Utah
Tet New Year celebration brings Utah Vietnamese community together
Lion dancers carry out at a Vietnamese New Yr Celebration on Saturday on the Utah Cultural Celebration Middle in West Valley. (Sydnee Gonzalez, KSL.com)
Estimated learn time: 4-5 minutes
WEST VALLEY CITY — Rosepark resident Van Tran says he grew up with the perfect of two worlds because the son of Vietnamese immigrants in Utah.
“Plenty of Vietnamese individuals right here know one another. All of us store in the identical shops and all the shop homeowners know one another, so it is very easy to get entangled,” he mentioned, including that it was each straightforward and troublesome to remain related to his tradition.
“My household invitations me out to all these things, however we grew up with public education and all the pieces. We obtained the perfect of each cultures,” Tran mentioned.”Vietnam continues to be below Chinese language authorities rule, which is communism, so it is actually laborious to personal something or do something in Vietnam. Plenty of the Vietnamese tradition, they need to come over right here to make a reputation for themselves.”
That was the case for Tran’s mother and father, who immigrated to the U.S. to pursue the American dream within the ’80s. The couple ran an Asian market close to Layton for 30 years till the pandemic compelled the shop to fold. Shedding the household enterprise was troublesome, however Tran mentioned celebrating the Vietnamese New Yr is sort of a contemporary begin.
“The whole lot is cleaned,” he mentioned. “I am enthusiastic about simply having the ability to get again on the market. We need to clearly be all profitable. Now {that a} pandemic is winding down and all the pieces, it is a good time for us to get again on the market and assist out one another.
“This place is filled with lots of people and we’re simply serving to one another out.”
Tran was certainly one of about 1,500 people who gathered on the Utah Cultural Celebration Middle in West Valley to have a good time Vietnamese New Yr on Saturday. The custom has been occurring for about 30 years in Utah however was on pause since 2020, when COVID unfold. The Vietnamese New Yr, often known as Tet Nguyen Dan or Tet for brief, is well known between mid-January to late-February. This yr, Tet falls on Jan. 22.
Tammy Luu, vice chairman of the Vietnamese American Group of Utah, mentioned her favourite a part of the celebration was seeing everybody come collectively to make the occasion a chance. She estimated round 10,000 Vietnamese People dwell in Utah.
“I am very proud to be a Vietnamese American, and I am very completely happy that I can have a neighborhood the place they’re very supportive,” she mentioned. “It is a very heat feeling to have the ability to have a good time and get collectively once more and have an opportunity to point out our children and grandkids that we do have a neighborhood and protect our tradition.”
Cultural traditions of Tet embrace a lion dance — which is completed to convey good luck and fortune into the brand new yr — in addition to Li Xi, “fortunate cash” that’s given to largely youngsters as a want of luck.
West Valley Metropolis Council member Tom Huynh, who fled Vietnam by boat when he was 19, mentioned the vacation is an opportunity to show his youngsters about Vietnamese traditions and replicate on them himself.
“You sit there and suppose for a second about the way in which your mother and pop taught you whenever you had been a bit of child, tips on how to respect individuals and tips on how to pay tribute to issues,” he mentioned. “I sit there and took time to suppose a bit of bit concerning the tradition, concerning the new yr and the lifestyle, approach again after I was little.”
It is not simply Luu and Huynh, and others who migrated from Vietnam, who’re attempting to protect the tradition. Youthful generations are additionally getting concerned. Haley Ngu, 17, began a a conventional Vietnamese fan dance group 4 years in the past to discover these traditions from the angle of youthful and older generations.
“I undoubtedly really feel like as you grow old, you notice youthful generations lose their traditions — particularly as a result of their mother and father are like, ‘Oh, we skilled this’ and so they don’t desire their children to,” Ngu mentioned. “However I believe our ideas on it are the alternative. We might a lot fairly have to choose our traditions over what we would like everybody to see about us.”
JJ Nguyen, 15, is a member of Ngu’s dance group, Doan Xuan Ca. She mentioned she seems like she’s been fading away from a few of these traditions.
“In America, I do not actually get my outdated conventional lot,” she mentioned. “Doing these sort of conventional dances sort of takes me again to my childhood.”
Rachel Nguyen, a first-generation Vietnamese immigrant who grew up in Utah, mentioned occasions like this assist her join along with her roots.
“Since I did develop up right here and a variety of that’s Western affect, I am very a lot Americanized and I do not know very a lot for Vietnamese,” she mentioned. “So it is good to be round neighborhood and know that that is what we do throughout New Years. It is one thing that you would be able to take with you.”