Asian ‘Yuppies’ Hope to Bring Successful Tet : Festival: A younger group of sponsors without a lot of political baggage hope they can make a traditionally troubled Westminster celebration a winner in this Year of the Dog.

WESTMINSTER —  For as long as the Tet festival has flourished in Little Saigon, the lunar new year holiday has been cause for celebration of high culture and ancient history--and ground-level infighting and politicking.

This year was no exception. During the hazy heat of summer, the celebration appeared to be headed for its zodiac sign--the Year of the Dog.

With little fanfare in August, the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce quietly eased out as festival sponsor amid fears that demonstrating extremists would crash the community’s carnival because of the group’s staunch support for the end of Vietnam trade sanctions.

Festival fans started searching for saviors for the 5-year-old festival of lion dances and fireworks, the biggest annual tourist draw for Little Saigon.

Enter the Vietnamese yuppies, born in Vietnam, reared in Orange County, educated in California and--most important--free from the scars of longstanding grudges and Byzantine political connections, yet exhibiting all the stubborn qualities of the sign of the Dog.

With little more than two months to organize, a core group of twentysomethings with newly minted university degrees in engineering and computers, politics and business have taken over the daily operation of the festival. The actual sponsors, the Asian American Merchants Assn., is expecting more than 100,000 people to attend the three-day festival starting Feb. 11 on Bolsa Avenue.

“We were raised here and so we’re a little more direct,” said Van T. Tran, 29, one of the coordinators and a former law student who describes himself as a political activist. “We’re emphasizing culture and tradition in this festival because we want to stay away from politics. It’s just the wrong forum to spout off about the trade embargo.”

If politics is taboo, other more sensitive issues are not.

One issue is making the money-losing festival pay for itself, raising some profits for local charities. The other is drawing non-Vietnamese visitors to Little Saigon, where one of the lingering complaints is that the Vietnamese merchants and shopkeepers do little or nothing to market themselves to others. The third issue is nurturing unity in a community fractured by political causes rooted in homeland issues.

For the first time, according to Tran, the festival’s sponsors are purposely trying to reach out beyond its base to the broader community. They’ve invited other ethnic groups to participate in the entertainment such as troupes of Chinese acrobats and Mexican dancers. Volunteers for the festival have been solicited from Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese charity groups.

Their slogan stresses unity: Ket Hop Ve Tuong Lai-- United We Build for the Future.

In addition, the festival’s nine-member coordinating board was handpicked to include three non-Vietnamese members along with Frank Jao, a prominent Little Saigon developer who owns the festival site, 20 acres of land behind the 99 Market, a shopping center on Bolsa Avenue.

One new board member, Westminster Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Frank Zellner, said he hopes the festival’s attempt to reach out will “open the gate” to more mixing of ethnic groups.

“Maybe this is the first step,” said Zellner. “Once people see the participation by the other organizations outside the Vietnamese community maybe they’ll feel more comfortable. It is intimidating when you walk in there and you’re one of eight or 10,000 Vietnamese and you don’t know the language. . . . But we need to come together as a community and to work together. They certainly are a factor here and we need to understand each other’s cultures.”

The roots of the Little Saigon festival date back to 1989 when a local pediatrician and Vietnamese chamber president, Co Pham, approached Westminster officials with the notion of a staging a grand Tet festival in the heart of the community. The goal was to promote a citywide cultural celebration, drawing more business to the city.

But over the years, the festival has been plagued by various disputes. The Vietnamese press occasionally published articles questioning why the festival didn’t make money. During the Year of the Ram in 1991, the chamber shifted control of the festival to the Vietnamese Community Council of Southern California after a dispute with city officials over a $52,920.23 bill for the use of public facilities the previous year.

Money was also at issue when the Vietnamese chamber decided to bow out of this year’s festivities.

“It costs a lot of money to operate,” said Pham. “And second it bogs us down. If we were running it, we couldn’t do any other programs which we think the community needs.”

Then there was the chamber’s political vision and its support for the lifting of trade sanctions against Vietnam. Pham, an outspoken supporter, was a target of regular demonstrations.

“Five or six months ago, some of the extremists were picketing in front of my office regarding my stance on Vietnam,” said Pham, “The chamber didn’t think it wise to do the Tet festival. We were afraid that President Clinton would lift the sanctions around Tet. And we were afraid they might try to blame the lifting on me. So we decided to prevent any demonstrations by staying out of it.”

Last year, the festival made only $3,000 and drew about 30,000 people, mostly Vietnamese, according to Pham. But in the Year of the Dog, organizers are counting on cloud-free skies to draw more than 100,000 people to a multicultural event, and raise as much as $50,000 for charity, according to Jao, the developer.

Pham, the veteran organizer, worries that he has not seen enough of a publicity effort to achieve those lofty goals. However, the new organizers say it’s their strategy to wait until this Monday to start advertising extensively on the radio and newspapers.

The organizers concede their goals are optimistic, but then they are relying on the traditional qualities of the sign of the Dog: works well with others; generous yet stubborn.

* LUNAR NEW YEAR

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