Cambodian Fete Celebrates Start of Year of the Snake

Amid offerings of curried beef, incense and bananas, San Diego’s Cambodian community celebrated the start of the Year of the Snake on Saturday, ending three days of prayer with an all-day program of song, food and traditional dance.

More than 500 people crowded into the Colina Del Sol Park and Recreation Center in East San Diego to pay respects to their ancestors, exchange gossip and show off their brightly colored sampot, shimmering wraparound skirts worn by men and women.

Children ran screeching through the center, while their parents offered up everything from rice and tomatoes to soda pop and toilet paper for the saffron-robed monks who led the ceremony with prayers for a prosperous new year.

Time for Family Gatherings

But for many Cambodians, the New Year celebration is necessarily intertwined with the political situation in their homeland because the national holiday is a time for family gatherings, visiting relatives and commemorating ancestors.

“Every year, we do this to bring luck and happiness,” said Ouch Lim Heng, president of the Cambodian Buddhist Assn. (also known as the Sovann Kiry Buddhist Society), which helped organize the event.

“We light candles, we give bananas, apples and pears. . . . It grows a little every year,” said Ouch, resplendent in a starched white military-style jacket with epaulets and gold buttons.

Kok Neet, 48, another association member, said, “I really enjoy this. . . . We believe each year a fairy or God or angel saves the people.”

At the start of each year an astrologer envisions an angel in a particular pose. The image spreads through San Diego’s 6,000- to 7,000-member Cambodian community by word of mouth and announcements in Cambodian-language newspapers.

This year, the angel sits on an elephant, with a gun or weapon in her right hand and a cane in her left. She sleeps with her eyes open and eats soybean and sesame seeds.

Sokennedy Pen, a counselor at the Union of Pan-Asian Communities, a multiservice agency serving San Diego’s Indochinese refugee population, said the gun and cane symbolize a country handicapped by fighting among three resistance factions in anticipation of a withdrawal by Vietnamese troops later this year.

“(This) vision is bad,” Pen said. “We usually produce rice in our country. The sesame seed means starvation.”

But the angel’s eyes are open, Pen said,

and that means there is still hope.

Community storyteller Chhim Sem, 69, sat before the blue and red flag of a united, independent Cambodia and said he is hopeful that Cambodia will have itsindependence in the Year of the Snake.

“I have sorrow inside, but I am showing happiness. I expect Cambodian resolution this year, but seeing all these people together reminds me of my own family members still in camps on the (Cambodia-Thailand) border.”

Changes in international refugee policy have resulted in a decrease of Cambodian refugees coming to the United States, making family reunification nearly impossible.

Kung Chap, a state Department of Rehabilitation counselor in Long Beach, said one of his clients went to a local temple for the New Year celebrations “and when she saw all the husbands and wives and families together, paying respects, she cried and cried and cried and thought about suicide.

“She has no family here, she’s lonely and by herself. Her husband and child were killed by the Khmer Rouge. She went to the cemetery that night and started drinking,” Chap said.

For others, the New Year celebration becomes an important lesson in tradition.

With fewer Cambodians arriving and with the assimilation of newer generations, many say sustaining the Cambodian culture is at risk. New Year’s is one way to get young people interested in their country’s customs.

“Every year, no matter what, this is an important event,” said Prom Khean, a monk. “Even those who are Americanized will come here before going elsewhere. “Every year, we keep doing it as a big event so the children will not lose interest, so they will not think we have nothing.”

Saturday’s festivities included a beauty pageant and a raffle tree sprinkled with silver pieces of paper. People gave dollar bills for a piece of paper, which were then traded for balloons, canned fruit, candy, toothpaste, soap and other items.

Classical dances and a running commentary of stories, poems, prayers and general well-wishing accompanied the eating and drinking.

“You see, we still have today,” Chhim said. “We try to explain the culture over and over, we try to show them to make sure they remember.”

Vanna Soeng, 28, was on hand to pay respects to her late parents and grandparents. Praying with her 2-year-old daughter, Somarly, beside her, Soeng said she would teach her all of the Cambodian customs. But she doesn’t know what will happen when Somarly grows up.

“If she’s old enough, she will do what she wants to. . . . It’s up to her.”

Chantha Khoeun, an 18-year-old San Diego High School student, is not allowed to date and does not go out at night.

“My parents expect me to be like a Cambodian, to speak the language more often, . . . but I know some of it. I’ll teach it to my children.”

Chhim’s daughter, Sonnary, 15, is a student a Roosevelt Junior High in North Park but said she would be willing to return to Cambodia permanently. She knows the “Wishing Dance”--which she performs every New Year’s--by heart.

“This means a lot to me because I can get a new beginning and wash away the bad things. I can wish well to relatives that passed away. I really believe in it.”

7 Holidays a Year

Ton Chimvorn, an assessment counselor for the United Cambodian Community Inc., in Santa Ana, said Cambodians celebrate about seven holidays a year.

“But New Year’s is the big one. It’s very special. We meet, we play, we forget the troubles in the past and reach out for the future.

“It’s a time for the family to meet together. We bless everything, and we pray that in the future, we’ll meet our brothers and sisters and relatives again.”