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SAN JOSE — The heavy rain clouds that hung over San Jose early Saturday cleared in time for a Vietnamese-style celebration of the Year of the Pig at one of San Jose’s largest Lunar New Year festivals at Eastridge Center.
The family-friendly festival, which continues Sunday in the parking lot of the center, includes carnival rides and games, booths by community groups, live performances, a fashion show and a lion dance. Festival-goers can also enjoy food cooked by local restaurants and vendors, including sweet coconut waffles, barbecue meat-on-a-stick, noodle soups and sticky rice cakes.
Lunar New Year is celebrated in several Asian countries, including, China, Vietnam, Laos, Singapore and Korea. In Vietnam, the holiday is known as Tet.
The festival — and San Jose’s Little Saigon — draw Vietnamese Americans across the region, like Hoi Nguyen, who drove with his family from Sacramento so his American-born children, five grandchildren and extended family, could see Tet traditions.
“A lot of the Vietnamese are down here, so we thought, it’s better to come down (to San Jose), it’s more fun,” said Nguyen, who said it was his family’s first time celebrating Tết in San Jose.
The two largest Vietnamese communities outside Vietnam are in San Jose and Orange County, with Orange County being the densest and most established Little Saigon in the world.
For families like Nguyen’s, the Tet Festival is an opportunity to enjoy a sense of community and show younger generations the traditions that families in Vietnam can celebrate for weeks.
Hang Tran, who has lived in San Jose for more than 20 years, sold hand-painted calligraphy banners and paintings at a booth along with traditional hats, parasols and tiny toy rickshaws. The banners are often hung over the entryways of homes and businesses to bring good luck and prosperity for the year.
Volunteers from Huyen Khong Monastary, a new Buddhist temple on Story Road, were among the food vendors selling popular snacks like spring rolls, banh cam (fried sesame dough balls stuffed with sweet mung beans), banh u (sticky rice dumplings) and nuoc mia (sugarcane juice).
Minh Nghia, who makes yogurt every weekend for the temple to sell, said volunteers for the temple came from Antioch, Modesto and as far as Los Angeles to help cook for the Tet Festival, as a fundraiser to raise money for construction of the temple.
“We just bought the property four years ago and we are still applying for a permit to construct the temple,” said Nghia, adding that the temple’s altar and worship space is housed under temporary plastic tents. “But we always have to fundraise, because the temple is still so poor.”
Bryan Chien, 30, who runs the Tono Coffee Project in East San Jose near where he grew up, brewed a gourmet twist on traditional Vietnamese coffee, ca phe sua, which is brewed in a drip filter and sweetened with condensed milk. Chien, through an “intricate cooking process,” makes his condensed milk from oatmilk.
“I served a bunch of old Vietnamese dudes ca phe sua da (iced coffee) the whole weekend, and the whole time it was vegan, but they didn’t say anything,” said Chien, referring to the first time he served Vietnamese coffee at the Tet Festival last year. “So that was pretty cool.”
The heavy rain Friday put a damper on attendance, but by noon Saturday, the festival was full of families. The festival is free, and continues Sunday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Contact Thy Vo at 408-200-1055 or tvo@bayareanewsgroup.com.
