Regarding Vietnam, Little Saigon’s Traders Are Gaining on the Haters

It’s an article of faith in Orange County’s Little Saigon: Somehow, someday, the defeated nation of South Vietnam will rise again.

Though the Communists won the war 28 years ago today, belief that the government of Vietnam will fall is promoted on Vietnamese-language radio and used as a litmus test for politicians in this community of Vietnamese expatriates -- the nation’s largest. Those who dare challenge the orthodoxy face ridicule, even violence.

But for all the widespread anti-Communist rhetoric, many in the Vietnamese American community, especially the young, are quietly coming to terms with reality.

They are traveling in increasing numbers to their homeland. Doing business with the Communist government. And, like Dung Tran of Garden Grove, sending money to family members.

“They are old and need some spending money,� the 39-year-old mother of three said after wiring her latest check for $400. “They are my parents, my blood -- I can’t leave them stranded. The war is over.�

In 2000, the most recent year for which figures are available, some 137,000 visas were issued to Vietnamese Americans for travel to Vietnam, twice as many as three years before. Last year, Vietnamese living overseas sent $2.2 billion to family back home, twice as much as in 1999, according to the Vietnamese embassy. And more than half that money comes from the United States, the embassy says.

“People send money home all the time; they travel there whenever they can,� said Minh-Hoa Ta, an assistant professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. “Everybody knows.... But you don’t talk about [it], because you can get in trouble.�

One measure of the political climate in Little Saigon and Vietnamese communities in cities such as San Jose and Houston is the reverence paid to the flag of the Republic of South Vietnam, a country that no longer exists. Vietnamese community leaders this year persuaded Westminster and Garden Grove to designate the red-and-yellow flag for regular display at official functions, prompting an angry rebuke last week from the Communist government.

Anti-Communist fervor is easily roused in the expatriate communities. Those who supported the 1994 normalization of relations with the U.S. were harassed, and a video store owner who displayed the red flag of Communist Vietnam in 1999 sparked large rallies whose angry demonstrators forced his business to close.

“When you live within an anti-Communist community, you better not show or do something that can give the assumption that you are helping the enemy,� said longtime community leader Cong Minh Tran, 63. “It’s offensive to all of us who fled for our lives.�

Among the most vociferous proponents of anti-Communism is Van Vo, a 53-year-old former South Vietnamese naval officer. He runs a local Vietnamese-language radio station from the back of his Garden Grove variety store, which sells perfume, herbs, telephone cards and music videos.

His nightly program, “Living in America,� is nonstop politics. South Vietnamese flags are displayed in his studio, above the entrance to his shop and on the rear-view mirror of his car -- constant reminders, he says, of the oppression that millions endure daily in Vietnam.

“It is the flag that represents the people of Vietnam,� Vo said. “Our homeland has only one flag.�

Vo says he believes that the U.S. war on terrorism will eventually focus on Vietnam, which he maintains, without providing evidence, helped Iraq in the recent war. One day, he says, the U.S. will invade Vietnam again and liberate his people.

Vo uses the airwaves to incite his audience to demonstrations and boycotts. He tells listeners they shouldn’t go to Vietnam, buy imported Vietnamese merchandise or send money to relatives. It all helps prop up the Communist-controlled economy.

“It’s the first step we can do while living in America,� he tells listeners. “They will lose their source of funding and collapse.�

While community leaders such as Vo continue to define the public debate in Little Saigon, Vietnamese Americans increasingly are redefining the exile experience -- many through countless private actions that transcend politics -- and some with dramatic business ventures.

Among these is a 49-year-old Orange County man who keeps a foot in both worlds.

In the Vietnamese community, he’s a successful sales consultant. His other business -- a pair of canning factories he opened two years ago in one of the poorest regions of Vietnam -- he keeps secret. Fearing reprisals from anti-Communists he must work with to make a living in Orange County, he spoke on condition of anonymity.

“A lot of people here don’t think like I do,� he said. “I don’t want to hurt my family and the life we have here.�

At 18, he was drafted into the South Vietnamese army. Wounded in combat, he was assigned to the nation’s Secret Service, guarding the presidential palace. His father was a high-ranking army official. He and his family escaped by boat in 1975, but several uncles were imprisoned. Today, he pays taxes to Vietnam’s Communist government as he tries to jump aboard that country’s fast-emerging economy. In 2002, Vietnam’s imports to the U.S. amounted to nearly $2.4 billion -- 127% more than in the year before, according to the U.S.-Vietnam Trade Council.

“I don’t support the Vietnam government, but I think ... that I am helping my countrymen by providing a decent job, decent money, a decent life,� he said, sitting at a Starbucks, his sparkling European car parked in the lot nearby. The risk he took with the venture played out in his marriage: His wife, a vocal anti-Communist and well-known Little Saigon businesswoman, divorced him, partly out of fear that word of his deal would destroy her own business.

“I think it’s time to let go of the past,� he said. “We should focus on the economics in Vietnam and put the politics aside.�

Many have. The owner of a Little Saigon music store says business is brisk in the pirated CDs of Vietnam’s hottest singers. She, too, doesn’t want her name used because selling the work of these artists would be criticized by some locally.

And yet anti-Communists she knows buy them. Guilty pleasures that they keep to themselves.

“I don’t feel guilty selling Vietnam CDs because it is music, not politics. They’re love songs,� she says. “The extremists and older generation are looking for revenge. It’s too late to fight. It’s the past. It’s over.�

Nowhere, though, are the views of the Vietnamese American community changing more quickly than among the children and grandchildren of those who fled.

It is a quiet evolution, in keeping with Vietnamese cultural norms that dictate respect for the views of elders -- even if they are not shared. These new generations see the South Vietnamese flag, for instance, as less an emblem of a nation than an heirloom of their family’s exile experience.

“I don’t care about these issues as much as my parents do,� said Viet Nguyen, an associate professor of English and American Studies at USC. But Nguyen’s parents, who lost their business when they fled Vietnam, don’t know this. He’s never spoken about it to them.

“It wouldn’t be a productive conversation,� the 32-year-old said. “The anti-Communism of my parents is so deeply set, it would be so hard to have a dialogue.... We don’t want to be disrespectful of the older generation. So the only practical way to deal with this is wait.�