″W / 33.74500°N 117.96361°W / 33.74500; -117.96361
CountryUnited States
StateCalifornia
CountyOrange
CitiesGarden Grove and Westminster

The Little Saigon district straddling the cities of

immigrants originate.[1]

History

The oldest, largest, and most prominent Little Saigon is centered in

Vietnamese Americans reside. With the other five counties (listed below) that make up the bulk of the Southern California mega-region, this region constitutes the largest ethnic Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam.[2]

County Vietnamese American population
Orange 189,455
Los Angeles 85,487
San Diego 59,824
Riverside 16,026
San Bernardino 14,097
Ventura 2,739
Total 367,628
  • 2011 US Census Bureau, American Community Survey

The community originally started emerging in Westminster, and quickly spread to the adjacent city of Garden Grove. Today, these two cities rank as the highest concentration of Vietnamese-Americans of any cities in the United States at 37.1% and 31.1%, respectively (according to the 2011 American Community Survey). With its original roots along the bustling Bolsa and Brookhurst corridors, the borders of Orange County's Greater Little Saigon community has grown to nearby cities. The chart below shows the Vietnamese American (VA) population of central Orange County cities that either borders, or is one jurisdiction away from Westminster, CA:

City Vietnamese American population
Garden Grove 54,029
Westminster 33,819
Santa Ana 23,215
Fountain Valley 11,289
Irvine 11,024
Anaheim 10,830
Huntington Beach 7,802
Stanton 5,501
Orange 4,768
Tustin 4,600
Costa Mesa 1,268
Cypress 1,037
Total 169,182
  • 2011 US Census Bureau, American Community Survey
Phước Lộc Thọ, known in English as Asian Garden Mall, the first Vietnamese-American business center in Little Saigon, Orange County

About 45 miles (72 km) south of Los Angeles,

middle-class suburban city of Orange County with ample farmland, but the city later experienced a decline by the 1970s. Since 1978, the nucleus of Little Saigon has long been Bolsa Avenue, where early pioneers Danh Quach and Frank Jao established businesses. During that year, the well-known Nguoi Viet Daily News also began publishing from a home in Garden Grove.[3]

Other new Vietnamese-American arrivals soon revitalized the area by opening their own businesses in old, formerly white-owned storefronts, and investors constructed large shopping centers containing a mix of businesses. The Vietnamese community and businesses later spread into adjacent Garden Grove, Stanton, Fountain Valley, Anaheim, and Santa Ana.

In 1988, a

freeway offramp sign was placed on the Garden Grove Freeway (State Route 22
) designating the exits leading to Little Saigon.

Bolsa Avenue in Westminster's eastern neighbor, Santa Ana, has also been designated a Little Saigon, but there are fewer businesses in the area than in either Westminster or Garden Grove. In 2003, some controversies emerged in Santa Ana over a proposed Little Saigon sign to promote its burgeoning Vietnamese commercial area with a design incorporating Vietnamese translation and a South Vietnamese flag. The sign was approved, but redesigned and placed on Euclid Street and First Street (Bolsa Avenue).

Layout and services

In Orange County, Little Saigon is now a wide, spread-out community dotted with a myriad of suburban-style strip malls containing a mixture of Vietnamese and Chinese Vietnamese businesses. It is located southwest of

city council of Westminster in the late 1980s. The borders of Little Saigon can be considered to be Trask and McFadden on the north and south and Euclid and Magnolia on the east and west, respectively. About three-quarters of the population in this area are Vietnamese.[4]

It is lined with numerous huge shopping centers and strip malls. There are approximately 200 restaurants in the area of Little Saigon and spilling over to Garden Grove, Fountain Valley, Santa Ana and Huntington Beach. As with many other Vietnamese American communities, competing mom-and-pop restaurants that serve Vietnamese cuisine, especially

phở, are abundant. Restaurants serving Chinese cuisines such as Teochew and Cantonese are also available but in smaller numbers. Little Saigon has seen a surge in coffee shops "Quan Ca-Fe" which are the equivalent to American coffee shops, where Vietnamese men go to spend time with male friends and drink coffee. With such a proliferation in coffee shops, the city of Westminster has limited the number of new coffee shop business licenses. In recent times a few have been shut down due to illegal gambling.[5]

There are quite a number of Vietnamese supermarkets, small Vietnamese delis and bakeries in Little Saigon specializing in French-style coffee and baguette sandwiches - a legacy of Vietnam's colonial past. Adding to growth of Vietnamese markets in the area, the rapidly expanding Vietnamese supermarket superstore chain Shun Fat Supermarket (called in Vietnamese, Siêu thị Thuận Phát) opened its doors in Westminster in 2005. Catering to the large Vietnamese population in the area are also professional offices of doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, etc. who speak Vietnamese. Food and authentic Vietnamese cuisine remains the forefront of attractions amongst non-Vietnamese visiting Little Saigon. The community's history of food and cuisine is captured in a recent cookbook by Ann Le,[6] "The Little Saigon Cookbook: Vietnamese Cuisine and Culture in Southern California's Little Saigon."[7]

Various professional offices in another area of Little Saigon in Westminster

In 1984, the major

Chinese American supermarket chain 99 Ranch Market
(initially called 99 Price Market) had its first start in Little Saigon of California. However, unable to compete with many of the Vietnamese markets in the area, the flagship store has since closed and been replaced by another supermarket.

The two-story enclosed Asian Garden Mall was developed by the well-known and influential Little Saigon founder and developer Frank Jao (an ethnic Chinese born in

Chinese Indonesian and Taiwanese investors. Asian Garden Mall was opened in 1987. Owing to its fame, it tends to have the highest costs of rent in Little Saigon. Jao also developed another heavily frequented Vietnamese shopping center across the street, called Asian Village Center, and this center once contained a long court of Confucius
statues as motifs, but frequently vacant storefronts in the rear of the plaza were cleared to make way for housing developments. Today, a few of the original statues remain, along with a mural of the Trung Sisters.

Banks

The First Vietnamese American Bank in Westminster is the first to serve co-ethnic clientele (as well as reaching out to Korean and Hispanic clientele) in the United States. Saigon National Bank, located on Brookhurst Street is the first nationally chartered bank organized and owned by Vietnamese Americans in the United States. In addition, in attempting to attract Vietnamese clientele, several

Chinatrust Bank. Major banks—such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo
—also have branches with mostly Vietnamese-speaking staff and with Vietnamese signs to attract customers.

Media and entertainment center

The Tet Festival in Little Saigon, Orange County, California

Westminster is generally considered the main cultural center of the Vietnamese American community with several Vietnamese-language television stations, radio stations, and newspapers originating from Little Saigon and adjacent areas (for example, Costa Mesa and Santa Ana). For example, there are the newspapers of

Vien Dong Daily News
. Many Little Saigon newspaper offices are based on Moran Street in Westminster and Vien Dong Daily News also has its own auditorium.

There are also the broadcasts of

Orange County Register
.

Little Saigon has also emerged as the prominent center of the Vietnamese

Thuy Nga
, is located in the heart of Westminster.

Garden Grove Park is the location of an annual Vietnamese Lunar New Year festival held in late January - early February known as Tết. Small amusement park rides, dances, and contests are held in Garden Grove Park which is across the street from Bolsa Grande High School grounds and is hosted by the Union of Vietnamese Student Association (UVSA).

Transportation

In 2016, a free shuttle bus called Little Saigon Shuttle was inaugurated to provide free transportation along the busiest commercial stretch of Westminster, serving 22 stops along the 2.5 mile route. The service was stopped after 6 months in operation due to the high cost of maintaining it.[10] An intercity bus service named Xe Đò Hoàng connects the Little Saigon in Orange county to the one in San Jose and various other cities in California and Arizona with high concentration of Vietnamese Americans.[11]

Politics

flag of the former South Vietnam

Many in Westminster's Little Saigon are vehemently

anti-communist. Even with the normalization of U.S.–Vietnam relations in 1995, older Vietnamese are more emotional with a strongly held point of view on the Vietnam War and its aftermath.[12] Five Vietnamese editors were killed from 1981 to 1993 in what authorities around the country have deemed a series of political attacks.[13]

Anti-Ho Chi Minh protest of 1999

Main article: Hi-Tek incident

Before the

immigrants from the former South Vietnam - a curious irony since Tran himself was among the refugees who fled the country. Others that participated were some Vietnamese Americans from San Jose
.

Mass vigils with wavings of South Vietnamese flags and demonstrations (sometimes peaceful and sometimes coming close to a riot), in front of the store ensued. For example, an egg was tossed at Tran as he was entering his store. In a

Hi-Tek Incident
, Hi-Tek being the name of the store.

Despite such anti-communist fervor in Little Saigon, however, remittance services (which allow Vietnamese Americans to send money to family members in Vietnam) still remain popular and grocers stock merchandise imported from Vietnam.

Political representation

Vietnamese Americans, due to their large numbers, have exercised considerable political power in Westminster and Garden Grove. Many have won public offices in these two cities. In the 2007 special election to replace the county supervisor serving the district containing Little Saigon, the top two candidates were Vietnamese Americans, garnering almost half the votes in a crowded field of 8 candidates. While comprising 25% of the district's registered voters, Vietnamese Americans accounted for nearly half of all the absentee votes cast.[14] The winner would become the first Vietnamese-American county supervisor in the nation.

Several Vietnamese Americans serve in the Garden Grove and Westminster city councils. They have pressured the Westminster city council to recognize the former South Vietnamese flag and the Garden Grove city council to controversially designate it a "no-communist zone." In 2003, they helped raise money for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Westminster commemorating American and South Vietnamese soldiers. In 2004, Van Tran became the first Vietnamese American to be elected to a state legislature, representing parts of Orange County. Vietnamese Americans attend many city council meetings.

Generational divide

Orange County is the

POW) John McCain once made a campaign stop at the Asian Garden Mall. McCain also drew the ire of some younger Vietnamese Americans when he called his North Vietnamese captors "gooks" (a derogatory term for Asians in general). But other Vietnamese Americans in Orange County, especially U.S.-born, are also Democratic as the younger generations become more concerned with the rights of the blue-collar population in the United States, rather than the old-world politics of Vietnam. However, the registration rates for Republicans still outnumber Democrats, with 55% registered Republicans and only 22% registered Democrats.[15]

Future of the community

The Vietnamese American population has now begun to diffuse from Little Saigon to traditionally working-class Hispanic cities, such as Santa Ana and southward to professional middle-class predominantly white cities such as Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley.

Over the years, the vibrant community of Little Saigon has experienced frequent openings and closures of small mom-and-pop Vietnamese businesses, resulting in sights of some abandoned strip plazas. There is however a resurgence of developments which will begin to shape the future of the area. Recently, a Pho restaurant in the area won the James Beard award, signaling a change in the perception of Vietnamese culture and identity in the region.[16]

References

  1. S2CID 33321978
    .
  2. ^ Do, Anh (November 9, 2015). "Not your grandmother's Little Saigon: Entrepreneurs expand enclave's horizons". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on May 31, 2022. Retrieved November 8, 2015.
  3. ^ Do, Anh (March 21, 2019). "In Little Saigon, this newspaper has been giving a community a voice for 40 years". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2021-10-10. Retrieved 2019-04-02.
  4. ^ Merrill Balassone (October 23, 2005). "The heart of Little Saigon beats strong". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on January 23, 2009. Retrieved January 13, 2007.
  5. ^ Santa Cruz, Nicole (2011-05-24). "Orange County authorities cracking down on Vietnamese cafes". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2020-06-09. Retrieved 2020-06-09.
  6. ^ "Internap - Intelligent IT Infrastructure solutions that deliver unmatched performance and platform flexibility". Lalunchbox.com. 2014-02-17. Archived from the original on 2013-06-05. Retrieved 2014-02-23.
  7. ^ 借金返済にかかる時間 (1999-02-22). "借金返済の道のり". Littlesaigoncookbook.com. Archived from the original on 2014-02-14. Retrieved 2014-02-23.
  8. ^ Quyen Do (May 10, 2008). "A big Little Saigon Star". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on July 31, 2008. Retrieved July 28, 2008.
  9. ^ Andrew Vontz (February 19, 2006). "Hanoi Heart Throbs". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on January 15, 2008. Retrieved March 11, 2007.
  10. ^ Graham, Jordan (2017-05-03). "Local leaders blame Little Saigon Shuttle closure on political maneuvering". Orange County Register. Archived from the original on 2022-01-17. Retrieved 2022-01-17.
  11. ISBN 9780520971554
    .
  12. ^ Harris, Scott (April 30, 2015). "Returning to homeland, Vietnamese Americans make their mark". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on June 17, 2022. Retrieved May 1, 2015.
  13. ^ Mai Tran (March 12, 2004). "Shock Jock's Listeners Aren't All Talk". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on March 7, 2014. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
  14. Orange County Register. February 9, 2007. Archived
    from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved September 20, 2007.
  15. ^ "OC Blog: Post-Election Spinning". Archived from the original on October 14, 2007. Retrieved February 9, 2007.
  16. ^ "Pho 79 is the first Orange County restaurant to win a prestigious James Beard Foundation award". Orange County Register. 2019-01-30. Archived from the original on 2019-02-15. Retrieved 2019-02-14.

External links

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