On Saturday, hundreds of cars packed the parking lots and lined the streets near the town of Weed’s recreation center. The big turnout was thanks to the local Hmong community, which has a large presence in rural Siskiyou County. This weekend they celebrated their New Year, an important holiday in Southeast Asia as well as immigrant communities in North America.
With a snow-dusted Mt. Shasta in the background, Hmong Americans showed off brightly-colored, often jingly, traditional clothes against the area's go-to cowboy wear. They mingled around a soccer tournament, listened to singers compete from rival speakers and browsed stands selling handcrafts and medicine from Asia. Hmong food, which resembles Thai cuisine, was free for visitors. Organizers made sure they knew it.
At one stand, a basket of tennis balls were on sale for $3 each, which might seem strange to first-time attendees. But Mou Ying Lee, a liaison between the Hmong community and the county, explained that the celebration is a time for courtship. That’s where the tennis balls come in.
“If you see a girl that you like, then you say ‘May I have the honor to toss the ball to you?’” said Lee.
The game of catch can provide an effective icebreaker. After all, Lee met his wife at a Hmong New Year gathering.
The annual celebration occurs at the end of the harvest season. And many Hmong have continued a tradition of small-lot farming in Siskiyou County, buying up land in the subdivision Mount Shasta Vista, now home to hundreds of families.
In the last decade, local authorities have cracked down on Hmong farmers using water in the arid region to illegally grow marijuana. The Asian Law Caucus sued the county after an ordinance banned transporting water without a permit, which lawyers said unfairly targeted the region’s Hmong community. That ordinance was later repealed.
According to Lee, the Hmong are used to living outside of the government’s reach as ethnic minorities in the mountains of Thailand and Laos.
“We are the freedom people. When [it] comes to law, it's hard to understand,” said Lee.
That sentiment isn’t so far out of place in Siskiyou County, birthplace for the State of Jefferson movement that seeks to wrest local control from Portland and Sacramento.
For this new year, the crowds didn’t seem too worried about water rights or the plummeting price of cannabis. Much of the work for the harvest is now over. And there’s plenty of people to toss a ball to.
