From a small village in the countryside of southern Vietnam, one of our first family members successfully reached American soil by boat. It was a journey of countless tales of losses and arrests and re-starts — a journey vying for an American Dream that can only be read about in Asian American history. Our first family stayed at Angel Island with a wish that our lives would change for the better. Because of this immigrant story, we are here today as Vietnamese Americans.

Many years later, we immigrated to the United States in 2002. We started a family business selling convenient and affordable to-go food, such as fried rice, chow mein, egg rolls, and orange chicken. In 2018, we moved to San Dimas and fell in love with the small-town feel and the grand mountains, trees, and parks that were a more peaceful green than the dullness of bricks and stones and pavements in Rosemead and El Monte. We opened a genuine Vietnamese restaurant, as we’ve always dreamed of, making baguettes and noodle soups that are a glimpse of our culture and history.

Here’s our greeting from the other shore, across the Pacific Ocean, with a shared history and meaning that we came to this land to be free, to hope and dream, to pay taxes with representation and legality, to die for this belief, and so that are children can have a better future.