Welcoming the Lunar New Year

Janice Gibbons is a financial analyst, but Saturday she was a Vietnamese-food vendor in Garden Grove, hawking sweet corn and barbecued pork on a stick.

“The rest of the year I don’t really get to be Vietnamese,” said Gibbons, 28, who uses her maiden name, Cao, when she plunges back into the Vietnamese community.

She emigrated from Vietnam almost 20 years ago, and now lives in San Jose. “This is a chance to connect with my people,” she said, “to be around my people.”

Cao and thousands of others gathered at Garden Grove Park for the annual Tet festival, which marks the arrival of the Lunar New Year.

The three-day event, which began Friday and ends today, was celebrated with dance shows, martial arts demonstrations and a fashion show at the park.

Cao traveled to Orange County, home to 136,000 Vietnamese and the cultural center of the state’s Vietnamese immigrant population, to help relatives and friends make traditional dishes and sell them in one of the dozens of booths at the park.

Although San Jose has a sizable Vietnamese community, Southern California, with nearly 270,000, has the biggest in the country, making Vietnamese celebrations here that much more popular.

“It is just fun,” said Cao.

“My God! Yesterday, we were up until 1:30 in the morning looking for sweet corn. We didn’t go to sleep until 4.... But we had a great time.”

In neighboring Westminster, the ninth annual Tet parade on Bolsa Avenue showcased local dignitaries, politicians, high school bands and military-themed floats, which underscored the Vietnamese community’s recent history of war and separation.

The yellow and red flag of the former Republic of Vietnam was everywhere.

Some in the parade held signs calling for the fall of the Communist government that now rules the unified country once divided into North and South Vietnam. “Freedom for Vietnam,” one said.

Saturday also marked the kickoff of Black History Month in Orange County, with a parade down Santa Ana’s Civic Center Drive and Broadway. The 23rd annual event was expected to draw 5,000 marchers.

The Tet and Black History Month events have outgrown their ethnic identifications and have become landmark events in Orange County, attracting a diverse group of people.

The festival in Garden Grove was a mixture of Vietnamese cultural fair and American carnival, complete with a Ferris wheel and palm-reading booths.

Al and Julia Gomez of La Mirada were at the park enjoying the weather and eating barbecued pork from Cao’s booth.

Originally from Costa Rica, they have traveled from Thailand and Australia to Europe, said Al Gomez, 55.

Throughout the year, they attend about a dozen festivals, including Nisei festivities in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo and Indian Independence Day celebrations in Cerritos.

“Virtually every group of people in Southern California has a celebration,” he said.