Symposium 2003

Ph_ and Apple Pie: Eden Center as a Representation of Vietnamese-American Ethnic Identity in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area from 1975-Present

by Jessica Meyers


Discovering Eden Center: An Introduction

Two stoic stone lions guard the entrance. Between them a red arch frames the complex and calligraphic gold letters announce the name, “Eden Center.” One might assume that the sign provides entry to a sleepy Chinese palace sitting on a hill outside of Beijing or a thriving Buddhist temple along the Mekong River in Laos. However, a glimpse to the left reveals a newly renovated GAP and the Seven Corners junction that joins several major roads in northern Virginia.
The words etched into the sign describe the buildings that make up the largest Vietnamese commercial center on the East Coast of North America. Despite the Passats and SUVs residing outside store entrances, Eden does feel like a miniature replica of a Vietnamese city. Young Vietnamese men gaze sleepily from behind café shop windows as mothers scold their children from across the parking lot in the multiple tones that characterize the Vietnamese language.
Set on the corner of Wilson Boulevard at Seven Corners in Falls Church, Virginia, Eden Center serves as the most visible point of interaction among the dispersed Vietnamese community in the Washington DC metropolitan area as well as for other Vietnamese Americans along the East Coast. The complex boasts throngs of shops selling ph_, a traditional Vietnamese noodle soup flavored with anise and a signature meal in Vietnam. Vietnamese run and own the businesses, which also include an extensive array of regional restaurants from Vietnam’s numerous provinces, jewelry boutiques, bakeries, delis, music and video stores, travel agencies that offer transportation to and from Vietnam and money wiring offices where one can carry out all business in Vietnamese. The center also houses an assortment of barbers, electronics outlets, nail salons and two Vietnamese markets to total over 120 stores.


Eden’s looming clock tower mirrors the design of its shopping center namesake in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. The American center’s building design, however, differs from the original. At Eden, five separate structures surround the parking lot in 1950’s American strip mall fashion and two giant flagpoles demand the attention of every visitor. Perhaps most intriguing, flying from one is the stars and stripes of the United States and from the other the red stripes and yellow background of the flag of the former Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam. The two flags add a political dimension to this seemingly innocuous place and suggest that Eden Center, with its multiple sources of identity, represents more than the standard United States outdoor mall.
The parking lot fills to bursting on weekends when Vietnamese from as far away as Tennessee and New York come to purchase rare ingredients for Vietnamese dishes, visit with friends or sip cà phê súa, Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk. The atmosphere is multigenerational, although single men tend to dominate the coffee shops as they would in Vietnam. Amid the fish sauce, silk for traditional ao dai dresses and camaraderie, Eden Center serves as a recreation of Vietnam in the United States, a place where Vietnamese Americans can come together to celebrate their Vietnamese roots in an American context.


According to the 2000 census, 1,122,528 self-identified Vietnamese reside in the United States and comprise eleven percent of the Asian American population, now eleven million strong. The broader Vietnamese community, however, has the fastest rate of growth of the six largest Asian American groups, including that of Koreans and Indians, with 134.8% since 1980. Over one million Vietnamese settled in the United States since 1975. Today, the DC metropolitan area, a region that includes northern Virginia and suburban Maryland, boasts the third largest Vietnamese population in the U.S. with 70,000 people. It follows Orange County, California with over 200,000 Vietnamese residents and Houston, Texas with over 80,000.

Interestingly enough, Vietnamese do not cluster together in an ethnic enclave but live spread throughout the suburbs of the DC area. The Virginia-DC-Maryland Vietnamese Yellow Pages Directory 2002-2003 displays a wide range of locations for Vietnamese-run businesses, although recurring addresses include Falls Church or Arlington, Virginia and Silver Spring or Wheaton, Maryland. Obviously, the community spans far beyond the envelope of Eden Center in Falls Church, Virginia. In fact, the wide expanse of the Vietnamese population makes Eden Center, the most visible Vietnamese location in the metropolitan area, that much more significant.


While many diverse opinions exist within the community regarding the importance of the center, every Vietnamese American the author encountered from Springfield, Virginia to Germantown, Maryland had interacted with Eden Center in some way since arriving in the area. Eden Center, then, acts as a tool to enable Vietnamese to recreate their ethnicity in a geographically widespread community that spans suburban Maryland, through the District of Columbia to the embrace of northern Virginia. A dispersed group of people, they invent an imagined community through the embodied form of Eden Center, a visible, physical symbol.


Since its founding in 1984, Eden Center has stood as a representation of Vietnamese-American establishment in the United States. This thriving retail center illustrates how Vietnamese in the DC area define themselves outside of Vietnam and more importantly how they recreate their ethnic identity as Vietnamese Americans. This identity has changed as new immigrant waves have settled in the area during the past thirty years and has influenced the meaning of Eden Center. Whether in its social aspect as a gathering point for the community, its political dynamic as a hub for anti-Communist sentiment or its economic function for immigrant entrepreneurship, Eden Center serves as a tangible representation of Vietnamese-American ethnic identity in the region.
The Four Waves: Vietnamese Arrival Patterns and the Development of a Community


In order to understand the development of Eden Center and the historical dynamics of the Vietnamese-American community in the area, one must begin with the arrival of the first Vietnamese to Washington DC and the three mass waves of immigration. Vietnamese who settled in the DC area prior to the fall of Saigon in 1975 included students on scholarship, diplomats or other government officials who came as individuals rather than as members of a group. Most settled in Arlington, Virginia or Bethesda, Maryland during the 1950s and 1960s and are considered by some the most elite and exclusive of the waves.
Before 1975, few Vietnamese settled in the DC area. In 1974, the number of Vietnamese in the United States totaled 18,000. Unlike the plethora of Indian, Thai and Pan-Asian restaurants dotting the streets of DC today, a former Vietnamese civil servant who arrived in the 1960s remembered that the only Asian food in the area was a Korean restaurant located near the American University campus in the District of Columbia in Tenleytown.
Two Vietnamese grocery stores existed at that time: Saigon Market, run by a secretary from the Vietnamese embassy, and Vietnam Center, headed by the Vietnamese wife of a CIA agent. One could find both on Wilson Boulevard in Clarendon, Virginia. The former government civil servant and his wife smiled at the memory of their foiled attempt to organize a large, multi-state gathering for Tet, the Vietnamese New Year in 1974. Roughly 800 to 1,000 Vietnamese came to the party, far fewer than they had hoped would attend but a testament to their attempt to create a distinctive Vietnamese community even if only for special occasions.

The first massive wave of immigration occurred with the fall of Saigon to Communist troops on April 30, 1975. From April to December of 1975, 125,000 Vietnamese fled to the United States. Those who came to the metropolitan area mainly settled in Arlington Country in northern Virginia due to placement by U.S. sponsor services.
The first wave consisted of fairly well educated and Westernized Vietnamese who practiced Roman Catholicism and came from urban areas. Those who settled in Washington, DC and its suburbs often had ties to the U.S. government or were sponsored by relatives already residing in the area. Unlike the already established group in the metropolitan area, Vietnamese within this wave considered themselves refugees.
These new settlers, who evacuated Vietnam with little time for preparation and no plan for the future, found themselves in a drastically different situation. Sponsored by families or agencies, many were thrust into a foreign environment with few resources on which to draw. “Little Saigon” in Clarendon, Virginia developed as a result of the growing need for familiarity. The center in Clarendon evolved into the first shopping complex specifically for Vietnamese in the area and become the central place for Vietnamese to visit from Pittsburgh to Florida. The center comprised several gift shops and the A&P grocery store. Washington tentatively had a place to celebrate being Vietnamese.


The idea of a Vietnamese community became a visible reality with this shopping center and its function as a meeting place for local Vietnamese. At the center, Vietnamese could imagine a wider Vietnamese community since the DC area’s increasing number of Vietnamese did not live in an ethnic enclave. An interviewee attributes that factor to a collective desire of Vietnamese Americans in all waves to “mingle in society and be mainstream people.” Little Saigon provided Vietnamese a place where they could temporarily come together and display aspects of their heritage, but then return to their American lives, thus connecting two distinct worlds. The value Vietnamese Americans put on place continued to evolve in the coming decades and affect Vietnamese-American identity as other waves settled in the area.

The second wave of refugees began in 1978 and further altered the dynamics of the community. The “boat people,” so termed because many fled Vietnam on homemade fishing boats and floated to safety in Thailand or Malaysia, arrived steadily until 1985. Around 75,000 boat people arrived in the United States with this wave. Many ethnic Chinese left Vietnam at this time to escape persecution by the Communist regime. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the animosity between Vietnam and China led to the Vietnamese government’s encouragement for the evacuation of ethnic Chinese from border areas that resulted in a mass exodus of refugees.


Generally, people within this wave were less educated, spoke little English and considered themselves Buddhist. Initially, some tension existed between the two waves. The United States economy had worsened since the arrival of the first wave. Furthermore, those who arrived in 1975 had found it easier to adjust to American society and gain white-collar jobs whereas the new group struggled to learn the language, understand Western culture and find work.


A refugee from the second wave noted that the current professionals in the area comprise former boat people because “we knew hardship so we tried really hard unlike the first group.” In part, he refers to Vietnamese-run small businesses that bloomed after the arrival of the second wave. When boat people could not find jobs in the area, some began looking for a location where they could start a business that marketed to the growing Vietnamese population.
In the early 1980s, the regentrification of the Clarendon area led to an increase in the rent to businesses at “Little Saigon.” When the landlord refused to renew the lease, business owners decided to move several miles down the road to the other end of Wilson Boulevard in Falls Church, Virginia to the location now known as Eden Center.
In 1982, the A&P grocery store moved into the Plaza Seven Shopping Center amidst a variety of non-Vietnamese stores. The increase in Vietnamese-run businesses (Vietnamese had the highest growth rate in small businesses of Asian American groups from 1982-1987 ) led to the eventual eradication of non-Vietnamese stores. Eden Center, formerly the Plaza Seven Shopping Center, officially opened in 1984 as a primarily Vietnamese center.


The arrival of the second wave influenced the move to Eden Center. Although Vietnamese in the area gained a sense of community from Little Saigon, the increase in Vietnamese items and people at Eden Center attracted even more Vietnamese. If Vietnamese imagined a community at Little Saigon then Eden Center further reinforced it. As a tangible symbol, it gave Vietnamese in the DC area the opportunity to honor their roots and feel a part of a community as they made themselves known to mainstream society.


The center continued to expand as the third wave of immigrants made its appearance from 1989-present. Although categorized as “boat people,” most Vietnamese from this wave came to the United States through government sponsored programs, namely the Orderly Departure Program and the Humanitarian Operations Program. In 1987, a smaller wave of AmerAsians, people with American fathers and Vietnamese mothers, arrived in the United States with the Homecoming Act. This act provided for the reunion of American GI fathers with their Vietnamese children. The Vietnamese community in the DC area, however, does not consider this a wave since it comprised a smaller group of people who they do not consider fully Vietnamese.


The Orderly Departure Program began in 1984 and permitted relatives in Vietnam to reconnect with those in the United States. The paperwork, however, took an extraordinarily long time within the Vietnamese government, and many others experienced the same frustration as an interviewee who spent seven years waiting for the government to process her visa.


The Humanitarian Operation (HO) Program began in 1989 with an official agreement between the United States and Vietnam in regard to Vietnam’s political prisoners. After 1975, the newly instated regime sent one million Vietnamese military officials from former South Vietnam to re-education camps, in actuality forced labor locations. In 1983, the United States began negotiations for release of these political prisoners. The Vietnamese government agreed to their release if the United States government allowed them to immigrate to the United States. The in-country processing program started in 1989 and former political prisoners began to arrive in 1991.


Many of the 180,000 HO refugees who came to the United States are survivors of torture and face different adjustment difficulties than the previous groups. The agency, Boat People S.O.S., in Arlington, Virginia, offers mental health screening, recreational programs for child torture survivors, educational information and legal services to the 10,000 people from the HO Program in the DC area.


On average, the education level of HO arrivals is higher than the previous wave because they had to complete high school to become officers in the South Vietnamese military. However, the worsening U.S. economic situation mixed with the process of overcoming the past has made it difficult for HO people to immerse themselves in mainstream society. Many have settled in subsidized housing in Mount Pleasant, Washington, DC, Hyattsville, Maryland and Falls Church, Virginia.


Not all members of the third wave suffered forced confinement. Some, such as an effusive young college student, make up the last of the boat people. He left Vietnam in 1989 and spent three years in an Indonesian refugee camp before arriving here in 1992. His father’s association with the South Vietnamese military forced them to flee. “We suffered a lot before we left. [We were] persecuted and had to hide from the Communists. [We were in] constant fear,” he recalled. Yet, he has not had great difficulty adapting to life in the U.S. because “we were pretty Westernized even in Vietnam.”


In that respect, the final wave draws a mix of people. The first group of Vietnamese arrived as immigrants, prepared for a life in American society. The three mass waves of refugees arrived with very different expectations. While first wave refugees distinguished themselves as Westernized and the second wave as less so, the third wave contains people from various economic and social backgrounds. Some feel less animosity towards the Vietnamese government since they recently lived under the regime, others continue to despise it. As a result, the waves at Eden Center appear less distinct. People no longer stereotype others by the wave in which they arrived.


These waves have shaped Eden Center and continue to affect its growth, as seen by the heavily trafficked center, the "no lease space" sign posted on the grounds and its new competitors. Although the community no longer separates people based on their arrival, small prejudices may still exist among those from different waves. The first wave laid the foundation for a Vietnamese commercial center, the second developed it through Eden Center and the third either patronized it or began to search for other venues. With a background in the history of the Vietnamese community in the DC area, one can examine Eden Center’s multiple layers and analyze the developing sense of ethnicity among Vietnamese Americans. Indeed, at the complex, members of the Vietnamese community show how they reinterpret the past in light of their present situation as refugees, Vietnamese, business people, immigrants and Americans.

Creating Community: How Vietnamese Americans Imagine a Vietnamese-American Community through Eden Center


A place often evokes as many stories as the people who reside within it. Whether one remembers sliding down stairs at grandma’s house or entering the noisy apartment of a best friend, the notion of place holds universal value. When a displaced people must reassemble their home, the structures they create display their shifting ethnicity. In the case of the Vietnamese in the DC area, the majority of whom fled the country for fear of their lives, the development of Eden Center shows how this ethnic group created a new identity in a place they did not choose. Vietnamese Americans have made a deliberate choice to display certain aspects of their identity through the physical representation of Eden Center. The complex portrays what the Vietnamese community wants political refugees to remember, non-Vietnamese to learn and second generation Vietnamese to appreciate.


Legal ownership of Eden Center rests with a non-Vietnamese man who resides in Florida. However, a local management group leases individual shops to Vietnamese business owners. The lawyer who represents the owner describes Eden Center as a “hands on job” due to its value to the Vietnamese community in the area and says that the owner feels proud of the center’s role as a place of interaction and community for Vietnamese. Although he lives too far away to visit the center often and is a non-Vietnamese man, the owner recognizes the uniqueness of the complex.


The center underwent a facelift in 1995. The owner, in league with a group of tenets and members of the Vietnamese community, hired architect David van Duzer from the Falls Church, Virginia firm Rounds & van Duzer to redesign the center. They instructed him to display Eden visually as a cultural center rather than a mere strip mall. With their input, van Duzer added the red arch, the stone lions, glowing lanterns that light the walkways and several more buildings.
Interestingly enough, to reinforce the Vietnamese cultural aspect of the center, the community hired an American architect. Van Duzer ultimately chose the design, although those who offered input suggested it resemble something similar to a tourist attraction. In that respect, the owner wanted to more prominently portray Eden Center to non-Vietnamese as a Vietnamese cultural center because Vietnamese Americans have displayed it as such to mainstream society.
When arrivals face the complex with their back to the arch, the center building, Eden Mall, marks the original Eden Center. Only two stores remain from their conception in 1982, a jewelry shop and a fabric store, both located near the front of the building.


For the most part, shops in this interior mall are the oldest. Located in Eden Mall and one of two grocery stores in the complex, Eden Supermarket began in 1986 and now claims to be one of the largest Asian markets in northern Virginia. Saigon East, situated to the right of Eden Mall, developed soon after and, unlike its predecessor, has both store-front and interior units. Together the buildings house over forty stores and make up the foundation of the center. The Eden Center strip mall, or sidewalk stores, developed to the left of Eden Mall. It includes over twenty storefront stores and often functions as a spot to stand and watch people walk around the complex.


Completed in 1996, Saigon West, attached at the far end to the sidewalk stores, is a fairly recent addition with over forty-five stores located inside the mall and along the storefront. The latest building, Saigon Garden, does not connect to the others. It stands across the parking lot from Eden Mall and contains the only outdoor patio at Eden Center. Renovated in 1999, it has the fewest number of stores, all of which are store-front. Several shrubs surround the building in an attempt at landscaping.


Eden Mall’s clock tower, the most striking landmark on the complex, resembles the one in downtown Saigon. The white circular clock bares no numbers and makes no sound, but its presence serves as a visible reminder of urban southern Vietnam. Also revealing, the blood red lettering on the front of the shops displays a decidedly Chinese influence as do the lanterns hanging from the outdoor overhang and the arch guarding the entrance to the complex. While some of the lettering on the complex appears in English, most of the lettering on the storefronts is in Vietnamese. In Vietnam one often sees clusters of shops selling similar goods just like at Eden Center where several jewelry stores or baked good shops sit next to each other. Nevertheless, the strip mall set-up, virtually non-existent in Vietnam, reminds the visitor of its American influence.
Few non-Vietnamese walk through the mall, however. Eden Center appeals mainly to a Vietnamese population that desires a connection to its former homeland as it creates a new one.


“Our Gathering Place:” Social and Cultural Dynamics of Eden Center
When one thinks of Eden Center they think of the heart of Vietnam-not jewelry, food, but a place people can be together if something really happens. It’s like part of their roots are there.

While the Vietnamese community in the DC area vacillates about the importance of Eden Center, most, like the Vietnamese hairdresser just quoted, agree that it functions as a multigenerational meeting place and establishes a sense of community among its visitors. On any given Saturday morning one finds retirees slurping breakfast at their regular spot. Several stores down, a group of men play video games and glance out of tinted windows as families search for their week’s supply of fish sauce and bok choy. License plates bare witness to the distance Vietnamese travel to shop there. North Carolina, New York and Tennessee sit interspersed between Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC tags.


One interviewee recalled the shock of walking through Eden Center and meeting a friend he had not seen in twelve years. Since the first group of Vietnamese stepped into the center, they have found themselves reuniting with distant relatives and rediscovering forgotten acquaintances within its borders. Apparently, such occurrences continue to happen quite frequently at the complex.
While various Vietnamese organizations hold lunch meetings at Eden Center, it does not house any of these associations. The online Vietnamese directory for the Washington, DC metropolitan area lists 88 civil organizations such as the Vietnam Refugee Fund and the Vietnamese American Art Photographers Association. The locations range from Springfield, Virginia to Silver Spring, Maryland.


Like the Vietnamese community, these associations span the entire metro area. One generally finds the organizations situated near the specific group they attract. The University of Maryland Student Association, for example, has a hub in College Park Maryland where the University of Maryland is located and Vietnamese-American students in the organization reside. Eden Center appeals to a broader Vietnamese-American audience because it does not target one particular interest group. The complex offers a place where people can interact apart from these associations. One may go to Eden to gather information from other Vietnamese about a certain organization, but will find no offices within its doors.
The strength of Eden Center lies not in its social services, then, but in its cultural significance. Whereas organizations target specific groups or people, the entire Vietnamese community comes to Eden Center several times a year to celebrate events meaningful to Vietnamese Americans. Eden Center’s visibility as a Vietnamese cultural center makes a physical reality of the imagined community.
On April 30, the community commemorates the fall of Saigon to Communist troops, a distinctly political holiday to remind Vietnamese of their freedom in America and similar to the June 21 celebration that honors military soldiers who fought in the South Vietnamese army. More festive celebrations occur in late January with Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, where custom mandates the preparation of specific foods and participation in annual rituals. People pay tribute to their ancestors through the creation of elaborate shrines and baskets of fragrant incense. During the celebration today, the Vietnamese community crowds to excess the parking lot and stores, a far cry from the poor showing at the Tet festival over three decades ago. In September, the children’s festival honors children with a variety of activities such as kite flying and, inevitably, numerous plates of sweet, steaming Vietnamese food.


These annual ceremonies display a desire to recreate Vietnamese culture, especially with traditional celebrations like Tet and the children’s festival. Yet, Vietnamese Americans also exhibit a pride in their separation from Vietnam. Both the April 30 and June 21 ceremonies illustrate how the community remembers its past in light of its situation as American, separate from the current Communist government of Vietnam.


Nevertheless, Eden Center contains a distinctly Vietnamese appeal. Employers import most of their goods from Vietnam. One can purchase other Southeast Asian, Japanese and Chinese products at the two grocery stores, but music shops offer only Vietnamese recordings and travel offices provide group flights solely to Vietnam. Restaurants vary depending on the region in Vietnam in which each specializes. Surprising to non-Vietnamese restaurant patrons, one often sees a customer come into one restaurant with a beverage provided from another shop that specializes in tapioca bubble fruit drinks or Vietnamese coffee.


Perhaps most distinct, Vietnamese tonal shifts dance in the air; English becomes a secondary sound. A Vietnamese business counselor who works with Eden Center explained that part of the attraction for people from the HO program stems from their ability to speak only Vietnamese at the complex. One can go to Eden Center and not speak a word of English.


The Chinese influence of Eden Center adds another cultural element. Many ethnically Chinese people fled northern Vietnam in 1954 to escape persecution and settled in the south. Quite a few of these people later came to the United States with the second wave of refugees. A small shrine occupies a room at Saigon East in an effort at positive relations between ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese. The temple represents the Cao Dai religion, a fusion of Catholicism, Buddhism and Confucianism. It serves more as a symbol of good luck and unity between Chinese and Vietnamese than a religious function, however. Two Buddhas sit next to each other, one Chinese and the other Vietnamese. Visitors can tell their fortunes in both Chinese and Vietnamese by throwing a bundle of sticks on the floor and reading the slip that corresponds to the number of sticks that leap out of the pile.


The lions that guard the entrance exist as a further reminder of the historical fusion of Chinese and Vietnamese cultures since they represent good fortune in Chinese legend. The first image the driver views upon entrance to this Vietnamese haven is a traditional Chinese good luck symbol. This deliberate Chinese architecture shows the community’s desire to display a certain aspect of its heritage. Rather than regard ethnic Chinese as the other, Vietnamese Americans incorporate these people into a presentation of themselves. Due to the sizable number in the community, ethnic Chinese at Eden Center become just as Vietnamese American as Vietnamese do.


The Vietnamese newspaper available at Eden Center further labels both the community and the center as Vietnamese. Printed down the street from the complex, the Vietnamese Weekly News provides coverage of the Vietnamese community in the area as well as worldwide. It keeps the community informed about local events and prints the newspaper and advertisements entirely in Vietnamese. Non-Vietnamese advertisers like local lawyers, 7 Corners Pharmacy or ABC Driving School also use this paper as a means of attracting the attention of the Vietnamese community. Eden Center visitors can also pick up The Capital Times, another local Vietnamese newspaper or Washington Chinese News, printed entirely in Chinese. These newspapers cater to a specific community and therefore establish it as a concrete reality.


As Anderson explained in his study of nationalism and print sources, the reader feels an inevitable connection with other readers when they pick up a newspaper. Readers establish a bond with an “imagined community” they know exists but do not see. Such is the case at Eden Center where newspapers like the Vietnamese Daily News reinforce the notion of a Vietnamese community that reads Vietnamese.


Eden Center’s regular visitors also substantiate the idea of a Vietnamese community. Indeed, Eden has a loyal daily following quite different from its weekend patrons. In terms of music, Eden Center caters to the older generation, those who arrived prior to or during the first wave. However, it attracts all waves for most of its other services. A group of retirees lay claim daily to one specific restaurant that faces the parking lot. The interior houses a bookshelf about Vietnamese independence as well as the Vietnam/American War, and an oversized map of Vietnam hangs on the far wall.


However, many of the regulars are recent arrivals: younger men who have difficulty finding jobs in the area and an older group from the HO Program. Eden Center provides a haven where both groups can feel safe speaking Vietnamese and eating familiar food as they begin to enter American society. These people spend the afternoon talking and playing chess. According to Eden Center’s business counselor, they find it so appealing because essentially it is “a place to be Vietnamese.”


Since the professional class from the first and second wave has learned how to interact successfully with broader society, it does not need to recreate the past and establish belonging at Eden Center in the same way that the new arrivals or others less engaged in American society do. To some “boat people” who have merged into American society through their education, the complex functions more as a marketplace than an ethnic stronghold.


Not every recent arrival flocks to Eden, however. A Vietnamese male student who arrived in the early 1990s with the third wave fears Eden Center. He considered himself fairly Westernized before he came to the United States and now works with the federal government. To him, Eden Center feels like an “exclusive club” to which he does not belong. He believes that the quickness at which he adapted threatens young people with less education at Eden Center who do not participate in mainstream society with quite the same ease. Older people view him with discomfort because they think of him as another new misguided young arrival.
The tension surrounding Vietnamese young men at Eden Center partially stems from the complex’s gang history. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, gang activity increased, in large part due to displaced Vietnamese youth frustrated with the downturn of the economy and their subsequent inability to get jobs. Some arrivals of the third wave saw the hard earned success of the second wave through customers and employers at Eden Center and envied their inability to reach the same level immediately. Gangs created a sense of belonging when they could not adjust to American society and its school system, another type of imagined community. As an interviewee put it, “just like in West Side Story” gangs fostered a sense of security and Eden Center became a safe haven ripe for gang activity.


The installment of a police station at Saigon West has helped somewhat, although the community finds it difficult to trust authority and therefore does not report many illegal activities. As youth began to adjust to mainstream society, gang activity decreased. They have dispersed for the most part. Traveling gangs occasionally haunt the area, but they do less damage than the former ones. In terms of other illegal activity, business owners may permit mahjong, a Chinese gambling game, behind closed doors but few people care enough to voice concern.


The various relationships between Vietnamese Americans and Eden Center demonstrate the fluidity of the community. Eden Center may represent Vietnamese Americans, but it does not fix their identity as indestructible. The process of creating a new identity involves deciding what aspects of the past to claim. As seen through Eden Center, Vietnamese Americans value a space that allows for interaction, common language and familiar items. As a cultural center, Eden Center represents a place to create community and remind Vietnamese of their “core” while providing a visible area to interact with an American landscape.


Anti-Communist Solidarity: Eden Center as a Political Hub
“Nobody [at Eden Center] believes in Communism.” Spoken with such sureness, one man identifies an underlying theme within the area’s Vietnamese community. The political aspect of the April 30 and July 21 ceremonies, for example, hints at the distinctiveness of Washington DC’s Vietnamese community. Vietnamese who first came to the area generally had some connection to the United States government, either as diplomats or State Department officials. Some of the refugees who came with the first wave were sponsored by United States governmental organizations. Thus, due to the relationship with and proximity to American bureaucracy, the developing Vietnamese community espoused a decidedly negative view of Communism and the Vietnamese government and continues to do so.


The political position of Vietnamese Americans in the DC area mirrors that of many Cuban Americans in Miami, Florida who fled Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s during the Communist revolution when Fidel Castro came to power. Due to the smaller population of Vietnamese Americans in the DC area, however, they do not hold the political sway of Cuban Americans who represent a significant Republican presence in Florida. Nevertheless, the continued animosity toward their respective countries demonstrates how refugees hold onto traumatic aspects of their past and influence American society as they recreate their identity in a new country.


A former civil servant and his wife who arrived in the DC metropolitan area before the first mass wave of refugees discussed in detail their hatred of the Vietnamese Communist system. Although they have never traveled to the northern half of Vietnam, they warn visitors against accepting an invitation from a “northerner” because “they don’t have any food for you [due to their poverty] and don’t expect you to accept the invitation.” Experience by the author in Hanoi suggests otherwise, but this hard-liner viewpoint represents many Vietnamese who arrived prior to or in the first wave, worked with the United States government and have not since returned to their home country. In that respect, northerners have become the “other” against which the community constructs its identity.


“All Vietnamese communities around the world look up to this one as the crown of the anti-Communist government and its sense of duty,” proudly stated an interviewee. At the same time, organizations in the area serve a variety of needs. Political associations exist such as the Democracy Forum for Vietnam, an organization that looks at political reform and economic development in Vietnam and works to democratize the country by holding monthly seminars and lobbying in Congress. Yet, separate professional and social organizations also work with the local Vietnamese community like Vietnamese Professionals of America, a social network of educated members, or the Vietnamese Resettlement Association that aids new Vietnamese immigrants in the area. Members of the community can interact with multiple organizations or only one. Thus, the community does not define itself necessarily by its united political action as by its anti-Communist philosophy. This staunch belief makes itself evident through an examination of the politicized decorations and behavior at Eden Center.


A former employee in the South Vietnamese government considers Eden Center the nationalist seat for the broader Vietnamese community. The flag of the former South Vietnamese government, unavoidably visible in the center of the parking lot, flies boldly next to its American ally. Nowhere in the complex can one view the current Vietnamese flag, a yellow star centered on a red background. Eden Center further displays its anti-Communist zeal through written form. The lease contract, negotiated by business owners, has stated for years that the former South Vietnamese flag must fly alongside the American one. Through this stipulation, Eden Center demonstrates that the Vietnamese community in the DC area does not politically align itself with today’s Vietnam.


Therefore, the community defines itself by what it is not: Communist. Vietnamese in Vietnam do not refer to themselves as northerners, southerners or Vietnamese for that matter, but identify themselves by region or ethnic group. Terms such as these develop when people arrive in a new place and outsiders create labels for them. In the case of Vietnamese Americans, they have incorporated these political phrases into their own self-definitions. All Vietnamese interviewed used the terms “northerner” and “southerner.”
In actuality, its function as a cultural meeting place augments the complex’s political voice. If one wants to engage in political action such as the establishment of a Liberation Front, they meet over a meal at Eden Center to discuss it. If a group like the Vietnamese Veterans decides to talk with a Congressperson it meets during a luncheon at Eden Center. Through its customers and its presentation, the center displays the community’s strong tie to politics.
However, business owners have begun to interact more with the current Vietnamese government. Some people within the community express a desire to restore relations with Vietnam. An active member of a Vietnamese democracy association suggests Vietnamese in the area “open their arms [as a] good way to open the democratization process.” At the same time, not all feel comfortable speaking openly about their shifting political beliefs. While some business owners at Eden Center do not necessarily want to fly the South Vietnamese flag, they fear that mentioning this idea will hurt their business.
As Eden Center displays, Vietnamese Americans create a distinct political identity within the community and in its relation to outsiders. The unified anti-Communist stance exemplified at Eden Center builds solidarity among Vietnamese in the area and reinforces the notion of a Vietnamese community. Yet, it also illustrates the internal tension that erupts when refugees establish themselves in a new place and begin to rethink their relation to their former homeland.


First Generation Immigrant Success Story: The Economic Dimensions of Eden Center


Eden Center, [it’s] more than a place to shop, it’s a symbol of the community…the spirit of the community…a success story of first generation immigrants. It mixes the ability of a new community to merge into mainstream society.


A Vietnamese business counselor examines Eden Center from an economic standpoint. Along with others in the community, he views the complex as a representation of Vietnamese self-determination and will power, a true testament to the immigrant work ethic. The influx of the second wave ultimately led to the growth of Eden Center from several shops to a bustling center. However, the decision by the first wave to relocate to Eden Center’s current location and the increased patronization by the third wave also dramatically influenced its development. The popularity of the center among Vietnamese from all waves and stretches of the East Coast suggests that if fills a distinct niche for a Vietnamese ethnic marketplace. A sign at the edge of Eden Center proclaims, “No vacancy.” With continued interest in the center, the management team has started exploring the possibility of buying out Ames, a large non-Vietnamese department store to the right of Saigon East.


Economically, the appeal of Eden Center corresponds to its services. One can purchase groceries, get a haircut, eat lunch, send money to relatives in Vietnam and buy the latest Vietnamese CD. Vietnamese Americans recognize the complex as a location for multiple uses. They know they can come to one place and find what they need to survive as Vietnamese in a new location.
Furthermore, Eden Center functions as a type of “ethnic enclave economy,” a term coined by Alejandro Portes and clarified by Ivan Light and Edna Bonacich. An ethnic enclave economy consists of a cluster of businesses whose owners and employees are from the same ethnic group. It serves as the economic base for the ethnic community. While not all Vietnamese Americans rely on Eden Center for their source of income, it provides employment opportunities for Vietnamese outside the general labor market, like the “boat people” in the early 1980s and recent arrivals in the mid 1990s.


Immigrants with little experience in banking find it appealing that they do not need credit history to lease space at Eden Center. Management requires only a one month deposit. However, Vietnamese naivete of American business standards often results in a store’s difficulty moving into mainstream society. For example, business owners have trouble making significant profits due to store similarity. While one often finds streets filled with the same product in Vietnam, identical stores have saturated the center. Few make a sizeable profit.
A degree of resentment has developed as a result of ethnic Chinese economic success. Some Vietnamese attribute this to higher business standards among ethnic Chinese. Many of these ethnically Chinese entrepreneurs arrived during the second wave. An interviewee insists that one will never see Chinese stores with similar goods for sale in close proximity to each other as one finds with Vietnamese shops because ethnically Chinese storeowners agree not to take business away from each other. Apparently, one man planned to open a Chinese herb shop, saw another one and moved buildings. Two Chinese herb shops now exist, one in Eden Mall and one in Saigon East.


In addition, the expensive rent poses a growing problem for employers. Eden Center business owners who responded to the survey unanimously agreed that increasing rent creates the greatest difficulty. The Common Area Maintenance agreement poses another concern. As stipulated in the contract, business owners must each pay when the owner decides to renovate the building. This occasional extra allowance draws on the already meager earnings of the employers.
A business counselor has held sessions at Eden Center to provide information about securing loans and advertising to a broader population. Nevertheless, little advertising occurs outside of the Vietnamese community and much of the writing on the building at Eden Center is in Vietnamese, preventing the complex from establishing itself in the mainstream corporate world.
Eden Center employers remain at the center despite high rent because they receive a steady flow of customers and do make some profit, especially on the weekends. Yet, the economic benefit of staying at the complex only partially explains their motivation. Eden Center merges the economic aspect of immigrant entrepreneurs with the political interests and social interactions of this dynamic community. It permits Vietnamese Americans to explore their changing ethnic identity while they find comfort through familiar products as well as reinforcement from others with similar experiences and beliefs. Eden Center establishes the imagined Vietnamese community as a physical community and therefore provides an arena for Vietnamese Americans to display their continuously shifting ethnicity.


Conclusion: Facing the Future through Remembrances of the Past
Eden Center displays the transformation from Vietnamese to American. It illustrates what Vietnamese deem important to their heritage within a decidedly American context. All seventeen interviewees agree that it stands as the symbol of the community in the DC area. The complex acts as a physical representation of an imagined Vietnamese community that provides Vietnamese a way to become American, to negotiate the transition between two identities and inevitably establish a new one. By examining the complex, one discovers that it serves the inevitable need of a minority community as it struggles to become “full partners in the future of America,” by celebrating its past without destroying its potential for the future.


Eden Center stands at the crossroads of a major northern Virginia intersection and of a powerful ethnic group. Influenced by three waves over thirty years, the complex visibly represents a community that demonstrates its Vietnamese cultural heritage through weekly interaction, advocates its political beliefs in the center’s decoration and focuses on economic advancements via an ethnic marketplace.


One can trace the spirit of the Vietnamese people and vitality of their community to the success of Eden Center but cannot limit it there. Rather, Vietnamese Americans continue to thrive and struggle as they learn to incorporate elements of one world into those of another to form a new identity.


Vietnamese Americans have the option of slurping the slippery sweet noodles in ph_ or savoring the warm sugary quality of apple pie, traditional foods of two separate countries. They need not make one decision. Actually, the traditional Vietnamese noodle soup originates from the French. Legend has it that when the French occupied Vietnam they wanted something light for a mid-day snack. A Vietnamese cook threw some noodles, meat and seasoning into boiling water and the word the French used to describe it sounded like ph_.
Some Vietnamese become upset at this story because it denigrates the idea of a pure Vietnamese dish. The beauty of the legend, however, is the combination of cultures that fueled its creation. Just as Vietnamese Americans do not live in isolation from mainstream society, this savory dish takes its roots from the combined history of nations. Eden Center offers ph_, but it also offers a place Vietnamese can go to remember being Vietnamese before they go back to their American lives and their apple pie, or more likely their newest creation, a mouth-watering concoction of pungent Asian spices and local American produce.

 

Notes
Eden Center-Vietnamese Community [web site], Falls Church, Virginia: Eden Center, Inc, 2002, [cited 19 August 2002], available from http://www.edencenter.com; INTERNET.
Compilation of interviews by author including interviewees V, W, and B. Due to the politicized nature of the community, some interviewees asked me not to refer to them by name and I have chosen to code all names of interviewees within the text. I interviewed fifteen first generation and two second generation Vietnamese Americans with various economic and social backgrounds in the Washington, DC metro area.
Interviewee B, interview by author, tape recording, 2002.
Interviewee E, interview by author, handwritten notes, 2002.
Interviewee W, interview by author, handwritten notes, 2002.
2002 census, in Asian Pacific American Affairs [web site], Urbana-Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois, 2001 [cited 23 September 2002], available from http://www.odos.uiuc.edu/apaa/apa_community.asp; INTERNET.
Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America Through Immigration Policy 1850-1990 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 121.
Interviewee B.
Virginia-DC-Maryland Vietnamese Yellow Pages Directory 2002-2003 (Falls Church, Virginia: Vietnamese Yellow Pages Directory, 2002).
The concept of “imagined communities” comes from Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983) who examined how nationalism, an intangible notion, serves to unite societies.
Interviewee B.
Hing, 134.
Interviewee E.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Hing, 126.
Interviewee X, interview by author, tape recording, 2002.
Interviewee B.
Interviewee V, interview by author, tape recording, 2002.
Interviewee B.
Interviewee T, interview by author, tape recording, 2002.
Interviewee M, interview by author, handwritten notes, 2002.
Young, 306.
Interviewee B.
Ibid.
Hing, 135.
Eden Center-Vietnamese Community web site.
Interviewee B.
Interviewee J, interview by author, tape recording, 2002, and Hing, 135.
Interviewee M.
Ibid.
Interviewee B.
Interviewee M.
Interviewee G, interview by author, 2002, tape recording.
Interviewee B.
For information about social construction of place see Susan Slyomovics, The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998).
Interviewee X.
Ibid.
Alan Frank, phone interview by author, handwritten notes, 20 November 2002, Falls Church, Virginia.
Ibid.
Interviewee B.
Eden Center-Vietnamese Community web site.
Ibid.
Eden Center-Vietnamese Community web site.
Interviewee W.
Compilation of interviews by author including interviewees W, V and B.
Interviewee V and W.
Viet Nest Online web site.
Interviewee W.
Interviewee J.
Interviewee X.
Interviewee B.
Interviewee P, interview by author, 2002, tape recording and Interviewee B.
Interviewee B.
Vietnamese Weekly News (Falls Church, Virginia), 26 July 2002.
The Capital Times (Falls Church, Virginia), 20 July 2002.and Washington Chinese News (Washington, DC), 25 July 2002.
Anderson, 36.
Interviewee X.
Interviewee X and Interviewee B.
Interviewee X.
Compilation of interviews by author including interviewee K, interview by author, 2002, tape recording, Interviewee T, interview by author, tape recording, 2002, and interviewee B.
Interviewee G.
Compilation of interviews by author including interviewees V,E and G.
Interviewee E.
Ibid.
Interviewee X and V.
Interviewee V.
Interviewee W.
Interviewee F.
Compilation of interviews by author including interviewees T, D and F. Due to the politicized nature of the community, many Vietnamese Americans react suspiciously to outsiders. I sent ninety surveys to Eden Center business owners as well as forty five Vietnamese associations listed on the Viet Net online directory. However, I received only six survey responses from business owners at Eden Center and nine from association representatives. While the English surveys may have posed a problem to some, the suspicious quality of the community may also have hindered people from responding.
James S. and Judith E. Olson, Cuban Americans: From Trauma to Triumph (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995), 70-95. Miami, Florida boasts the largest population of Cuban Americans in the United States. The ethnic enclave in which many live, “Little Havana” expresses similar anti-Communist sentiments to the Vietnamese community in the DC area. Both communities are primarily Republican due to the anti-Communist stance historically taken by this party.
Interviewee Y, interview by author, 2002, handwritten notes and Interviewee E. When Vietnamese in the DC area speak of northerners, they refer to those who recently emigrated from the North, places such as Hanoi, and interacted in some way with the Communist regime, not people who resettled in the South in 1954. Therefore, the term “north” among this group of people is not as much a geographical reference as a political one.
Interviewee B.
Interviewee T.
Viet Nest Online website.
Compilation of interviews by author including interviewees D, T and W.
Interviewee D.
Interviewee B.
See information about ascription and adversity in John Sarna, “From Immigrants to Ethnics: Toward a Theory of Ethnicization,” Ethnicity 5 (1978) 370-78.
Interviewee T.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Interviewee B.
Compilation of interviews with author including interviewees V, F and B.
Ivan Light and Edna Bonacich. Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Koreans in Los Angeles 1965-1982 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), xi.
Interviewee X.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Interviewee F, interview by author, tape recording, 2002, and interviewee B.
Interviewee B.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Interviewee X.
Vietnamese Americans create community through other means as well, namely the Vietnamese Catholic Church, the Buddhist temple and Internet resources. For a more detailed analysis, see my original thesis, Ph_ and Apple Pie: Eden Center as a Representation of Vietnamese-American Ethnic Identity in the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area from 1975-Present, Goshen, Indiana: Goshen College, 2002.
Helen Zia, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of An American People (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 254.
Interviewee B.