Sticky rice meets Southern hospitality at Buddhist temple festivals (original) (raw)

Growing up in Georgia, Molli Voraotsady would regularly look forward to the Lao New Year festival at Wat Lao Buddhamoongcoon. In April, the Buddhist temple in Riverdale, Ga., would fill up with community-staffed food tents, greeting Voraotsady with the smells of grilling meat and sticky rice steaming in bamboo baskets. Her uncle would boil crawfish and serve it the Lao way, with a side of jeow som, a spicy condiment full of citrus and fish sauce.

After meeting up with her cousins, eating was first on her to-do list. Then they might participate in new year traditions such as water fights or shaving cream battles, symbolizing the washing away of the old year and the purification for the new one. It was the one time of year that she saw everyone in the Lao community come together.

“It’s just sort of comforting being around your elders,” Voraotsady said. “Most [Lao grandmothers] are really, really loud, they usually love to cook, and they all call you ‘luk,’ which means child. So it’s just one big, happy family, it sort of feels like.”

Similar gatherings take place at temples across the country with the arrival of Thai, Lao and Cambodian new years in April, but they’re particularly important in the American South. U.S. Census numbers report that the region has some of the smallest Asian populations in the country, and states in the South rank among the lowest in the country in religious diversity.

Buddhist temples attract locals and travelers alike for the festivals. As these temple gatherings get more popular, they play a key role in helping the rapidly growing Thai and Lao populations in the South connect with each other and share their culture with the larger community.

Today, Voraotsady, 32, serves her own Lao food as the chef of Atlanta pop-up So So Fed. But she makes sure to take a break from serving larb and papaya salad to celebrate the New Year by sampling the home cooking at Wat Lao Buddha Khanti, a temple in Snellville, Ga. This year, she took the So So Fed team to the temple’s annual festival to try some of the same food they serve, but from aunties and grandmas.

On April 23, the second day of the weekend festival, grills sizzled, and the temple grounds thrummed with the bass of live music. The festivities kicked off with prayers and a blessing, continuing through the afternoon with ceremonies, a parade and dancing. In between, visitors stopped by different vendor tents, which sold such things as water guns, fresh-pressed sugar cane juice and traditional Lao dishes marked by fragrant herbs and spicy chiles.

“It was really sweet going with people who had never been before, especially the crew who’s been serving Lao food with us at So So Fed. It was a huge learning experience for everyone — really immersive,” Voraotsady said. “I was like, ‘Now you get to see how other people’s families make Lao food, not just mine.’”

Lamai Begue, 43, immigrated to New Orleans from Thailand in 2002 and only knew a few people before she found Wat Wimuttayaram Buddhist Temple of Louisiana.

There she started to build a community and eventually volunteered as a food vendor for the temple’s biannual celebrations: one for Songkran, or Thai New Year, in April and another for Loy Krathong, the Thai festival of lights, in the fall. A line usually snakes behind her booth as she serves spicy papaya salad and bamboo shoot salad, a crowd favorite.

“[People] try everything, and I’ve heard they like everything,” she said. “I think that’s the reason why we get bigger and bigger too.”

When the temple began hosting food fairs in 2018, they were small, mainly serving the Thai community, but over time, they’ve attracted people from across the area. The Songkran festival this year featured about 10 to 15 volunteer vendors serving a range of Thai street food, including appetizers such as Begue’s salads and Thai sausage, as well as classic desserts such as mango and sticky rice. People could also observe traditional Thai dance, enter raffles and participate in the water festival portion of the event.

“When other people or other religions or other cultures come, we want to share,” said temple secretary Luksamee Dyer. “It’s nice to promote our country, our community, our temple.”

Southeast Asian immigrants arrived in the United States in large numbers in the 1970s and ’80s as refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos fled communist regimes following the end of the Vietnam War. Refugees from the first wave were often sponsored by individuals or religious organizations such as churches or synagogues, which determined where in the United States they would initially settle.

Social networks and word of mouth later drove migration to the American South. In the ’80s, manufacturing jobs brought more Lao people to Southern communities. According to Kimberly Khounthalangsy and Justin Settah Rodriguez of the Laotian American Society, manufacturing plants in places such as Habersham and Gwinnett counties in Georgia were willing to hire immigrants despite language barriers.

Today, Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the United States. And although the South has some of the smallest Asian populations in the States, it also has some of the fastest-growing Asian communities in the country.

C.N. Le, the director of the Asian & Asian American Studies Certificate program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said job opportunities, more affordable real estate, a lower cost of living and more are driving Southeast Asian immigrants to relocate to the South from “traditional gateway destinations” such as Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.

Moukdavanh Ngonephetsy moved from Rockford, Ill., to Tennessee and joined Wat Amphawan of America in Murfreesboro four years ago. There, she sees broad interest in the Thai-Lao food fairs the temple holds twice a year. People travel from all over the area to get a taste of Southeast Asian food from one of the many volunteer cooks.

“We have all kinds of people walking in here,” Ngonephetsy said. “Any culture, they just walk in and they’re all welcome.”

Preeda Momungkun, a monk at the Murfreesboro temple, enjoys seeing the city come together, especially families.

“I love the city, and I love the people, and we have the best neighbors in this area,” he said through Ngonephetsy, who interpreted on his behalf. And although temple festivals often serve as fundraisers, Momungkun said the money is not important: “[What’s] important is to see the people and friendly faces.”

In April, the food fair had a $30 all-you-can-eat entry fee and 30 different dishes on the roster, including stir-fried beef and Ngonephetsy’s homemade egg rolls. Although food is the main attraction, Ngonephetsy also sees the events as a chance for the temple community to share its religion and culture. The fair features traditional dances and music, and the temple always makes sure there’s a monk present for attendees who may have questions about the temple or traditions.

The New Orleans temple only charges for food, and proceeds go to maintaining and expanding the property. Each event raises between 3,000and3,000 and 3,000and5,000. This growth, Begue said, helps the temple make a bigger impact, as it did for her. Around 2017, during a difficult time in her life, the temple was a place for comfort and refuge.

For other locals and visitors from around the area, these kinds of events can be an entry point for learning about Southeast Asian culture and Buddhist perspectives on community. Le said there’s a long tradition of Buddhist temples welcoming visitors of other faiths.

“Buddhist temples have been organized around making sure that they are connected to the communities in which they are located,” Le said, “so I think that kind of ethos has also been transferred to their lives here in the U.S.”

Kris Martins is a food writer based in the South. Follow her on Twitter (@bykrism) and Instagram (@thekrism).