Hockessin’s Chinese American Community Center squeezed four holidays into a long weekend during the 17th annual Chinese Festival.
The performances, demonstrations, activities and food at the festival, held from June 20 to June 22, revolved around the four major Chinese holidays: the Spring Festival, Moon Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Lantern Festival.
The Friday night festivities began with a cooking demonstration in which volunteer Nancy Sher showed visitors how to make zongzi, a traditional dish served for the Dragon Boat Festival. Sher carefully folded a thin, green bamboo leaf, stuffed it with a handful of sticky rice, dates and peanuts, and tied the leaf with string to make a triangular shape.
She explained that the Dragon Boat Festival honors Qu Yuan, a famous Chinese poet who committed suicide in 278 BC by jumping into the Miluo River. Yuan’s friends did not want fish to eat his body, so they made zongzi and dropped them into the river so the fish would have something else to eat, she said.
The zongzi tasted nothing like fish food, said Nancy Henderson, 47, of Landenberg, Pa., as she chewed thoughtfully. She said the sticky rice created a gummy texture, but the salty ingredients combined to create a unique flavor that she would like to duplicate at home.
“Watching her do it made the recipe look so simple. It took away some of the fear factor,” she said. “If I had the right ingredients, I think I could make it as good as in a Chinese restaurant.”
Down the hall from the cooking demonstration, children and their parents worked together to fold, staple and decorate bright red paper lanterns. The lanterns were covered with shiny, silver fish, a symbol of luck in China, and would be floated down rivers to guide peoples’ ancestors home during the Lantern Festival.
Hockessin resident Lindsay Nichols, 6, said she liked her lantern because the fish created a cool design. It took a little more folding and stapling than anticipated, but making the lantern was a lot of fun, she said.
Lindsay and her family took their lantern outside into the parking lot of the community center to watch the dragon dance, a traditional performance where a line of dancers chase a giant pearl while carrying a dragon puppet.
A steady cadence of drum beats echoed off the walls of the community center while the bright yellow dragon floated above the dancers’ heads, zigzagging back and forth in front of the crowd.
The dragon dance is performed during the Spring Festival, which is the Chinese New Year, and other holidays to bring luck to spectators.
Robyn Correale of Hockessin said she did not feel lucky, but enjoyed the dance because it was a unique performance. The dragon dance was a perfect example of the beauty present in other cultures and Correale, 30, said she hoped her 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son learned something from the performance.
“I want them to know that other ethnicities are around us all the time,” she said. “I don’t want my children to think they are in this world alone.”
