COSTA MESA – A village frozen in time – before the war, before communism, before a mass exodus from Vietnam.

A village re-created amid the modern suburbia of Costa Mesa – as a celebration of the past, of home and of tradition.

The annual Tet Festival, which kicked off Friday evening at the OC Fair & Event Center, is a three-day celebration of the Lunar New Year, which begins Saturday and is a time for those in the Little Saigon community to remember the past and look forward with hope at the year to come. Some 50,000 people are expected to attend the festival during its three-day run.

The festival, organized by the Union of Vietnamese Student Associations, blends history with the contemporary: There are Asian-fusion food trucks and performers singing modern pop music and a beauty pageant. But there is also the Cultural Village, expanded from past years, that aims to transport visitors to the Vietnamese countryside.

“You walk in the gate and you see Vietnam,” said Peter Le, 43, a Boston resident who brought his wife and 4-year-old twins to Orange County to reconnect with family and visit the festival. “The whole country is right here.”

As the sun set Friday, Le’s children, Michael and Michelle, both dressed in the traditional ao dai gowns – Michael in yellow, Michelle in red – scampered around the village. They ducked into a miniature country home. Ran to a well. And skipped around bushels of hay and sticks of bamboo.

“You don’t see this anywhere else,” Le said, looking around at canoes used for fishing, vats of rice to be carried on shoulders and a white rickshaw. Le, who was born in Vietnam and came to the United States in his 20s, paused.

Then, he added: “Not even in Vietnam anymore.”

As Little Saigon welcomes the Year of Rooster over the next two days, the festival’s schedule will be diverse, with a dance competition, a youth night and a pho-eating contest.

But the Cultural Village – with a traditional spring wedding and an ancestral procession among the planned activities – will likely be the main draw, for both young and old.

“We don’t usually hear Vietnamese music at parties,” said Mary Nguyen, 23, shortly after taking a photo with two friends in front of paper lanterns. “It’s nice to feel Vietnamese and not just American.”

Emphasizing their homeland’s history and culture, has taken on greater importance among the Vietnamese diaspora in Orange County as the years since the fall of Saigon, in April 1975, pile up.

On the pagoda-style gate leading to the Cultural Village, a short poem – written in Vietnamese – calls on those who enter the village to remember Southeast Asian nation:

The country is still asking, the poem translates to.

The fatherland is still waiting.

“We left the country and we’re hoping to one day go back,” said Luong Tran, a retired hobbyist poet. “We don’t want the younger generation to forget.”

Contact the writer: 714-796-6979 or chaire@scng.com