At the festival, there were a lot of interesting things going on, but most importantly, the different stands about Chinese culture in general stood out the most. With more than 30 stands with different aspects of Chinese culture, it was full of bliss and content. The stands varied from hanzi writing, to dressing up in traditional Chinese robes. There were performances from many different groups and organizations from the DMV area, along with a representative from China that came to oversee the festival.
One thing that caught most people’s attention was the food stalls. The food stalls stretched for an entire street, with delicacies for all cravings. There were food stalls that sold boba, there were food stalls that sold fried street food, and there were even stalls that sold bowls of noodles. One of the most notable food stalls was the food stall representing Peter Chang’s, a very popular restaurant chain in the DMV area. Aside from foods that fill you up, there was also a dessert section, selling mocha donuts and traditional Chinese pastries.
The mascot for the festival was a pretty obvious choice, being the panda. Everywhere you looked, there was always a panda, whether it be on a banner, a shirt, and even a panda costume. One way that the host of the festival decided to keep people entertained is bringing stuffed pandas into the mix. By using a lottery system, pandas would be given out to random people every 30 minutes. Besides this lottery system, there were also QR codes everywhere, and scanning all of them allowed you to enter the lottery for pandas.
The festival had started early in the morning, with volunteers bringing in the necessary supplies for each stall. The streets were packed with volunteers hauling around materials and props. To prepare for the festival, we had to set up a tent, along with a banner that represented our stalls’s focus. And when the festival finally ended, we had to put all of our materials back, and clean up after ourselves. The festival was a perfect representation of people coming together to build something great.
