WESTMINSTER : Dalat City Reunion ‘Like Coming Home’

The memories came in a flood for Anh Nguyen as she watched young girls in ao dai, the traditional long Vietnamese dress, parade on stage during a fashion show at the Westminster Cultural Center on Sunday.

Vietnamese dancers and singers also performed during the two-hour cultural show, capping the festivities as more than 1,000 local Vietnamese residents who had lived in Dalat City in Vietnam gathered for the first time since leaving their country more than 18 years ago.

“It was like coming home,” said Nguyen, a Westminster resident who helped organize the event. “It was an occasion for people who have not seen each other for a long time to meet and talk about old times.”

Nguyen said that Dalat City, about 200 miles north of Saigon, is a resort in the highlands famous for its cool mountain climate, lakes, waterfalls, pine trees and flowers.

It was a major tourist attraction and the site of some of Vietnam’s best schools before the Communist government took over in 1975.

Most of the generals from the former Vietnamese army studied at the military academy in the city, said Thach Nguyen, Anh Nguyen’s husband, who went to a French high school there.

Thach Nguyen said Dalat City was spared from heavy damage during the Vietnam War, but many of the schools have now closed, the city is in general disrepair and tourism is practically dead.

“The government now owns most of the hotels and buildings,” said Anh Dung, who left Dalat City for the United States two years ago. “The businessmen who run the city’s tourist industry have all left.”

Thac Nguyen said he hopes the gathering of former Dalat City residents will lead to future efforts to help the city, particularly in reviving tourism.

But Sunday, people were thinking more about Dalat City’s past, not its future.

Through the songs, dances and a fashion show, people tried to remember what it was like when the city was considered one of the most beautiful in Vietnam.

Singer David Do of Irvine performed a haunting song about a man leaving his lover in Dalat City.

Do said the city is like a lover that one has left behind and hopes to come back to someday.

“I really loved that city,” Do said, who had studied at the National College of Agriculture in Dalat City. “I thought I would live there forever.”

“It was a very romantic place,” said Marianne Tam Young Young, 54, who went to a high school run by Catholic nuns in the 1950s. “I have fond memories of the city and hopes to go back there someday.”