Walser Automotive Group Celebrates 50 Years of the Hmong Community in Minnesota

2025 marked a milestone of 50 years of the Hmong community in Minnesota. Walser’s Asian Hmong Alliance rose to the occasion with two standout events: hosting a companywide Hmong New Year at our Walser Toyota Bloomington and representing Walser at St. Paul’s RiverCentre Hmong New Year, one of the largest Hmong cultural celebrations in the United States.

Hmong New Year at Walser Toyota Bloomington

To kick off the Hmong New Year festivities, our Asian Hmong Alliance hosted this year’s celebration at our Walser Toyota Bloomington location, having previously hosted at Walser’s Reconditioning Center. With partnerships with Walser Toyota and our hiring partner, Avenica, they were able to put on an extraordinary event, featuring platters of spicy chicken wings, pork belly with bok choy, egg rolls, and many other Hmong favorites.

At the conclusion of lunch, participants were asked to head to the conference room, where Asian Hmong Alliance’s board had prepared an educational presentation on the Hmong New Year and talked about the roots of the celebration as a time to reflect and relax after the hard harvest season. In a nice personal touch, each board member discussed their memories of past Hmong New Years and what it has meant to them.

Our employees were then awed by the Eternal Embers—a St. Paul-based Hmong dance troupe—both by the dancing as well as the sophisticated outfits. Then, volunteers got to get their hands dirty while pounding rice to make sticky rice the traditional Hmong way with a wooden mallet. At the end, Asian Hmong Alliance President Song Vang thanked all who attended, and asked for some brave souls to come up front and join him and the Eternal Embers in a Hmong line dance. The event combined great food, dancing, music, and education into a very memorable Walser Hmong New Year.

Walser at St. Paul RiverCentre’s Hmong New Year

The Hmong New Year at St. Paul’s RiverCentre is a massive gathering of the Hmong community which generally draws crowds of around 30,000 people over two days. Even though this year’s attendees had to brave a very cold November weekend, 2025’s celebration was a big one. While always a presence at the RiverCentre celebration, our Asian Hmong Alliance played a bigger part than ever in ‘25.

Upon entering the Hmong New Year celebration, guests walked through a gate, which symbolized leaving negative energy and bad luck behind. On the other side of the gate comes the cleansing for the new year, which is steamed taro, a shot of apple juice, and an egg—a Hmong symbol of life and vitality.

Once inside, visitors got the chance to mingle and visit the various vendors’ booths on site, like Walser’s. As always, our booth was right next to our longtime community partner, the Hmong American Partnership. At our booth, we had members of our Asian Hmong Alliance team and volunteers from across the company, with games to play to win prizes and giveaways to services at our various dealerships.

Attendees also had the chance to witness the ball-toss courtship event, pov pob. Traditionally, unmarried Hmong boys and girls line up from each other and toss the ball back and forth, using the time to make small talk to get to know one another. If one of the pair drops the ball, they must sing a love song to the other, buy a treat, or forfeit an item for later retrieval. All the consequences of dropping the ball in pov pob were meant for the pair to get to know each other better and meet in a more private setting later.

To conclude the Hmong New Year celebration, our team had the privilege of crowning the first ever Mrs. Hmong Minnesota, with Walser’s Dayna Kleve stepping on stage to do the honors for the winner—Amy Vang-Thao. Our team was asked due to our commitment and dedication to the Hmong community, as well as being a top sponsor for the event.

Walser at St. Paul RiverCentre’s Hmong New Year

The history of the Hmong and their diaspora is a tale of resistance and resilience. Originating in Southern China, the Hmong battled against the Chinese government for their own autonomy, only to be defeated and forced to flee to neighboring Laos and Vietnam during the 19th century. The Hmong people believed they had found their new home in Laos, up ten percent of the country’s population as recently as 1970, but again they faced an oppressive government when communism took hold.

Even with the support of the United States in what was known as the Secret War against the Laotian communist government, the Hmong again fled to avoid massacres and chemical warfare, and many made the dangerous journey to Thailand via rafts or by foot. Finally, in 1975, the United States offered asylum to the Hmong people and the first wave of Hmong arrived in Minnesota.

Today, 50 years later, St. Paul now has the highest urban concentration of Hmong in the world. The people of St. Paul also recently elected its first Hmong mayor, Kaohly Her. The Hmong have made a tremendous impact through their rich culture and talents to the great state of Minnesota, and the fifty-year celebration during this year’s Hmong New Year was more than deserved. We recognize the important contributions of the Hmong people and started AHA to both support our Hmong employees as well as connect Walser to the great Hmong community in Minnesota and beyond.