Monterey-Monterey Bay Chinese Association says next month the organization will promote inclusion, cooperation and awareness-raising as it marks the fourth annual Chinese Cultural Festival.
This year’s festival, held for the first time since 2019, will take place on Sunday, October 16th from 11am to 3pm at the Custom House Plaza Monterey. Event organizers explained that it serves as a local opportunity to promote a better understanding of Chinese culture and heritage, and the festival aims to maintain diversity and promote connections between cultural groups across the region. He added that there are
“This is an important opportunity for the Chinese community to reunite because we have people of different bloodlines. But it is also an opportunity to welcome and connect with different ethnic groups,” he said. Yong-Ling Beiman, a member of the Monterey Bay Chinese Association, said. “This is a gathering of old and new friends, an experience where people can explore connection and continuity through culture, art-making and entertainment.”
Free and open to the public, the October festival features authentic Chinese art, food, games, cultural exhibits and folk dance. The Monterey Bay Chinese Association invited local Japanese and Korean organizations, as well as the Pacific Grove Adult Education Center, in hopes of being an example of cross-cultural friendship.
“Our goal is to promote harmonious diversity,” said Beiman.
The Chinese Cultural Festival was established in 2017 to ensure that the presence of the local Chinese community is not only widely known, but understood, said Richard Zhang, president of the Monterey Bay Chinese Association. Zhang, who has been a member of the association since its founding more than eight years ago, said raising awareness has always been at the heart of the festival’s purpose.
The Chinese community has deep roots in Monterey Bay. In 1851, a group of Chinese families immigrated to the California coast and established the fishing village of Point He Alones, where the Marine Corps Base is now Hopkins. It was the first and largest family-based Chinese community in the United States at the time and is recognized as a pioneer of commercial fishing in Monterey Bay. Eventually, when the village of Point Alone mysteriously burned down in 1906, the family was scattered throughout the area.
Coordinating historic ties with current community members, the Monterey Bay Chinese Association recognizes next month’s festival as an opportunity to come together and celebrate our cultures together.
Embracing the local Chinese community is particularly notable on the Monterey Peninsula, where the dust continues to settle from the Pacific Grove Lantern Feast that ends earlier this year. After widespread discontent over its appropriation of Chinese culture, the disbanded Lantern Feast prompted city officials to seek an apology for its history of systemic racism and discrimination against Chinese immigrants in Pacific Grove. rice field.
Asked about holding this year’s Chinese cultural festival following the dissolution of Feast of Lantern, Zhang asserted that the two events were “completely separate” and that the Monterey Bay Chinese Association was “bringing people together. We are just trying to introduce and build Chinese culture.” good relations with the community; “
In response to Chan’s efforts to stay positive, Bayman said, “The performance is going to be real at this event.”
“There will be Chinese performances by local Chinese. Japanese performances by local Japanese. No cultural appropriation,” she continued. “We want to take this issue positively. We want to show that we live in a great neighborhood… different ethnic groups get along in harmony. of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion).”