| Little Saigon |
Article Index for Little |
Shopping Saigon |
Website Links For Little |
Information AboutLittle Saigon |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT LITTLE SAIGON | |
| orange county, california | |
| neighborhoods in houston | |
| ethnic enclaves | |
| vietnamese diaspora | |
|
After the end of the Vietnam War , Vietnamese refugees began settling in refugee camps of Camp Pendleton , California , of Fort Chaffee , Arkansas , and of Eglin Air Force Base , Florida . They were intentionally spread out of fear by the U.S. resettlement program that the new Vietnamese arrivals would cluster in " Ghetto s". The well-established and largest Little Saigons are located in Orange County, California , Houston, Texas , and San Jose, California , although somewhat smaller Vietnamese American enclaves such as have cropped up, including the comparatively nascent Vietnamese commercial districts in San Francisco , San Diego , and Sacramento, California as well as in Orlando, Florida . Additionally, Vietnamese Americans of Chinese lineage have also established businesses and bringing distinctively Vietnamese elements to most Chinatown s, essentially blurring the line between a "Chinatown" and a "Little Saigon"; some examples would include the Chinatowns of Boston, Massachusetts , Houston, Texas (Bellaire Chinatown)or Honolulu, Hawaii . This article below deals exclusively with the "Little Saigons" within the United States of America; for other "Little Saigons" and similar Vietnamese communities outside Vietnam, refer to the Viet Kieu article. CALIFORNIA Orange County History The oldest, largest, and most prominent Little Saigon is in Westminster and Garden Grove in Orange County, California where Vietnamese American s constitute 30.7% and 21.4% of the population, respectively, as of 2000 Census . Whereas ethnic Vietnamese are predominant in population, in many cases, the population also consists of some people of Chinese Vietnamese origin, many of whom arrived during the second refugee wave in 1980 and own a large share of businesses in Little Saigon today. Despite the title "Little Saigon," there are also many Hispanic and remaining white residents as well as some Cambodian and Laotian immigrants residing in the area. About 50 miles north of Camp Pendleton, Westminster was once a predominantly White Middle-class suburban city 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. 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 ( California State Highway 22 ) designating the exits leading to Little Saigon. Bolsa Avenue in Westminster's eastern neighbor, Santa Ana, California , has also been designated a Little Saigon, but there are fewer businesses in the area than in either Westminster or Garden Grove. In 2003, there were some controversies 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 Avenue and First Street. The year 1987 saw an increase in Vietnamese American Street Gang activity, as Westminster Police reported an increase of Extortion targeting small Vietnamese immigrant businesses. However, according to the Morgan Quitno annual study on the safety of individual US cities, both Garden Grove and Westminster are both safer than most US cities. 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 west of Disneyland between the California State Highway 22 and Interstate 405 . However, the main focus of Little Saigon is the Bolsa Avenue center (where Asian Garden Mall and Little Saigon Plaza are considered the heart), which runs through Westminster and the street has been officially designated Little Saigon by the City Council of Westminster in the late 1980s. It is lined with numerous huge shopping centers and strip malls. As with many other Vietnamese American communities, competing mom-and-pop restaurants that serve Vietnamese cuisine (especially Phở {Link without Title} beef noodles) are abundant. There are approximately 200 hundred restaurants in the area of Little Saigon and spilling over to Fountain Valley, Santa Ana and Huntington Beach. In addition, there are quite a number of Vietnamese supermarkets, small Vietnamese delis and bakeries in Little Saigon specializing in French-style Coffee and Baguette sandwiches - indeed, a legacy of Vietnam's turbulent colonial past. Restaurants serving Chinese cuisine such as Teochew and Cantonese are also available but in smaller numbers. 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'' 超市順發) 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, "The Little Saigon Cookbook: Vietnamese Cuisine and Culture in Southern California's Little Saigon." 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 Haiphong , Vietnam) and bankrolled by 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, 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. =Banks Despite stereotypes of the distrust of banks and tendency to keep money at home by Vietnamese immigrants, financial institutions operate within Little Saigon. The First Vietnamese American Bank in Westminster is the first to serve co-ethnic clientele in the United States. In addition, in attempting to attract Vietnamese clientele, several Chinese American banks also operate sole Vietnamese-speaking branches in Little Saigon, including Cathay Bank , East West Bank , and Chinatrust Bank . =Plans of a tourist economy There have been plans to turn Westminster's Little Saigon (Bolsa Avenue) into an ethnic Tourist Attraction , to draw tourists, particularly from Disneyland . Plans were proposed by Jao for a pedestrian-friendly area and a 500-foot bridge - with a projected cost of nearly $3 million - connecting several Vietnamese shopping centers as well as envisioning it to resemble historic Saigon. However, in 1996, a small committee made up of local ethnic Vietnamese residents decried the design of the bridge as being too heavily Chinese-influenced. The concept has since been scrapped. =Media and entertainment center 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 '' 106.3 FM). At least one radio station broadcast 24 hours a day in Vietnamese. In addition, many advertisements in Los Angeles area Vietnamese-language programming and publications invariably refer to businesses in Westminster. Many stories about the Vietnamese American community in Orange County are regularly featured in '' The Orange County Register ''. Little Saigon has also emerged as the prominent center of the Vietnamese Pop Music industry with several recording studios, even more so than in Vietnam itself. Vietnamese music recorded in Westminster are distributed and sold in Vietnamese communities throughout the United States and in Australia , France , and Germany as well as illegally in Vietnam. As many as 30 studios once operated in Little Saigon, but the effects of Piracy have reduced the number of companies remaining.
Crime in the Community San Gabriel Valley Due to the large influx and presence of relatively poor ethnic Chinese refugees from Vietnam in the 1980s (which also coincided with the arrival of immigrant elite from Taiwan and Hong Kong ), the San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles has another important concentration of Vietnamese in Southern California. While not generally referred to as "Little Saigon", the stretch of Garvey Avenue in the working-class Barrio s of Rosemead, California , South El Monte, California , and El Monte, California have a relatively heavy but scattered collection of businesses owned mainly by majority ethnic Chinese Vietnamese with a growing number of ethnic Vietnamese residents and business owners as well. Many of these businesses are housed in tiny strip malls whereas others occupy freestanding, aging buildings. These Vietnamese businesses are very gradually replacing businesses owned by Hispanics. Rosemead is the Vietnamese center of the San Gabriel Valley. One particular shopping center in Rosemead, called Diamond Square, is anchored by the Taiwanese American chain 99 Ranch Market and contains various Chinese Vietnamese small businesses and a food court catering to local Asians. It remains a major hub for working-class Vietnamese and Mainland Chinese expatriates residing in the area. Many Vietnamese of ethnic Chinese origin also tend to own countless businesses - especially supermarkets, restaurants, beauty parlors, and auto repair shops - in the main general mixed-Chinese commercial thoroughfares of Garvey Avenue in Monterey Park, California and Valley Boulevard in Alhambra, California , San Gabriel, California , and Rosemead. There are already several pho and banh mi eateries represented along Valley Boulevard. The Sriracha hot sauce manufacturer Huy Fong Foods( known for its rooster logo and found in countless Vietnamese restaurants) is owned by a Chinese Vietnamese refugee named David Tran and was originally located in Chinatown, Los Angeles but it relocated to its larger facility in Rosemead. In 2005, John Tran became the first Vietnamese American to be elected to a seat on the city council of Rosemead. San Jose With about 9% of the population being Vietnamese-American, San Jose 's Little Saigon is almost comparable to the one in Orange County. San Jose has by far more Vietnamese residents than any other United States city. Vietnamese language radio programs from Orange County are also rebroadcasted in the region. The San Jose Mercury News has a Vietnamese-language edition, along with other publications. Several shopping malls on Tully Road cater to Vietnamese tastes, such as the incredibly popular Grand Century Mall. The popular Lee's Sandwiches (a Vietnamese Bánh Mi Sandwich chain eatery) as well as the semi-authentic Vietnamese pho chain Pho Hoa Restaurant had their first locations here. The Vietnamese community in San Jose, however, is more integrated into the local community, and is generally not as high-profile as other places. Sacramento With a large and growing Vietnamese American population, Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento has an informal "Little Saigon". Although settlement of Vietnamese refugees began during the 1980s, large numbers of Vietnamese have moved from the San Jose area to the Sacramento area since the late 1990s and 2000s (especially after the dot-com bust in Silicon Valley). The large Asian supermarket Shun Fat Supermarket (a small Southern California-based chain owned by a Chinese Vietnamese American) has opened in 2000 to cater to the local community and anchors Pacific Plaza. There are nearby Vietnamese shopping centers planned for development, including Little Saigon Plaza (to be anchored by a supermarket) that is to be developed by prominent San Jose-based Vietnamese American developers. Other current shopping centers sport names such as Little Vietnam and Pacific Rim Plaza. Sources: http://sacbee.com/content/business/story/11422250p-12336442c.html and http://www.creforum.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=87 San Francisco San Francisco has now officially designated a Little Saigon on Larkin Street in the Tenderloin district. Long being a major Vietnamese community (unlike San Jose with its larger ethnic Vietnamese population, the ethnic Chinese from Vietnam are especially represented in San Francisco as a result of self-imposed segregation from ethnic Vietnamese), and attracting Vietnamese from San Jose, a number of community activists have supported making this Tenderloin neighborhood into a Little Saigon. Soon, there will be an official entrance constructed, much in the same way as the Japantown and Chinatown in San Francisco. Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle here. Oakland Many of Oakland 's Vietnamese businesses are concentrated along International Boulevard and East 12th Street in the San Antonio district. The Oakland suburb of San Pablo has a pan-Asian shopping center called San Pablo Marketplace, developed by Orange County-based developer Frank Jao. San Diego When the "first wave" of Vietnamese immigrants started to arrive in the late 1970's/early 1980's, many settled in the communities adjacent to San Diego State Univerisity, such as City Heights and Talmadge, better known as East San Diego. As families and individuals became more affluent however, many relocated to other communities in the city: Linda Vista, Clairemont, Serra Mesa, etc. (Central San Diego) and what was then brand-new tract communities such as Mira Mesa, Rancho Penasquitos, Rancho Bernardo, etc.) With a population of about 35,000 people (U.S. Census Bureau), the San Diego metropolitan area ranks as one of the largest Vietnamese communities in the United States. Because of the Vietnamese population's unique migration patterns in the city, it does not have a huge concentration of Vietnamese businesses in a particular area like other metropolitan areas (e.g., San Jose, Houston, etc.) Still, there are 3 notable Vietnamese business disticts in the San Diego region: Mira Mesa Blvd. (North San Diego), El Cahon Blvd. (East San Diego), and Convoy Street/Linda Vista Road (Central San Diego). COLORADO Following the development of the Far East Center shopping complex, a growing Vietnamese commercial district is emerging on Federal Boulevard between Evans and Alameda Avenues in Denver, Colorado , with already choices of Vietnamese cuisine eateries and various businesses. This particular area has already been promoted as evidence of the city's cultural diversity. FLORIDA A thriving Vietnamese quarter called "Little Vietnam" exists on East Colonial Drive in the Colonialtown district of Orlando, Florida . GEORGIA There are many Vietnamese businesses located in the mixed-Asian – that is, co-existing with ethnic Korean and Chinese businesses – commercial and cultural strip of Buford Highway in Doraville and Chamblee , which are working-class suburbs of Atlanta . Although a fair number of post-war Vietnamese refugees settled in Atlanta earlier, many Vietnamese Americans from California and other parts of the United States have been relocating into the Atlanta area and making a fairly large presence since the 1990s. Many of the "Vietnamese" commercial enterprises along Buford Highway are dominated by ethnic Chinese Vietnamese. ILLINOIS Argyle Street in the city of Chicago contains a Little Saigon district, and it has become the hub of vibrant Vietnamese culture in the city. It is erroneously referred to by Chicagoans as the "New Chinatown." LOUISIANA Louisiana is home to many Vietnamese, many of whom especially engaged in traditional fishing. New Orleans has a small "Little Saigon" in the eastern part of the city. There is a Vietnamese business section in Baton Rouge , located near the 12000 block of Florida Blvd (Hwy 190), which consists of restaurants, grocery stores, and other various businesses. MISSISSIPPI A small "Little Saigon" can be found on Oak Street in Biloxi . MICHIGAN While not titled as a "Little Saigon", the suburban community of Madison Heights in the Detroit area has become a center of Vietnamese commerce. Located on John R Road, several Vietnamese markets, pho noodle soup restaurants, and beauty salons have cropped up along the street. NEW MEXICO A small "Little Saigon" community thrives in Southeast Albuquerque , New Mexico . Located on and around Central Avenue, the community consists of various Vietnamese restaurants and markets. OKLAHOMA Like Seattle, Oklahoma City has a significant Vietnamese American business district in a gentrified area in the center part of the city. Thousands of Vietnamese refugees were relocated to Oklahoma City during the 1980s and have established businesses in much of the old Uptown 23rd and Classen business districts. While the area is officially known as the Asia District because of the abundant Asian diversity of the area, much of the "Little Saigon" portion centres on Military Dr. Little Saigon features numerous Pho Café s and Asian Supermarket s. There are even a few hopping nightclubs and videobars joining the growing list of Chinese , Thai , Filipino , and Korea n establishments that make up the remainder of the Asia District. PENNSYLVANIA South Philadelphia near the Italian Market has a large Vietnamese American population. Many Vietnamese businesses tucked in strip malls have emerged on Washington Street to service the local immigrant population. The Vietnamese sandwich '' Banh Mi '' is gaining much attention in Philadelphia and is now competing with the Philly Cheesesteak . TEXAS A major Little Saigon can also be found in Houston , a strip along Bellaire Boulevard west of the city of Bellaire . The redevelopment of Midtown Houston from run-down to upscale has increased Property Value s and Property Tax es, thus forcing the Vietnamese Americans out of their current Neighborhood into other areas. One of the largest Vietnamese supermarkets in the Bellaire district is called Hong Kong Supermarket, located in Hong Kong City Mall at the crossroads of Bellaire and Boone. Another Vietnamese supermarket was recently opened near Texas Beltway 8 and Beechnut, called Viet Hoa International Foods. These supermarkets, along with various smaller outfits across Houston area, provide great selections of Asian produce and foodstuffs, and prices are very reasonable. In 2004, the area has been officially named "Little Saigon" by the city of Houston. Citing source: http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2004/05/10/tidbits1.html There are a number of unofficial Little Saigons around Dallas area. 1) First one is located in the city of Garland along Walnut Street between Audelia Road and Jupiter Road. This is the largest one around. There are three large supermarkets (Hiep Thai, Truong Nguyen and Hong Kong) each is located on a different shopping complex and a number of restaurants. 2) Second one is in Arlington on Pioneer Parkway with a few supermarkets (Saigon-Taipei, Hong Kong) and restaurants. 3) The third one is in Irving on Beltline Road with "Little Saigon Mall". 4) Vietnamese businesses can also be found in other nearby cities of Richardson , Carrollton and Haltom City . Vietnamese Yellow Page in DFW: http://vndfw.com VIRGINIA The Washington, D.C. suburb of Seven Corners in Fairfax County, Virginia is home to the largest Vietnamese American population and cultural center on the eastern seaboard. While there is no full-fledged "Little Saigon" to speak of, the most prominent hub for local-area Vietnamese is the massive and highly-elaborate shopping mall called the Eden Center , complete with a garden and an arch to signifying its entrance. WASHINGTON Seattle, Washington has a significant, prosperous Vietnamese American business district centered at 12th Avenue and Jackson Street, immediately east of the city's considerably older Chinatown . This area has not been officially designated a "Little Saigon", although a few street signs with this name have been erected. Rather, the area – along with the Chinatown – has retained the longstanding name International District (now officially Chinatown/International District, but often just "The I.D."), dating back about a century. The predominantly Chinese and predominantly Vietnamese areas are separated from one another by Interstate 5 , but there is easy pedestrian and car access between the two. FILMING LOCATIONS IN LITTLE SAIGON
SEE ALSO
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|