‘Remember where you are and why you are here.’ Tacoma’s Lunar New Year founders reflect on 35 years

When dragon and lion dancers swerve down 38th Street and through the many Vietnamese-owned businesses on Sunday, it will mark the 35th time the Lincoln District — and by turn Tacoma and Pierce County — collectively celebrate the Asian tradition of leaving bad luck behind and turning toward a brighter, more prosperous future.

The annual Lunar New Year festival now attracts thousands of people of all races and cultural backgrounds to the neighborhood, making it the largest celebration in the South Sound, but it wasn’t always that way.

The first official event in 1990 sprung from a modest idea of camaraderie among immigrants and refugees: specifically, two Vietnamese women who became friends in their adopted hometown and, in their own ways, recognized the significance of continuing traditions not only for themselves and their families but also for their new neighbors.

Oanh “Lee Lee” Lam and Lisa Mathusz both emigrated to the United States in their early 20s. They spoke little English and knew basically no one except their American husbands whom they met in the war. They recalled those decades as an era that was far less inclusive than today.

“There was a need for Vietnamese community,” said Mathusz in an interview, “but your kids had to assimilate. They had to become American at school.”

Lam’s son, Jerry Waldorn, described the experience of representing his second-grade class at Larchmont Elementary in a spelling bee. “‘Speak English and you’ll stop being bullied,’” he remembered hearing from peers and adults.

There was a constant pressure, in their heads and in their surroundings, to let go of their pasts.

Yet over more than three decades, the influence of Asian cultures is visible up and down the West Coast and across the country — perhaps no more so than during Lunar New Year. As of 2025, the Year of the Snake, Washington recognizes it as an official legislative (but unpaid) holiday, joining states including California and Colorado.

Tacoma’s free, public festival has grown to represent more than just a day for food and firecrackers, said Waldorn.

“It’s the tradition, it’s sharing the culture,” he added, and the block-party atmosphere opens the doors for the public to “enter businesses maybe they usually wouldn’t enter.”

BRINGING TET TO TACOMA

Lunar New Year is by far the biggest holiday in many Asian nations, including Vietnam, China, Singapore and Thailand. Scholars believe it has been honored as far back as 1600 B.C. The timing, of course, is not dependent on the Gregorian calendar but the lunar calendar, which recognizes the year’s first alignment of the sun, the moon and the Earth.

For a week or two ahead of Lunar New Years of their youth, Lam and Mathusz remembered shopping for new dresses and doing their hair the night before. Their families would gather for dinners and memorials to honor their ancestors. They would share red envelopes filled with money, clean and organize and prepare plenty of bánh chung, a special sticky rice cake with peppery pork and mung bean steamed in banana leaves. They would say so-long to recent ills and welcome a renewed vow for good health and good fortune.

Settling into their new life in America, they didn’t forget about the tradition, but their celebrations stayed much closer to home. Building community takes time.

Lam soon sponsored family members to also emigrate, including her siblings and their children. She hasn’t been back to Vietnam in years and years, she said, in part because most of her family is now here and not there. She picked fruit for a while but was eventually encouraged to open her own business and in 1984 bought a salon from a fellow who was ready to retire.

She still operates Lorinda’s Hair Care at 769 S. 38th St. For 15 years, from 2001 to 2016, she also ran a beauty school, teaching fellow immigrants who have gone on to open their own salons, she said. She has offered advice about not just hair care but starting and operating a business in America, helping others navigate things like permits and loans.

Mathusz followed a similar, if somewhat inadvertent, path to supporting an influx in the 1980s of immigrant families through her Golden Bamboo Walking Group.

From their home in Salishan, she recalled, “I just started walking with my mom, and people started following us! We were singing in Vietnamese. We were encouraging — it’s good for your health and your heart.”

She also taught dancing. Whatever the reason people were coming together, she added, it was also an opportunity to teach English.

“They feel more comfortable, and more trusted,” she said. “Helping others — that’s what brought us together. If you’re working hard, you’re gonna be somebody.”

A BIGGER LUNAR NEW YEAR IN TACOMA

The Lincoln District blossomed with Vietnamese-owned businesses, anchored by East Asia Market in 1981 and Vien Dong in 1989, as did other pockets of the South Sound and Western Washington. Then-governor Dan Evans welcomed hundreds of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in 1975 after California declined to embrace them, according to a 2015 Seattle Times editorial commemorating the 40th anniversary of Saigon’s fall to North Vietnamese forces. Many of the thousands who followed landed at Camp Murray next to what is now Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

As of 2023, around 75,000 of Pierce County residents are of Asian heritage and another 20,000 identify as Asian Pacific Islander or Hawaiian, totaling about 10% of the population, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. In Tacoma, the Monkeyshine tradition, in which little glass treasures are hidden around town for anyone to discover and keep, began 20 years ago.

In 1990, Lam and Mathusz figured out how to get a permit, printed flyers and held the Lincoln District’s first official Lunar New Year celebration.

In those early days, they said, everything was simpler from a planning standpoint. Vendors would set up tables on the sidewalk, for instance, but the health department eventually shut that down, they said with a laugh. Now, through the Lincoln District Business Association, they save up to cover the costs of not just the permits but also police, fire and barricades, as well as the lion dancers, envelopes, decorations and marketing.

Around 1997, they estimated, the mayor started attending. The throngs of people grew from a few dozen to a few hundred; in good weather in recent years, a few thousand show up. One year it snowed, and they had to reschedule twice before finally making it happen.

It’s been a lot of hard work, they admitted just a few days before the 2025 festival, and in the past few years, they also have played an important part in the Parks Tacoma Tet celebration at the Eastside Community Center.

“To keep our culture going, especially for second and third generations, is to remind them — there’s your culture,” said Mathusz. It’s a chance to “encourage the young to remember where you are, where you are coming from and why you are here.”

Both women are in their 70s and are admittedly eager to pass the torch.

“We’re proud but tired,” but Mathusz. “We have fun, too, but we work hard.”

“Yes,” added Lam. “We have fun.”

LUNAR NEW YEAR - TACOMA

▪ Sunday, Feb. 2, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

▪ Lincoln District, South 38th from South Yakima to South G streets

▪ Free, family-friendly event with street performances and dancing; cash/card accepted at most businesses; details at facebook.com/LincolnDistrictTacoma

This story was originally published January 31, 2025 at 5:00 AM.