New Year's celebration offers cultural connection

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by Matt Boyd
Staff Writer

The new year is the biggest celebration of the year in Cambodian culture, whether you're in Southeast Asia or Silver Spring. That's why about 3,000 people turned out Sunday to the Cambodian Buddhist Temple on New Hampshire Avenue to ring in the Year of the Monkey.

For many, it was a way of keeping ties to their culture as people with one metaphorical foot in the United States and another in Cambodia.

Kids tossed footballs as adults played the Cambodian game of Chorl Choung with a kind of flat nut. Craftsmen sold carvings, art and soft drinks as people danced to live music. Tubs of white rice with spicy beef kabobs and bowls of rice noodle soup were set out for everyone.

The free food is standard practice, meant to communicate that "the house is open, welcome everybody," said volunteer Ithara Phlong.

Inside the temple is a white room with pink carpet and no seats. At the front is a golden statue of Siddartha Guatama, the Buddha, in front of a painting of the tree under which he is said to have achieved enlightenment.

People knelt, hands before them with palms together, bowing three times to punctuate a prayer as a Christian might say "amen." Others videotaped their surroundings and took pictures of each other in front of the statue with cell phone cameras. A group of children struck up a game on the floor. Buddhist monk Vorn Yen sprinkled people's heads with water as a blessing.

Haydi Dupuy was there with her husband Oliver, her 21-month-old daughter, Maile, and her niece, Katherine Yap. They live in Ashburn, Va., but come for the new year celebrations. Her parents, as some of the founding members of the temple, come regularly, she said.

Over the last few years, there has been more of a mix of people coming, Dupuy said. Walking around, she had heard not just the Cambodian language, Khmer, but also Tai, Vietnamese and Laotian. Some non-Asians who had lived overseas also attended.

That kind of mixture probably wouldn't happen in Asia, but was partly possible because English acts as a common language, Dupuy said. "American culture is the common thing that brings everyone together," she said.

Dupuy's family is a bit of a mixture itself. Her husband, Oliver, is French. Her daughter, one of "the new breed" as Dupuy said, speaks English, French and Khmer.

Dupuy is Presbyterian and Oliver is Catholic, but they both come to the temple for the celebration because it's part of her background and heritage, she said.

"We don't see ourselves as pure Cambodian," Dupuy said. "We're American-Cambodian, which is different."

Dupuy said she went back to Cambodia for the first time in 1994, and despite speaking fluent Khmer, it was obvious to everyone that she was an American. The way she dressed and the way she spoke her opinion all marked her as having been raised elsewhere. Her relatives told her she even smelled like an American, thanks to the shampoo and soaps she used. "It's everything," she said.

Young Claire Ottemoeller was also raised in the United States, having been adopted from Cambodia as an infant three years ago. Her parents, Dan Ottemoeller and Kim Lanegran, brought her from their home in Frederick.

"Basically what this is is a kind of cultural connection for Claire," Dan Ottemoeller said.

Political activism

Outside, the temple was holding a voter registration drive as part of an effort to make Cambodian-Americans a more powerful political bloc. Yuvora Nong, an attorney who deals mostly with immigration issues, explained that the drive is a response to an issue of great concern in the Cambodian-American community: the deportation of Cambodians convicted of crimes.

The United States and Cambodia signed an extradition treaty in March 2002, Nong said. Deportable offense is an "aggravated felony," which can have a different meaning under immigration law. These aggravated felonies can include violent assault, theft, forgery, lying under oath, and in some states, driving under the influence.

Though the treaty was signed in 2002, it is being applied retroactively, Nong said. People are being deported for crimes they committed years ago and for which they have already served time. There are more than 1,500 people waiting to be deported, and most of those who have already been sent back were convicted of violent physical crimes like assault, he said.

Nong doesn't believe in halting deportation entirely, though some groups addressing the issue do. "We're trying to make a distinction," he said. "Most Cambodians being deported are refugees."

Hip-hop, Cambodian style

Hip-hop artist Prach Ly, 24, performed for the audience outdoors between dances. Ly was on tour with filmmaker Tiara Delgado, for whose documentary of four Cambodian families he provided the soundtrack.

Raised in Long Beach, Calif., Ly had an accidental best-selling album in Cambodia after he made a demo tape for some friends, copies of which made their way to his country of birth. Bootleg sales put him at the top of the Cambodian charts for months. Ly didn't know about it until Newsweek called to interview him.

The album, "Dalama," cuts back and forth between English and Khmer with history lessons of the Cambodia before and during the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge. The track "Neutral (Before the War)" is a love letter to the beauty of the country, while "The Great Escape!" tells the story of his own family's flight as refugees.

Life as a Cambodian in the United States can be difficult, Ly said. There's a significant generation gap between the young and the old. The younger generation raised here can't always communicate with the older generation of parents, who speak mostly Khmer. The countries themselves are different, as Cambodia is all villages while he was raised in a city. "It's a different world," Ly said.

The Cambodian New Year's celebration, though, is an important part of the culture, Ly said. Two years ago he helped organize one with 15,000 people. "Even though we're American, we're still Cambodian," he said.

But even if the new year celebration is part of the Cambodian-American identity, Ly is quick to point out that it isn't exclusionary, as evidenced by the number of non-Cambodians walking around the festival. "I don't think there's a boundary," he said. "There's no color line."