Under a bright blue sky and appreciating warm temperatures despite occasional gusty winds, Orange County's Little Saigon community celebrated the Chinese Lunar New Year today with a Tet parade that, if based solely on the number of South Vietnam flags waved, resurrected the long dead Asian nation if only for a day.
More than 1,000 spectators watched the 2.5-hour parade down Bolsa Avenue, the main thoroughfare in Little Saigon.
The parade featured bands from area high schools, community groups, former South Vietnamese soldiers, retired U.S. Marines, local business owners as well as Democrat and Republican politicians.
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Westminster Unified School Board member Sergio Contreras gave Tet envelopes with cash to cheering kids along the parade route.
Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen received cheers as she walked the parade route, shook hands and posed for photographs with her constituents.
OC's Little Saigon is home to the world's largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam.
Here are photographs from today's parade:
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.