The Hmong are a major ethnic group residing in Merced, California. As of 1997, Merced had a high concentration of Hmong residents relative to its population. The Hmong community settled in Merced after Dang Moua, a Hmong community leader, had promoted Merced to the Hmong communities scattered across the United States. As of 2010, there were 4,741 people of Hmong descent living in Merced, comprising 6% of Merced's population.
Culture
As of 1997 Merced has fourteen Hmong clans; they are the Cheng, Fang, Hang, Her, Kong, Kue, Lee, Lor, Moua, Thao, Vang, Vue, Xiong, and Yang. As a result, as of 1997 young people easily found exogamous marriage partners. Hmong often drive from city to city in the Central Valley. The Hmong who moved elsewhere go to Merced for subclan gatherings in a manner similar to how, in history, Hmong residents in Laos traveled to their home villages from satellite villages. Because of the manner of the Hmong using Merced as the location of the subclan gatherings, Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, said, "Sometimes I felt that the other cities of the Central Valley—Fresno, Visalia, Porterville, Modesto, Stockton, Sacramento, Marysville, Yuba City—were mere suburbs of Merced." Because of the presence of a large Hmong community, it is easy for one to find a Hmong clan elder for dispute mediation, a txiv neeb, a Hmong herbalist, and a qeej player. Since, as of 1997, bamboo is not commonly found in Merced, qeejs are often constructed from PVC plumbing pipes.
Beginning of settlement
The Hmong began to settle in Merced in the 1970s and the 1980s. The Hmong settled Merced and other areas in the Central Valley of California after the conclusion of the Laotian Civil War, when Communist forces won and began to oppress the Hmong, who had fought for the anti-Communist United States side. The Hmong fled to refugee camps in Thailand, then relocated to other parts of the world such as the United States, France, and Australia.
Members of the Hmong community settled in Merced because Dang Moua, a community leader and former clerk typist at the Embassy of the United States in Laos, promoted Merced. Fadiman said that from the Hmong point of view, Moua "bears the same relation to Merced that Daniel Boone bore to Kentucky or the Pied Piper bore to Koppelberg Hill." When Moua moved to the United States, he originally lived in Richmond, Virginia. While there he researched climates, crop yields, and soil conditions in other states. Moua's brother, a resident of Southern California, told him that the Central Valley had good weather and a variety of ethnic groups. Through the Hmong community social network, Moua learned that General Vang Pao planned to buy a fruit ranch near Merced. As a result, Moua left for Merced, arriving there mid-April 1977. While Vang's plan to buy the fruit ranch did not succeed, the Hmong community spread favorable reviews of Merced, and Hmong people from all over the United States traveled to Merced. Eric Crystal, an anthropologist, expressed surprise over the fact that the Hmong had converged upon Merced; he told a reporter for the Merced Sun-Star, "It was just wild! You'd see these Arkansas plates and stuff on the streets, I mean they were just pouring in from all over the place!" Because of the pre-existing Hmong settlement in Merced, Merced remained a favored destination for Hmong migrants.
In April 1982, Merced County had 1,800 Hmong people. On October 19, 1982 Merced County officials said that the county had 5,800 Hmongs, with most of them having arrived within six months of that day. Mike Conway of Merced Sun-Star said that the officials said that "they may be underestimating the total."
The Hmong believed that Merced was a farming community, but they discovered that the land was owned by other people, and they could not farm. Many Hmong who traveled to Merced became unemployed; they could not get high end agricultural jobs because they did not speak sufficient English, and Mexican migrants already held low end agricultural jobs. The Hmong arrived as Merced began to experience an economic recession in the early 1980s. In October 1982 the Hmong refugees present in Merced County had not stayed in the county long enough to become eligible to receive unemployment-derived benefits. They were not counted in the county unemployment rate of 13.5%, which represented 8,000 jobless people already present before the arrival of the refugees. In a meeting held by the Merced County Board of Supervisors, the members of the board were told that the addition of the Hmong in the labor pool increased racial tensions in Merced County.