Family-Frendly Fair to Celebrate the Year of the Dragon in Palo Alto

Palo Altans no longer have to drive to San Francisco and get stuck in traffic for a flamboyant festival during the Lunar New Year. There will be a wide variety of cultural activities and tasty dishes at the easily accessible Mitchell Park Community Center on Feb 25, from 11:30 am to 5:00 pm.

Organized by the non-profit WizChinese, the Palo Alto Lunar New Year Fair is meant to promote intercultural understanding and strengthen community bonds. The annual event has raised $38,473 for the Palo Alto Unified School District and the Palo Alto community since 2016.

Co-sponsored by the City of Palo Alto, the Palo Alto Council of the Parent-Teacher Associations, and the Palo Alto Weekly, the upcoming Lunar New Year's fair at Mitchell Park will feature more than music, dances, and martial arts. It will provide lots of hands-on activities for children as well as fun-loving adults, including calligraphy, face painting, paper cutting, lantern making, and riddle guessing.

In addition, there will be a dragon-themed or Lunar-New-Year-themed balloon giveaway at the Lijiang Foundation booth for everyone who purchases a copy of Seasonal Living with Splendid Poetry, a bilingual book (in English and Chinese) that explains how to live in tune with nature based on the 24 micro-seasons defined by traditional Chinese culture, namely the 24 solar terms, which have been listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization since 2016.

In the meantime, plenty of food can be purchased from vendors at the fair. Choices include dumplings, rice noodles, Xinjiang-style barbecue, Taiwanese-style bento boxes, freshly baked goodies, traditional Chinese snacks, fruit-flavored tea, and pearl milk tea.

The fair is open to everyone.