Hmong celebrate New Year – By CHELSI MOY of the Missoulian – 12-16-07

 

Saturday evening marked the first time streamers and balloons hung from the ceiling of Missoula’s Hmong New Year celebration. It was also the first time tablecloths covered the tables – albeit in traditional Hmong colors.

 

The New Year celebration is one of the biggest events of the year for the Hmong community, which numbers about 150 to 200 in Missoula.

Though it’s a time to gather with family and celebrate Hmong culture through food, song and dance, influences of modern society – especially as seen in the younger generations – is now, too, a part of the festivities. Hence, the balloons, streamers and tablecloths.
Kao Nou Thao, 23, organized this year’s event at Big Sky High School. That in itself was significant, because for years it was the task of older folks, Thao said. It made her proud to think the Hmong elders trusted such a special event to a person of her age.

 

Among the biggest differences in the way things operated this year included Thao’s making a budget, securing liability insurance, looking for a new venue and doing everything on a computer and MP3 player.

 

“My parents helped with a lot of the traditional stuff,” she said, “but I digitalized a lot of this.”

 

Hmong people, predominately found in China, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, France, Australia and the United States, settled in Missoula 30 years ago. Theirs is a rich farming community.

 

The New Year’s celebration occurs in December when the harvest season has passed and people have time to pay attention to other important matters, such as finding a mate.

 

Anymore, the festivities are less about courtship and more about celebration, Thao said. In some bigger cities, it’s still a time for boys and girls to become acquainted, but here in Missoula, the Hmong community is so small that everyone either knows everyone else, or is related, she said.

 

Last Thursday was the Hmong community’s spiritual event, where families gathered to hear the blessing. For the three days leading up to the New Year’s celebration, the Hmong people take part in a fasting of sorts. But instead of not eating, they can’t spend any money, wash clothes or embroider.

 

“As a student, that’s hard because you usually forget to stock up on food,” said Thao, a University of Montana graduate student in social work.

 

At the celebration, boys wearing colorful sashes with dangling coins that jingled as they walked and girls in beaded dresses and hats huddled to take pictures with digital cameras.

 

The dinner, too, was a mixture of then and now. Rice, curry and traditional carrot salad from Hmong gardens was served with fried chicken from Wal-Mart, Thao said.

 

Later in the evening came a “culture show,” full of traditional dancing, singing, poetry and blessings.

 

The fashion show was an unconventional presentation of many of the traditional costumes from different parts of Laos.

 

New this year was line dancing, but to customary Hmong music.

 

“There’s a lot that’s different, but there’s still a lot that’s the same,” Thao said.

 

The event is not just for the Hmong community, but for everyone. And many Missoula residents attended Saturday’s festivities.

 

Early in the evening, 14-year-old Scott Moua was nervous about performing traditional Hmong dances that he and other middle-school-age boys had been practicing for months.

 

Both Moua, and Matthew Thao, 14, play football and run track, but said they also enjoy dancing and learning to play the qeej, a traditional Hmong instrument that slightly resembles bagpipes, but with six bamboo rods.

 

“It shows the older generation that we still have respect for our culture,” Thao said. “We have a lot of history. I don’t want it to die.”

 

Chue Vang, 56, agreed.

 

If the children and young adults want to modernize the New Year’s celebration with streamers and balloons in order to have fun learning and remembering the traditional ways, so be it, he said. The important part is that they understand.

 

“It’s so the kids remember,” Vang said.

 

Article By CHELSI MOY published in the Missoulian 12-16-07