Chinese Culture Festival – 2024

Author: Lucas Chen

If you went to Capitol Hill on August 31, 2024, you would have found Tai Chi performers, people playing Go, lion and dragon dances, and stuffed pandas. This is no normal day in DC, it’s the Chinese Culture Festival. Every year since 1993, it draws hundreds of people to gather at Capitol Hill, and clearly NOT for any political event.

The culture festival was created to spread awareness of Chinese culture, hence the name. Last year, my service group, Capitol Youth Outreach Club, volunteered at this festival, and my job was to walk around the city and do some advertising. This year, I switched to the reporter group. My job this time around was to take pictures and videos and write a report on the festival.

The culture festival was created to spread awareness of Chinese culture, hence the name. Last year, my service group, Capitol Youth Outreach Club, volunteered at this festival, and my job was to walk around the city and do some advertising. This year, I switched to the reporter group. My job this time around was to take pictures and videos and write a report on the festival.

My reporting job was going to take longer than expected. I started by taking a picture of all the food stalls. The first one was a kabob and naan bread(fluffy flatbread) stall. I was taking a picture of some sauteed chicken kabobs when the man running the place stopped me.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking pictures of the food.”

“To get good pictures of food, try to take a picture very close to the food and at a 45 degree angle.

I took his advice, and it worked immediately. My final picture came out much better than my first one!

The next few stalls were matcha(crushed tea leaves), 冰粉(bingfen) or ice jelly made from shoofly(aka Apple of Peru) seeds, and 煎饼果子(jianbing guo zi). I didn’t know what this was, so I asked the vendor, but she must have heard wrong, because she said they hadn’t made any yet. After that was cleared up, I found out that this was pretty much dough sticks wrapped in flatbread(a famous food from Tianjin). Other notable stands were for more kabobs, Korean BBQ, Hibachi, and even Beijing Duck made by a guy that was a James Beard Award finalist. I ended up eating hibachi for lunch.

After going through the food stands, I went to the main street and checked out everything there. What really caught my attention was a stand for Go. Go is a game where you put down black and white stones and try to get as much territory on the board as possible. I learned and played a game against a guy with years of experience. I lost the match, but I did manage to keep all the stones I used on the board, so that was a plus. My dad also played a game of Go against another guy, an American political strategist, at the Go stand, and he won. The guy he played had 15-20 years of experience by then, so I was surprised.

The main events of the culture festival were the dances/performances. Most of the performances were dances, however there were some outliers. There was a girl who sang very well, a woman who played all kinds of traditional chinese instruments, and my mom did a Tai Chi routine with her group. On the second stage, there were lion dances, percussion performances, and my dragon dancing team was also there. I said hi to them, specifically Derek and Evan, and I really liked their performance.

My favorite show was a martial arts routine done by Shaolin Temple USA. It involved eight students and a Shaolin Monk. There was a guy throwing a whip around, kids swinging around chain whips, and the coach smashing a piece of wood with his head. The whole thing just looked awesome.

A completely unexpected and unplanned surprise for everyone at CYOC was when Miss DC stopped by to take a picture with us. My dad had seen her joining the parade, and so he asked her to take a picture with CYOC. When she came over, I asked myself, “who is that person?” and by the end of the festival, I was surprised to find out that it was Miss DC.

This cultural festival was enjoyable, and the only loss for me is that my event, archery, was cut out for no particular reason, and I hope that won’t happen next year. I think everything else made up for that this year. 

The next time you go to the culture festival, I hope you will not find it surprising but fun. I’m looking forward to an even bigger event in the future.

Editor: Sophie Xu