Little Saigon is a name given to any of several overseas Vietnamese immigrant and descendant communities outside Vietnam, usually in the United States. Saigon is the former name of the capital of the former South Vietnam, where a large number of first-generation Vietnamese immigrants originate.
The well-established and largest Vietnamese-American enclaves, not all of which are called Little Saigon, are located in Orange County, California; San Jose; and Houston, Texas. Somewhat smaller communities also exist, including the comparatively nascent Vietnamese commercial districts in San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, and Orlando. Additionally, Vietnamese Americans of Chinese lineage have also established businesses and bringing distinctively Vietnamese elements to most Chinatowns, essentially blurring the line between a "Chinatown" and a "Little Saigon"; some examples would include the Chinatowns of Las Vegas, Chicago, Boston, Bellaire in Houston, or Honolulu.
Background
There has been relatively little direct immigration to the United States from the northern portions of Vietnam, although nearly one million North Vietnamese had already immigrated to the South during the partitioning of the country in 1954 and many of these subsequently immigrated to the U.S. from the South. This lack of immigration is partly due to the fact that the United States had refused to admit refugees from northern Vietnam. (In the mid-1990s, relations between the U.S. and Vietnam improved under President Bill Clinton, although many old-guard Vietnamese anti-Communists—many of them veterans of the ARVN in the Vietnam War—in several Little Saigon communities still strongly oppose formal U.S. diplomatic relations with the Communist government of Vietnam.). Today, comparatively newer Vietnamese immigrant arrivals hail from diverse regions from throughout Vietnam.
After the end of the Vietnam War, Vietnamese refugees began settling in refugee camps of Camp Pendleton, California, of Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, and of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. They were intentionally spread out of fear by the U.S. resettlement program that the new Vietnamese arrivals would cluster in "ghettos".
California
Orange County
History
The oldest, largest, and most prominent Little Saigon is in Westminster and Garden Grove in Orange County, California, where Vietnamese Americans constitute 30.7% and 21.4% of the population, respectively, as of the 2000 Census. Despite the title "Little Saigon," there are also many Hispanic and remaining white residents as well as some Cambodian and Laotian immigrants residing in the area.
About 45 miles south of Los Angeles, Westminster was once a predominantly White middle-class suburban city of Orange County with ample farmland, but the city later experienced a decline by the 1970s. Since 1978, the nucleus of Little Saigon has long been Bolsa Avenue, where early pioneers Danh Quach and Frank Jao established businesses. During that year, the well-known Nguoi Viet Daily News also began publishing from a home in Garden Grove. Other new Vietnamese-American arrivals soon revitalized the area by opening their own businesses in old, formerly white-owned storefronts, and investors constructed large shopping centers containing a mix of businesses. The Vietnamese community and businesses later spread into adjacent Garden Grove, Stanton, Fountain Valley, Anaheim, and Santa Ana.
In 1988, a freeway offramp sign was placed on the Garden Grove Freeway (State Route 22) designating the exits leading to Little Saigon.
Bolsa Avenue in Westminster's eastern neighbor, Santa Ana, has also been designated a Little Saigon, but there are fewer businesses in the area than in either Westminster or Garden Grove. In 2003, some controversies emerged in Santa Ana over a proposed Little Saigon sign to promote its burgeoning Vietnamese commercial area with a design incorporating Vietnamese translation and a South Vietnamese flag. The sign was approved, but redesigned and placed on Euclid Avenue and First Street.
The year 1987 saw an increase in Vietnamese-American street gang activity, as Westminster police reported an increase of extortion targeting small Vietnamese immigrant businesses. However, according to the Morgan Quitno annual study on the safety of individual US cities, both Garden Grove and Westminster are both safer than most US cities.
Layout and services
In Orange County, Little Saigon is now a wide, spread-out community dotted with a myriad of suburban-style strip malls containing a mixture of Vietnamese and Chinese Vietnamese businesses. It is located southwest of Disneyland between the State Route 22 and Interstate 405. However, the main focus of Little Saigon is the Bolsa Avenue center (where Asian Garden Mall and Little Saigon Plaza are considered the heart), which runs through Westminster and the street has been officially designated Little Saigon by the city council of Westminster in the late 1980s. The borders of Little Saigon can be considered to be Trask and McFadden on the north and south and Euclid and Magnolia on the east and west, respectively. About three-quarters of the population in this area are Vietnamese.
It is lined with numerous huge shopping centers and strip malls. As with many other Vietnamese American communities, competing mom-and-pop restaurants that serve Vietnamese cuisine especially Phở are abundant. There are approximately 200 restaurants in the area of Little Saigon and spilling over to Garden Grove, Fountain Valley, Santa Ana and Huntington Beach. In addition, there are quite a number of Vietnamese supermarkets, small Vietnamese delis and bakeries in Little Saigon specializing in French-style coffee and baguette sandwiches - indeed, a legacy of Vietnam's turbulent colonial past. Restaurants serving Chinese cuisine such as Teochew and Cantonese are also available but in smaller numbers. Adding to growth of Vietnamese markets in the area, the rapidly expanding Vietnamese supermarket superstore chain Shun Fat Supermarket (called in Vietnamese, Siêu thị Thuận Phát ) opened its doors in Westminster in 2005. Catering to the large Vietnamese population in the area are also professional offices of doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, etc. who speak Vietnamese. Food and authentic Vietnamese cuisine remains the forefront of attractions amongst non-Vietnamese visiting Little Saigon. The community's history of food and cuisine is captured in a recent cookbook by Ann Le, "The Little Saigon Cookbook: Vietnamese Cuisine and Culture in Southern California's Little Saigon."
In 1984, the major Chinese American supermarket chain 99 Ranch Market (initially called 99 Price Market) had its first start in Little Saigon of California. However, unable to compete with many of the Vietnamese markets in the area, the flagship store has since closed and been replaced by another supermarket.
The two-story enclosed Asian Garden Mall was developed by the well-known and influential Little Saigon founder and developer Frank Jao (an ethnic Chinese born in Haiphong, Vietnam) and bankrolled by Chinese Indonesian and Taiwanese investors. Asian Garden Mall was opened in 1987. Owing to its fame, it tends to have the highest costs of rent in Little Saigon. Jao also developed another heavily-frequented Vietnamese shopping center across the street, and this center once contained a long court of Confucius statues as motifs, but frequently vacant storefronts in the rear of the plaza were cleared to make way for housing developments. Today, a few of the original statues remain.
Banks
The First Vietnamese American Bank in Westminster is the first to serve co-ethnic clientele (as well as reaching out to Korean and Hispanic clientele) in the United States. Saigon National Bank, located on Brookhurst Street is the first nationally chartered bank organized and owned by Vietnamese Americans in the United States. In addition, in attempting to attract Vietnamese clientele, several Chinese American banks also operate sole Vietnamese-speaking branches in Little Saigon, including Cathay Bank, East West Bank, United Commercial Bank, and Chinatrust Bank. Major banks such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo also have branches with mostly Vietnamese-speaking staff and with Vietnamese signs to attract customers.
Plans of a tourist economy
There have been plans to turn Westminster's Little Saigon (Bolsa Avenue) into an ethnic tourist attraction, to draw tourists, particularly from Disneyland. Plans were proposed by Jao for a pedestrian-friendly area and a 500-foot bridge - with a projected cost of nearly $3 million - connecting several Vietnamese shopping centers as well as envisioning it to resemble historic Saigon. However, in 1996, a small committee made up of local ethnic Vietnamese residents decried the design of the bridge as being too heavily Chinese-influenced. The concept has since been scrapped.
Media and entertainment center
Westminster is generally considered the main cultural center of the Vietnamese American community with several
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