Manhattan's Dragon Fest celebrates Chinese street food, culture

Flurry of Chinese food festivals attracted 30,000 visitors, Mingmei Li reports in New York.

Steamers, frying pans and griddles sizzled, while voices in various Chinese dialects filled the air.

Food vendors lined both sides of the bustling street as crowds formed queues at various food stalls, eagerly anticipating discoveries and sharing culinary delights with friends.

Manhattan's first Chinese food festival, Dragon Fest, in June featured more than 40 vendors and offered more than 100 distinct foods across five pop-up locations in the city. A total of five food festivals from June until September attracted more than 30,000 visitors, providing people with a new experience of Chinese street food and culture.

"It's really nice. There are so many different vendors and people here. I did a Peking duck crepe. We had dumplings and scallion noodles. It was really good, and now we are drinking milk tea," Nyla Legemah, who lives in Jersey City and took a one-hour trip to the food fair, told China Daily.

"It's very cultural and comes especially through the senses. The smells are very different, and it's something that you don't necessarily find in regular Chinese restaurants."

"We found the food to be exotic that we had never seen before. But it's great, it's delicious. We are waiting in line for 20 minutes to get a jianbing." said Alias, who wanted to try more types of food.

Dragon Fest is part of a growing scene of more Chinese food trucks and vendors on the streets of Manhattan, offering a new array of culinary options to New Yorkers and tourists.

People stroll along the streets, eating traditional Chinese food that conveniently fits in their hands, and observing the entire food production process in the food trucks.

The events featured well-known local Chinese food like soup dumplings or fried noodles and a diverse range of traditional snacks from various regions of China, such as stinky tofu, candied hawthorns and Chinese barbecue, each with its own unique regional flair.

"The goal for the first year is to arouse everyone's curiosity about these foods because curiosity will drive people to want to know more," said Biubiu Xu, founder of Dragon Fest. "Then I hope to add some more in-depth cultural introductions next year. Local Americans are more familiar with several cities in China like Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. But food in many other cities is also unique and representative."

Xu said although New Yorkers are familiar with Asian food, Dragon Fest specifically features regional Chinese food and snacks.

"It's not just Asian food. I think Chinese food is spicier and I love that," Rebbaca Kim told China Daily. Kim is from South Korea, and she said Asian food is different and unique.

"New York is a diverse city. It has so many pop-up shows, exhibitions and street fairs," she said. "You can see many food festivals from other countries, such as Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and Italy. Chinese cuisine is broad and profound. We have so many varieties of food in China. Why don't we have a large-scale Chinese food festival in Manhattan?"

Xu said she came up with the food festival idea in 2019, but her plan was postponed due to the pandemic. She said that she spent months studying large-scale outdoor events, from applying for permits and road closures to finding vendors, to make the food fair happen.

Food has a special meaning to Xu. When she first arrived in New York in 2015, she didn't know how to cook, so she told herself that she would go out to eat every day to try so many different food from different countries.

Building connections

While visiting different restaurants, Xu also liked to share her daily food on her personal social media platform.

She said friends would always ask her for the best restaurant in the city, so she decided to share her list with more people and put her food account on social media. Since then, she has built connections with more than 500 Chinese small food business owners, which made it easier to invite vendors to the street fair.

"The first step is that I really want to bring our Chinese food to the mainstream market, which is what I have been doing. I have helped many Chinese restaurants launch their products into overseas markets. Food is the fastest way for everyone to get in touch with this country," Xu said. "I felt that local people were actually interested in Chinese food already, otherwise they would not keep eating soup dumplings and fried noodles, but their understanding of types of Chinese food is still limited."

Xu explained that sometimes people are reluctant to try new Chinese food because they don't know what it is, what it is made of or how it tastes. This can be because of cultural differences, she said, and people might be hesitant because of unfamiliar smells or because they have never seen these types of food.

"When foreigners come across a box of pan-fried buns, they typically purchase one each since they're familiar with them. However, when they face the stinky tofu vendor, you might see four or five people pooling their interest to buy a single box. They take a cautious first bite, and when they find the taste appealing, they decide to buy more."

Xu said she asked each vendor to interpret their snacks and provide customers with the context of the food — calling tanghulu as Chinese fruit lollipop originated from Beijing, and bozaigao as fruit rice pudding from Guangdong province, so that customers could know more about the food and wanted to try it.

"In the beginning, we called roujiamo a Chinese burger and xiaolongbao soup dumpling, but as it became more popular, everyone knew the food's Chinese pinyin name. This might be a slow process for foreign people to get familiar with the pinyin name, but they are trying," Xu said. "It was a relatively simple way for local people to understand the food. When they try the food and like it, they will be more interested and want to know some of the stories behind the food and our culture."

"I really like the strawberry and grape, the fruit thing. Wait, is it called tanghulu?" Malicah Phillips told China Daily while she was waiting in line at a food truck. She introduced her favorite snack and tried to pronounce its pinyin name.

"I really like the food, and I'd love to know more about it. My knowledge isn't great of Chinese culture, but I think it's unique. I'd love to know more if there's a paper or a video explaining more," Ari Laurent, 20, told China Daily.

Xu said she planned to expand the Chinese street food festival to other US states and hold 15 to 20 events per year. She hopes the events and food will help Chinese people to better connect to the Chinese community.

"There are a lot of Chinese people who have not been home for a long time after the pandemic. There are also many seniors who have been living abroad for a long time. Food always carries people's memories of their hometowns, and tasting their most distinctive local delicacies will make them feel like they are home," Xu said.

"Food carries the indigenous culture and history of many countries, and this is a mutual exchange. Food also reflects the cities, culture, tradition, environment and people's characteristics," Xu said. "Following the local traditions, f lour can be made as grilled naan in Xinjiang, and then made into pizza in Italy. Bringing delicious food to the city is equivalent to bringing a culture here."

Xinyi He, who originally came from Changsha, said she was surprised to eat her hometown version of stinky tofu.

"It's been really hard to find this. In the last couple of months, the black version has been becoming more popular, because usually it's the Taiwanese white one," she said. "I came here because the smells are really hard. This reminds me of my hometown."

On-the-go vibe

Beyond sharing Chinese food with an international audience, another purpose of Dragon Fest is to connect the Chinese community and help small business owners.

"Many foreigners like to try Chinese food, but they think the food is only available in Manhattan's Chinatown. Actually, we have more Chinese restaurants in Flushing, Queens or Brooklyn," Chenyu Wang, operations manager of the event, told China Daily.

It might be too far for people other than Chinese to find these restaurants, so they are bringing these foods to the city, erasing the distance gap.

Wang said that the food festival would be a platform to help promote those small businesses, using new promotional methods like short videos and event platforms to attract more customers. She said that the events are close to subway stations to attract people.

"But more importantly, there are many street foods around subway stations in China. It gives a vibe like grabbing something to eat on your way back home. You can easily take them to go. That feels like home," Wang said. "Food brings all the people together."

"Food cultural output and helping small businesses are our main goals," Wang added. "I didn't have a picture of this when I was preparing for the event, but now, I feel the vibe, I saw people enjoying our food and liking our culture, I feel really good."

"This is no longer the era that 'Good wine needs no bush'. These restaurants need opportunities to promote, tell their stories, and share their delicious food so that they can be more known and accepted by more and more people," Xu added.

Several art and cultural vendors are also showcased at the street fairs, including sugar painting and traditional ethnic accessories. Dough figurines are also very popular among event-goers.

Yanjun Sui, an sugar painting artist, said she was very busy during the event from beginning to end. She said she has been interested in community events and always wanted to promote Chinese intangible cultural heritage to larger audiences.

Instinct to share

The 60-year-old artist has been working on sugar painting for seven years in the New York area. Sui said she needs to prepare at least 16 pounds of sugar for the event.

"Sugar painting is a traditional Chinese street culture, and everyone loves it, especially kids," she said. "You can eat it, it's sugar and it's sweet, or you can just stand there and watch me painting."

Sui said doing sugar painting in the US is a very different experience for her. She usually draws pictures like a dragon and phoenix from Chinese traditional fairy tales, giant pandas that represent China or the 12 zodiac signs, which is a way to promote Chinese culture at the same time.

She would also use sugar to write her customer's name in both Chinese and English, or write Chinese calligraphy.

"Sometimes they ask me to draw a Peppa Pig, and it's really fun to see how cultural things and modern cartoons interact together," Sui said. "We also tried some 3D art painting."

Sui usually finishes a picture in 30 seconds, and sometimes people would like to try sugar painting themselves, and later they find it is very difficult because the sugar requires a special temperature.

"Then they would ask me questions. They want to know more things about sugar painting and know more about the traditions and culture behind it," she said.

"Local people are also very curious about their Chinese names, and they will exclaim when they see what I write," Junqi Zhang told China Daily.

Zhang and her partner, Guowei Sun, are providing event-goers the chance to select their Chinese names based on their original name pronunciation and then inscribe them on bookmarks as keepsakes.

"I just saw people eating grilled cold noodles and jianbing. These are all very authentic Chinese food. It's fun to see people are open to more diverse cuisines and cultures now," Zhang said.

"This provides an immersive cultural experience."

Zhang and Sun are operating their social media platforms, which have more than 1.7 million followers.

"I enjoy engaging in activities tied to Chinese culture during Chinese festivals," Zhang said.

"As vloggers, we have the instinct of sharing Chinese culture freely with everyone. Additionally, it's great to have our Chinese audiences back home witness our ef orts in promoting Chinese culture abroad, reinforcing the notion that our culture is gaining popularity and recognition worldwide. It's truly inspiring."

Contact the writer at mingmeili@chinadailyusa.com