Vietnamese American Place Making in Northern Virginia* - DocsLib

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This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VIETNAMESE AMERICAN PLACE MAKING IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA*

JOSEPH WOOD

ABSTRACT. Vietnamese Americans have made places for themselves in Northern Virginia by reconfiguringthe geography of the suburban places they inherited, including former high-order central-placenodes. VietnameseAmerican residences, churches, cemetery plots, and other distinctive ethnic markersare by and largedispersed and rarelynoticeable. Their retail districts,however, serve them in multiple materialand symbolic ways, not unlike suburban Chinatowns.Keywords: Northern Virginia, place making,retail districts, suburbs, Viet- nameseAmericans.

Suburbs,where most Americans live, are rarely regarded as refugesof American pluralism,and the vastliterature on themis largelysilent about immigration and ethnicity(Li 1995,1996; Allen and Turner 1996). Conventional models of immigration andurban geography cluster immigrants in centralcities, in responseto housing and employment opportunities. William Burgess's1920s-era concentric-ring model of urban social morphology makesclear the geographythat immigrantsare said to haveshaped. But more recentimmigrants are making their own placesin the suburbsof America.Los Angeles epitomizes a metropolitanarea-wide, multiethnic reworkingof suburbanlandscapes and geographies.Suburban Northern Virginia is also experiencingvibrant ethnic place making. Here immigrantswrite fresh chap- ters in the biographyof the Americansuburb, even as they recasttheir own values, beliefs, norms, and behavior. VietnameseAmericans in Northern Virginiahave undertakentheir place making through subtle and not-so-subtle acts of appropriationand accommodation. The landscapesthey areshaping reflect their perceptionsof suburbanopportunities within inherited geographies.They are assuredlynot constructing ethnic homelands or culture regions in conventional cultural geographicalterms-usually an original shaping of place said to occur with "firsteffective settlement"(Zelinsky 1973; Conzen 1993). Instead, Vietnamese Americans are imbuing suburbs with their own novel meanings.Passersby may notice a clusterof Vietnamesestores in a shoppingplaza, a zone of SoutheastAsian cuisine, a Buddhisttemple or VietnameseCatholic church announcedwith a distinctivescript, or a reservedsection of a cemetery.Vietnamese Americanssee a vibrantcommunity center,economic enterprise,reflections of tradition, contested interests, and complex social and economic geographies.Place making involvesa continual processof shaping identity and expressingsocial relationships. The Vietnamese American community is itself evolving; nowhere are

* The National Endowment for the Humanities,through its National Conversationon American Pluralism,and George Mason University provided funding for researchon this project.

*t, DR.WOOD iSa professorof geographyatGeorge Mason University,Fairfax, Virginia 22030-4444.

The GeographicalReview 87 (1): 58-72, January1997 Copyright ? 1997 by the American Geographical Society of New York

This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VIETNAMESE AMERICAN PLACE MAKING 59 pieces of Vietnam merely relocating wholesale (Hein 1995, 50). In making places VietnameseAmericans are enjoying and directing suburbangeographical change.

VIETNAMESE AMERICANS IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA Vietnamesehave come to the United Statesin a seriesof distinctivewaves, their refugee status distinguishing them and other Indochinese from the larger category of Asian immigrants.The original1975 refugeewave includedhighly educated,professional and elite membersof the formerU.S.-backed South Vietnamesegovernment who fled afterthe fall of Saigon. Some 40 percent of these immigrantswere Catho- lic-from a basepopulation in Vietnamthat was only lo percentCatholic-and some 20 percent had a university-leveleducation. "Boatpeople" were refugeesof more modest means who escaped in late 1970S and early198os. This second wavewas composed especiallyof Viet Hoa, a highly en- trepreneurial,Chinese ethnic minority.In general,more of the second-waveimmi- grantswere males, Buddhists,less affluent,and less educated (Dunning 1989). Still, they maintained strong family ties and kinship networks and adapted quickly to their new Americansetting, even if they did not necessarilyassimilate as quicklyas many of the first-waveimmigrants did (Desbarats1986; Yu and Liu 1986; Dunning 1989, 77). In the 198os the immigrationcohorts began to mirrorthe demographiccharac- teristics of Vietnam itself (Allen and Turner 1988, 191). By this time, too, many Amerasianswere contributingto the immigrationstream, though they faced much the same prejudice among Vietnamese Americans as they had faced in Vietnam. Most recently,former political prisonersor reeducationdetainees have been arriv- ing. All are participatingin place making in Northern Virginia. Particularhistorical reasons led Vietnamese to the United States and certain Vietnamese to Northern Virginia (Andrews and Stopp 1985; Desbarats1985). Al- though neither the District of Columbianor Virginiawas historicallyan important destination for immigrants,Pentagon connections are today highly significantfor first-waverefugees from a number of countries to Northern Virginia. Moreover, jobs in a dynamic,suburban-focused metropolitan economy are an immediate ex- planation for the suburbandestinations of these immigrants.Global economic and political change has catapultedthe region into the spotlight for recentimmigrants, with English now the second language in 25 percent of Northern Virginia house- holds. Chain migration has brought subsequent waves, and immigrants have as- similated quickly,especially if they have local relativesand English-languageskills. As recentlyas 1994Vietnamese were second only to Salvadoransin the number of immigrantsentering the Washingtonmetropolitan region. Now some 50,000 Viet- nameseAmericans live in the metropolitanarea, most of them in NorthernVirginia (Sun and Nguyen 1995, 12) (Figure 1). SuburbanNorthern Virginia includes within it relict proto-urban places, like FallsChurch, settlement of which dates from 1699.Such places have emerged in recent years as nodes for suburban central-placeactivities as the rapid post-World

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corded more than 9 percentVietnamese Americans, but the number of tractswith i percent and more is considerable. A traditionalmodel of ethnic residentialconcentration does not work for Viet- namese Americans-or for other Asian Americans in metropolitan Washington. Wilbur Zelinskyand BarrettLee (1993)call such complex distribution heterolocalism, by which they mean that physicalproximity is increasinglyless a prerequisite for ethnic identity and community. KevinDunn's (1993)study of VietnameseAus- traliansin Cabramatta,a suburb of Sydney,revealed a similarpattern, one that re- calls also Hmong settlement in California. Ines Miyares (1995) found that, for Hmong, home is relational.Location of houses is less important than location of shopping, which in turn reflects clan associations;the result is a social geography that is not necessarilyevident to the casual observer. Economic success helps account for heterolocalism.Vietnamese Americans, so often discriminatedagainst in hiringbut with a strongwork ethic, havefound niches in all strata of Northern Virginiasociety, especiallyin certain characteristicenter- prises (Nguyen and Henkin 1982;Rutledge 1992, 81). Among the important employment activities are the provision of retail goods and services, including food wholesalingand restaurants;the saleand repairof jewelry,gold, and silver;appliance, small-engine,and automotiverepairs; accounting and bookkeeping;and light manu- facturing.Restaurateurs are mostly ethnic Chinese Vietnamese,Viet Hoa, whereas non-ChineseVietnamese often own jewelrystores (Nhula Tran 1996). Vietnamese retail establishmentsoften hold near monopolies locally on high-quality,imported goods, includingspecialty produce and silkfor Vietnamese dresses. Certain activities, such as nail and hair salons, offer employmentfor women who find that they must work outside the home. And in NorthernVirginia, information-technology compa- nies and local, state, and federalgovernment are increasinglyimportant sources of employment.Vietnamese Americans, in short,have tran can cu, a conceptthat "com- bines hardwork, patience, and tenacityinto a relentlessdrive to surviveor be success- ful" (Rutledge 1992, 45). Despitesome adaptationproblems, most VietnameseAmericans have found economic success (Haines 1989).By the mid-198osfirst-wave immigrants had a median income equal to that of the U.S. population as awhole (Hein 1995,135).Many Vietnam- ese Americansin the 1990s are bicultural,having taken Americangiven names and adoptedAmerican popular culture with a Vietnameseflavor. Vietnamese American Boy Scout and GirlScout troops arebecoming more commonplacethan Vietnamese Americangangs. A VietnameseAmerican served on the FairfaxCounty School Board, and VietnameseAmerican children born in the United Statesare now enteringcol- lege-Vietnamese Americanscomprise the largestsingle non-Euroamericanethnic groupat GeorgeMason University. And realestate marketers directly target successfil VietnameseAmericans for new home salesin outersuburban rings toward Centreville or Herndon and beyond Dulles InternationalAirport, to the west. Northern Virginia is not one of Wei Li's "ethnoburbs" (1995, 1996). Li describes an ethnoburbas a clusterof ethnicallyhomogeneous residentialareas and business

This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 62 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW districtslocated in suburbsand characterizedby a unique spatialform and internal socioeconomic structure.Fueled by globalizationof capitaland internationalization of flows of commodities,skilled labor, and high-techand managerialpersonnel, ethnic groups deliberatelyset up their own job and consumermarkets integrated with the dominant economy. Monterey Park,in California'sSan Gabriel Valley,is the quintessentialethnoburb. This is not to saythat Vietnamese Americans and other immigrantsin Northern Virginialack an internaleconomy or arenot linkedto the globaleconomy. It is to say that the ethnoburb concept fails to capturethe comparativescale and intensity of the geographicalimpress of recent immigrantson Northern Virginia.In Northern Virginia non-Vietnamese travelpast or through neighborhoods and business districts oblivious to the presence of VietnameseAmericans. And only the watchful non-Vietnamese observe the Korean or Salvadoranpresence-also significant in population numbers, relativeconcentration, and landscape imprint. Thus North- ern Virginialacks the ethnoburbcharacteristics of MontereyPark, at least as yet. So one must look closely to see evidence of VietnameseAmericans.

ETHNIC MARKERS Most of Northern Virginia'sVietnamese are from urban Vietnam, unlike another largegroup of VietnameseAmericans: largely rural immigrants who have carrieda market-gardentradition to New Orleans(Airriess and Clawson1991, 1994). No similar ruralplace-making or landscapetradition is evident in Northern Virginia.The most visible manifestationsof the urbanVietnamese tradition are clustersof retail shops. Some immigrant groups specializein highly distinctiveretail activities,like Koreandry-cleaning establishments, found in virtuallyevery shopping center and plaza in NorthernVirginia. In contrast,Vietnamese specialize in a form, their shops commonly congregated in strips of stores that replicate the characteristicsmall spacesand stallsone might find in a markettown in Vietnamor in a shoppingdistrict in Saigon(Figure 2). Streetcarstrips built in the 1920S and shoppingplazas con- structedin the 1950S arepreadapted to such use. Restaurants,having become important culturalcommodification symbols in Americanmass-consumption society, are the most apparentretail activity. Even so, manyVietnamese retail outlets arenot visibly Vietnamese. This is especially true of service stations and automobile-repair shops, which a VietnameseAmerican may own but in which non-Vietnameseem- ployees deal with the public. Residential neighborhoods, I have noted, are not visibly Vietnamese either, though manyVietnamese Americans favor real estate agents or housing consultants who are trained to interpretfeng shui to identify salubrioussites and orientations and to harmonizeenvironmental relationships. House interiors,in contrast,reflect stronglythe accommodationof Vietnamesematerial culture tradition to American building form and furnishings. Catholic or Buddhist shrines and less sectarian decorative objects-many recently imported from Vietnam-share living-room space with leather sofas and large-screentelevision sets, video cassette recorders,

This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VIETNAMESE AMERICAN PLACE MAKING 63

FIG. 2-A markettown in Quang Ngai Province,Vietnam, in the winter Of1970. (Photograph by the author) andastonilshingly sophisticated amplificat'ion systems. Likewilse, rice cookers share kitchencounter space with microwaveovens and electric can openers. Churches,always important gathering places for refugees,reveal where Viet- nameseAmericans first congregated in the suburbs(Rutledge 1992 , 50).Bdhs templesare in rentedspaces in industrialor officecomplexes and thus remain invisible to most Northen Virginians. Now, however, in Fauquier County, in the horse- fancyingoutliers of Washington'ssprawling metropolitan area, a VietnameseBud- dhistmeditation center has opened, despite substantial local opposition. Catholic congregationshave reconstituted the nationalCatholic parishes of earlierinmi- grantperiods; nationality-based parishes with ethnicpriests are overlapping geo- graphicallywith moreEuroamerican diocesan parishes. Father Nhi Tranfounded his "personalparish, as he identified it (1996), in 1975at the Holy Martyrsof Viet- namCatholic Church in Arlington.The parish is an important space, and the church an importantcongregation, for the social networkof VietnameseAmericans in NorthernVirginia. Suburbancemeteries are not well studied, and the place of ethnicityin suburban cemeteriesis trueterra incognita, largely because suburban cemeteries are nonde- nominational,commercial enterprises. In NorthernVirginia, however, some ceme- teriescater specifically to AsianAmericans by accommodatingtraditional burial practices(Lucas 1995; Vo 1996). A VietnameseAmerican church purchased space in FairfaxMemorial Park, where it has reservedplots for Vietnamese Americans. The

This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 64 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW cemeteryuses conventional brass markersflush with the ground for easy mainte- nance,but it also has a mausoleum.Vietnamese Americans use both forms of burial and decorategraves with prayersticks, ashes of burned papermoney to help the de- ceasedpay for their trip to heaven,and food in a rice bowl or in the form of the deceased's favorite fruit. Buddhist and Catholic Vietnamese are buried at National MemorialPark in gravesites selected and oriented in accordancewith feng shui. A small Asian section, opened in 1993,has a formal entrancegate, granitebenches to keep people fromwalking on the heads of the deceased,and pricesthat increasewith the gentleelevation. Proximity of the section to a noisy highwayis disturbing,so Na- tional MemorialPark recently opened a secludednew AsianCultural Cemetery section located between its Jewishand Islamic sections. A large pagoda-style gate, a Koreanand Vietnamese War Memorial, and bong boon characterizethis section. Bong boon is a Koreanterm for a raised grave site, which keeps people and equip- ment off gravesand allows families to trim the grassand manicurethe graves (Pae 1994; Vo 1996). Giventhe long-standingdiversity of the United States,there is, of course,no such thing as a truly non-Americanethnic landscape.Instead, there are ethnic markers, including many compromiseswith preexistingforms-temples in office buildings, commercial,nonsectarian cemetery plots-or manipulationsof preadaptedforms, like shoppingplazas. Christopher Airriess (1996), reactivating John K. Wright's concept of "geopiety,"argues that VietnameseAmerican religious artifactsin the New Orleanslandscape offer materialfamiliarity while also linking a spirituallyimpor- tant past place with the present.These Vietnamese Americans have, in other words, "confronteda pre-formed, predeterminedset of rules, a settlement code already locked solidly into the ground and one they could modify [visibly]only in the more trivial of details"(Zelinsky 1990, 33). So patternsof land use and landscapeare not easilyevident. Still, Vietnamese Americans are reshaping the NorthernVirginia suburbs in remarkableways. They haveundertaken place makingand createda familiar sense of place by inhabitingthis landscapeand elaboratingon it.

PLACE MAKING It is in forming retaildistricts that VietnameseAmericans are most effectiveat place making.Throughout Southeast Asia, and in Ho Chi Minh Citytoday, petty retailen- terprisesreveal a remarkablepersistence, despite starkchanges in economic conditions (Freeman 1996). These retail activities favor small stalls arranged along shopping streetsto form shopping districts,a patternthat VietnameseAmericans have replicated.In NorthernVirginia the two most dominant sites are formerretail centersthat lost theirluster with the developmentof distant,modern shopping cen- ters accessiblefrom beltwayinterstate highways. Clarendon was alreadyArlington's downtownwhen Arlingtonbecame one of the few placesin the nation to experience suburbangrowth in the 1930S and 1940s, and it was still thriving in the 1950s, when new suburbanshopping centersfirst drew shoppers away. In pre-interstatehighway days Seven Cornerswas the point of greatestaccessibility in Northern Virginia:Its

This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VIETNAMESE AMERICAN PLACE MAKING 65 namesakeshopping center was Washington'slargest when it opened in 1953.These districts of 1920S streetcarretail strips and 1950S shopping plazas,respectively, have low rents, requireonly limited sales, and can attractcustomers from considerable distances;and they reside in a formerhigh-order retail corridor that itself has been displacedby Interstate66 (Figure1). These sites also have in common long strips of modularretail spaces that VietnameseAmericans easily transform into ethnic commercial districts imitative of market districts in Vietnamese towns and cities. Central-placesuccession in the suburbs has served Vietnamese American place making well. Clarendonwas depressedby the early1970S; the firstVietnamese store appeared in 1972; and the areabecame Washington'sLittle Saigon in the late 1970S (Andrews 1984,72). Its low rentsand availablespace-and the disarraythat was partand parcel of Washington'sMetrorail subway construction-were perfectfor Vietnameserefu- gees in searchof inexpensiveretail space for dry goods, tailoring,bridal shops, jewelry shops, and beauty salons.Although neverthe centerof a VietnameseAmerican residential neighborhood, the assorted retail shops gave Clarendon a singularly Asian feel for about a decade, simultaneouslybringing economic vitality to it. In- deed, by the early198os Vietnamese Americans had transformedClarendon into the hub of the EastCoast Vietnamese American community. After Metrorail opened in 1979, however,rents in Clarendonincreased. Displacement of Vietnamese Ameri- cans began,and so did the searchfor new locations in which to concentratetheir retail activities. Ironically,thanks to economic fits and starts, much of Clarendon's replacementconstruction has yet to be built. The areahas retainedthose Vietnam- ese restaurantsthat caterto non-Vietnameseand has attracteda mix of other ethnic retail activities (Figure3). From their initial retail setting in Clarendon,Vietnamese Americans dispersed westwardto retailsettings in the SevenCorners and BaileysCrossroads areas of east- ern FairfaxCounty and as far west as Herndon (leapfroggingTysons Corner) and Centreville,in western FairfaxCounty. The Seven Corners area, in particularthe Plaza Seven Shopping Center (Eden Center),has the largestconcentration of retail activities. SuchVietnamese shopping plazas near major thoroughfares and well locatedfor a dispersedor heterolocalpopulation, like the PlazaSeven Shopping Center, are becoming commonplace in suburbs, especially in California'sOrange County (Lou 1989,105; Rutledge 1992, 81). The same phenomenon appears in Richardson (Dallas) and Houston, Texas.Graham Center, on ArlingtonBoulevard in FairfaxCounty, is a second-orderVietnamese American shopping plaza district. Other small clusters occur throughout central Fairfax County. Dong Ok Lee (1995,192) notes this dualistic patternof growth among KoreanAmericans in LosAngeles-"increased concentration in Koreatownand deconcentrationtoward a broader local area"simultane- ously-and it echoes the experienceof VietnameseAmericans in SanJose, California, where similar revitalizationof former high-order central-placenodes took place (Lou 1989).

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FIG. 3-Clarendon, a Little Saigon in the early 1980s and now a place for non-Vietnamese to fre- quent Vietnamese restaurants,like the ever-popularQueen Bee. (Photograph by the author)

EDEN CENTER At a distance there is nothing unusual about PlazaSeven, or EdenCenter as it is commonly known to VietnameseAmericans. It is an archetypalshopping piaza,created in an L-shapewith ample parkingin front, a grocery-storeanchor, and in more recent years an adjacentAmes Department Store and stand-alone tire dealership.In 1984 the formerGiant grocery store was convertedinto a 20,000-square-foot arcade or minimall, which is the structurethat formallycarries the name Eden Shopping Center (Figure4). A closerlook revealsthat EdenCenter and the largerPlaza Seven Shopping Cen- ter in effect replicatea small Vietnamese marketingtown or urban marketdistrict (Figure5). Actually,Khu Eden and Khu Rexwere 196osshopping districtsin Saigon. Any number of restaurantand shop names from Saigonand elsewherein the former Republic of Vietnam have been reanimated in Northern Virginia, as have their counterpartsin Southern California,Houston, and New Orleans. What makesEden Centerpopular among VietnameseAmericans is its particu- lar mix of activitiesand its Vietnamesecostuming. It servesas a neighborhood center for a widely dispersed,automobile-based community to satisfydaily, weekly, or more occasional central-placeneeds. Eden Centeris now the most important central place for Vietnamese goods and services on the East Coast. Some foods and many dry goods are availableelsewhere, but many of the products availableat Eden Centerare found nowhere else in the easternUnited States.Thousands of shoppers

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FIG. 4-Eden Center, formerly the grocery-store anchor for the Plaza Seven Shopping Center, as it looked in the summer of 1994. (Photograph by the author)

FIG.5-The PlazaSeven Shopping Center, an archetypalL-shaped shopping plaza, in the springof 1996. (Photographby the author)

This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 68 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW enjoy its eclectic variety of jewelrystores, pastry shops, and restaurants.They buy ginsengtea, fish sauce,pho(Vietnamese noodle soup), and ornatesilk for traditional ao dai dresses.The EdenCenter arcade offers coffee shops, pool halls,books on Viet- nameselife and culture,audiotapes, videotapes, and compact discs-and even kara- oke. Expresscommunications and travelservices offer quick connections to Saigon, as it is still called in Eden Center,and to other locations in Vietnam. Outdoor ven- dors sell mint leaves,sugarcane drinks, and freshdurians, longans, and other fruits. Signs are in Vietnamese, arcade music is Vietnamese, and the clientele is almost solely Vietnamese. Eden Centeris also a refuge.It servesfor NorthernVirginia the same social func- tion as the community gardensof Versaillesdo for New Orleans(Airriess and Claw- son 1991, 1994). Spending Sunday afternoons at Eden Center has become an importantVietnamese American family custom. Many patrons are veteransof the war and of postwarreeducation camps, and the yellow-with-redstriped flag of the former Republicof Vietnam flies boldly alongside the Starsand Stripes.It is also a gang hangout:Youths congregate in coffee shops, pho restaurants,and billiardpar- lors. In large measure Eden Center is a Vietnam-likehaven in the United States,a place where VietnameseAmericans can relish being Vietnamese. In this respect,Eden Centeris also a suburbanshopping-plaza version of China- town, with both positive and negativeconnotations. It is an exotic place to shop, but its sensationalizedgang activity also gives it notoriety. Some theft, gambling, and fighting take place-one-third of all calls for police assistancein FallsChurch come from Plaza Seven-though much of the actual harm caused by gangs occurs elsewhere. As KayAnderson noted for Vancouver,Chinatowns reflect a non-Chinese concept of ethnicity and codify differencesbetween dominant and immigrantsocieties (Anderson1987). An urban Chinatownreflects ideologies of marginalityand sepa- ration in non-Chinese eyes, despite place making by Chinese themselves.Indeed, non-Asians are rarelyaware of Eden Center'sexistence, and of those who are, few have ever ventured into it. Studentsof mine who grew up in FallsChurch, Arlington, or elsewherein east- ern FairfaxCounty have heard of Eden Center,and some are awareof gang activity in it, but until I take them there, few have known how to approachit. To speak of Eden Center as a suburbanChinatown, then, is to suggest a Euroamericanview in which boundariesare employed to highlightsegregation. In fact,Eden Center is only part-albeit a highly central and important part-of a highly integrated,labyrin- thine, and well-networkedVietnamese American social and economic geographyin Northern Virginiaand the East Coast. In time, Eden Centerbecame too much of a good thing. Diners lined up for ta- bles. The parkinglot was often full, so driverswould follow shoppersas they left the stores,hoping to inherittheir parking spaces. Hoang Yen,who sold silk,complained that "Everytime customerscome here,they sayparking is the worst."Her saleswere down, she noted, and her rent was up (Nguyen 1996b). And security remained a

This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VIETNAMESE AMERICAN PLACE MAKING 69 problem. As a result, Falls Church, within whose jurisdiction Eden Center lies, sought an opportunityto increaseits tax base,especially to payfor the higherlevel of police servicesprovided. Then PlazaSeven owner Norman Ebensteinof Boca Raton, Florida,moved to renovateand enlargeEden Center.In a recentinterview he noted, "Inthe past,we were unable to satisfyall the demands for store space.We alwaysin- tended that if at some time business warrantedit, we would expand the center" (Nguyen 1996a). Ebenstein'splan was to build a 32,400-square-footaddition to the plaza-to be called Saigon Center-which would more than double the size of Eden Center;to give all of PlazaSeven, including Eden Center, a majorfacelift; to expandthe parking area;and to enhance security.The one-floor Saigon Center mall was to have space for up to forty-eight new retailestablishments. A clock tower modeled on a Saigon originalwas to adornthe old EdenCenter, and the entirecomplex was to havea new, Asian-styleentrance gate (Hoang 1996).Unstated, but easilyinferred from the renovation plans, was that the commodification of Vietnamese American culture in NorthernVirginia was intendedto expandtourism and novelty shopping-and thus to enhance the exchangevalue of the property. Falls Churchplanning and development officials reviewedEbenstein's plan in the summer of 1995and gave preliminaryapproval in October of that year,despite some opposition. Owners of existing stores complainedabout the higher rentsand opposed the redevelopment.Many of them signed a form letter addressedto the FallsChurch City PlanningBoard, in which they expressedtheir concernsabout security,parking, duplication of businesses,and the irresponsibilityof the landlordin terms of upkeep during the previous dozen years.They called for the improvement of currentstructures before the construction of new ones. The real issue, of course,was fear of higher rents,a lesson learnedfrom redevelopment in Clarendon;and, indeed, rents in EdenCenter did increaseduring 1995in anticipation of the renovation.As An TrongHua of the Eden BusinessAssociation argued, "Not too many people can make it here,"strongly intimating that mer- chants might move on to create a new Vietnamese American shopping center somewhere else (Nguyen 1996b). They were also fearful of competition from the expanded center's new shops and those elsewhere in Northern Virginia. On the other side of the issue, FallsChurch city officialsreceived an anonymous letter that purported to representa large number of underpaidPlaza Seven shop and restau- rant employees. Employershad createdan opportunity for low-skilled and poorly spoken immigrant refugees to find work, albeit at low wages and with compara- tively poor working conditions (Gold 1994). Employees,therefore, very much fa- vored redevelopment and the accompanying prospect of more jobs and higher wages. The owner and the municipalityprevailed. Final approval and ground breaking took place in March 1996, and construction was to be completed in early 1997 (Hoang 1996).The owner'sleasing agentshad alreadyspeculated that the new Plaza Seven Shopping Centerwould become the largestVietnamese shopping district in

This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 70 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW the United States,topping any in the LittleSaigon area along BolsaAvenue in Orange County,California (Nguyen 1996a).Indeed, it "makesthe communitylook stronger when you have somethinglarger. The communitywill look richerand stronger,"argued Minh Nguyen, a janitor in nearby Reston (Nguyen 1996a). As Dunn (1993,239) observed of Sydney'ssuburb Cabramatta,shopping-center clusters of Vietnamese activity in a burgeoning commercial district invariablylead to perception of a greaterspatial concentrationof Vietnamesethan actuallyexits. Eden Center,then, has developeda kind of epiphoricfunction: It is more important and less tangiblethan itself (Tuan1978, 70). It has become investedwith all sorts of social and culturalmeaning. For Vietnamese Americans, it is the culturalheart of a suburban-oriented,metropolitan community. For Norman Ebenstein,the presence of VietnameseAmericans is serendipitous,rewarding an otherwiseunpresup- posing real estate investment. For the City of Falls Church, Eden Center is an opportunityto developand increasethe tax base from a piece of land tuckedinto an awkwardspace on the city'speriphery that had developedinto more trouble than it was worth, in part due to gang activity.For employeesin existing shops and restaurants,it promisesan opportunityfor betterjobs and betterwages. Only for success- ful VietnameseAmerican owners of existing shops and restaurantsdoes it appear problematic,and time will tell whether Eden Centerproduces its own demise. Fi- nally,the centersymbolizes the importantrole that new immigrantsplay in the sub- urbanizationof the United States.For despite its similarform, borrowedname, and imported ornamentation,Eden Centeris not a Vietnamesetransplant but a reflec- tion of what VietnameseAmericans have done with the Americansuburban landscape they have come to occupy.

VIETNAMESEAMERICA Becoming American means shaping America,literally and figuratively,materially and socially,as VietnameseAmericans are doing in NorthernVirginia. Eden Center is a highly visible place for Asians in Northern Virginia and along the entire East Coast.Like many places in an Americanlandscape rich with meaning, however,it is invisible to the untutored. Residencesand ethnic markersdispersed through the suburbanlandscape mean that most residentsare scarcelyaware that Vietnamese Americanshave configureda labyrinthinegeography for themselvesin the Ameri- can suburbsand thatthey arecontributing to Americanplace making. Thus we must view this landscapenot as deviantfrom Americannorms but as a source for under- standinghow we become American-all of us, constantly-by reinventingourselves and our spacesand places (Hayden1995). Landscapeinvolves a continualshaping of social identity and expressing of social relations. It can be argued-indeed, cele- brated-that Vietnamese Americanshave become important actors in the subur- banization process, reinventing themselves as Americans and reconfiguringthe spacesand places they have inherited.Beneath the veneer of elements unfamiliarto most of us, through which we must look closely to see, are places that serve immigrant communities in multiple materialand symbolic ways. Like other American

This content downloaded from 38.68.251.107 on Mon, 15 Sep 2014 13:41:45 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VIETNAMESE AMERICAN PLACE MAKING 71 frontiers in other generations, suburbs are now the geographicalspaces in which Americans of all sorts of origins are creatingAmerica.

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