Hmong immigrant in Montana celebrates 100th birthday

Xong Xiong celebrated becoming a centenarian this week with family and several friends from the Missoula affordable housing complex community in Montana, including Mayor Andrea Davis.

Having survived and escaped the Vietnam War and the Laotian Civil War, Xiong arrived in the U.S. as a Hmong refugee in 1978. She recalled to the Missoulian how she was “very poor” when she moved into the housing complex, classified by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as serving either “very low” or “extremely low” income residents, around four decades ago, but managed to get by after finding jobs as a dishwasher and in food service for many years.