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WEST VALLEY CITY — Rosepark resident Van Tran says he grew up with the best of two worlds as the son of Vietnamese immigrants in Utah.
"A lot of Vietnamese people here know each other. We all shop in the same stores and all the store owners know each other, so it's really easy to get involved," he said, adding that it was both easy and difficult to stay connected to his culture.
"My family invites me out to all this stuff, but we grew up with public schooling and everything. We got the best of both cultures," Tran said."Vietnam is still under Chinese government rule, which is communism, so it's really hard to own anything or do anything in Vietnam. A lot of the Vietnamese culture, they want to come over here to make a name for themselves."
That was the case for Tran's parents, who immigrated to the U.S. to pursue the American dream in the '80s. The couple ran an Asian market near Layton for 30 years until the pandemic forced the store to fold. Losing the family business was difficult, but Tran said celebrating the Vietnamese New Year is like a fresh start.
"Everything is wiped clean," he said. "I'm excited about just being able to get back out there. We want to obviously be all successful. Now that a pandemic is winding down and everything, it's a good time for us to get back out there and help out each other.
"This place is packed with a lot of people and we're just helping each other out."
Tran was one of about 1,500 individuals who gathered at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center in West Valley to celebrate Vietnamese New Year on Saturday. The tradition has been happening for about 30 years in Utah but was on pause since 2020, when COVID spread. The Vietnamese New Year, known as Tet Nguyen Dan or Tet for short, is celebrated between mid-January to late-February. This year, Tet falls on Jan. 22.
Tammy Luu, vice president of the Vietnamese American Community of Utah, said her favorite part of the celebration was seeing everyone come together to make the event a possibility. She estimated around 10,000 Vietnamese Americans live in Utah.
"I'm very proud to be a Vietnamese American, and I'm very happy that I'm able to have a community where they're very supportive," she said. "It's a very warm feeling to be able to celebrate and get together again and have a chance to show our kids and grandkids that we do have a community and preserve our culture."
Cultural traditions of Tet include a lion dance — which is done to bring good luck and fortune into the new year — as well as Li Xi, "lucky money" that is given to mostly children as a wish of luck.
West Valley City Council member Tom Huynh, who fled Vietnam by boat when he was 19, said the holiday is a chance to teach his children about Vietnamese traditions and reflect on them himself.
"You sit there and think for a moment about the way your mom and dad taught you when you were a little kid, how to respect people and how to pay tribute to things," he said. "I sit there and took time to think a little bit about the culture, about the new year and the way of life, way back when I was little."
It's not just Luu and Huynh, and others who migrated from Vietnam, who are trying to preserve the culture. Younger generations are also getting involved. Haley Ngu, 17, started a a traditional Vietnamese fan dance group four years ago to explore those traditions from the perspective of younger and older generations.
"I definitely feel like as you get older, you realize younger generations lose their traditions — specifically because their parents are like, 'Oh, we experienced this' and they don't want their kids to," Ngu said. "But I think our thoughts on it are the opposite. We would much rather have to pick our traditions over what we want everyone to see about us."
JJ Nguyen, 15, is a member of Ngu's dance group, Doan Xuan Ca. She said she feels like she's been fading away from some of those traditions.
"In America, I don't really get my old traditional lot," she said. "Doing these kind of traditional dances kind of takes me back to my childhood."
Rachel Nguyen, a first-generation Vietnamese immigrant who grew up in Utah, said events like this help her connect with her roots.
"Since I did grow up here and a lot of that is Western influence, I'm very much Americanized and I don't know very much for Vietnamese," she said. "So it's nice to be around community and know that this is what we do during New Years. It's something that you can take with you."
