• The food truck phenomenon is everywhere, and among the tasty dishes that the festival will offer is Taiwanese popcorn chicken ($6), based on food offered by trucks in Taiwan. It would be eaten there as a snack in the afternoon between lunch and dinner, or at late night, says Judy Chen.
• Those gorgeous designs in lacquerware boxes, urns and vases aren’t just applied wholesale to the surfaces through some mystical Oriental process. The objects begin with a wooden or copper base and then are painted with coats of lacquer – a minimum of 30 but as many as 100 – and those thick coats of lacquer are carved and then polished for the final exquisite pieces.
• China’s Weifang is known as the kite capital of the world, and 15 kites from there, mostly smaller ones, and a dragon with a 60-foot tail, are on display.
The Chinese American Community Center began the festival in 1992, as a way for the center to share its history, culture and food with the area. Since then, it’s become a popular event, with parking hard to come by, and food starting to sell out on Sunday morning.
In 2009, the center began adding an exhibit focusing on one part of China’s history or culture. Past exhibitions have looked at oracle bones, Chinese porcelain and jade. This year’s collection of red lacquerware, borrowed from Shrin Sun of Delaware, shows the many forms and designs used in that traditional art.
Posters around the room show the earliest known pieces, including a wood box dated back to 400 B.C. Gradually, creators switched to copper forms, although bamboo is sometimes still used as a base. A small case of urns illuminates the process, with coat after coat of lacquer built up until it’s thick enough to be carved into the final shapes.
That can be 30 coats, or as many as 100 coats for bigger, more complex designs, says Ta-Chen Mo. He and other members of the center volunteer to be docents and answer questions about the lacquerware.
Making a lacquerware piece requires patience and time, maybe 45 to 60 days just to paint, he points out. “There’s not many people who will take the time to do it today,” he says.
While lacquerware can come in many colors, the most common is red, he says.
“Ancient Chinese people liked the red color to do more of the Chinese artwork in because red represents good fortune, good future and good health,” he says.
In the room next door, Shuhong Wang and her daughter, Olivia Xu, are docents for the exhibition of 15 traditional, handmade kites brought from Weifang. The exhibition includes a giant dragon kite with polystyrene foam teeth and a 60-foot tail done in a centipede style. There’s also smaller butterfly, goldfish, eagle, phoenix and dragonfly kites.
The company that the center ordered its kites from won first place in the International Kite Festival in Italy with a dragon that had a 300-foot tail.
The Chinese man who created kites, Mozi, was a philosopher who was a contemporary of Confucious and just as well known at the time, Wang says. Kites were most widely used in China first as a spy tool in the wars of spring and fall from 770 B.C. to 476 B.C., she says.
One Chinese story says that in a big fog, Gen. Zhang Liang flew kites big enough to hold children playing flutes. The Chu army he was fighting heard the music, became homesick and left to return home, and the Chu lost the war.
By the Tang Dynasty in 618 A.D. to 907 A.D., kites had become popular toys for the royal families, who believed the flying paper and sticks helped them communicate with their ancestors, Wang says. They also believed certain symbols held certain messages for prosperity, health and long life.
While many are made of paper, the better ones are made of silk on bamboo frames, Wang says.
On the other end of the center, the Folk Dance Troupe will perform the Dragon Dance, Lion Dance, Folk Dance and more. Performances will include a magic show and a demonstration of the Chinese tea ceremony, with examples of beautiful Chinese teapots.
But the most crowded area will be the seven food tables, which will be selling barbecue chicken and beef ($2); Taiwanese sausage (2 for $3); Gen. Tso’s chicken with rice and a spring roll ($9); Taiwanese popcorn chicken ($6); sesame cool noodles ($4); white rice with spiced pork ($5); ham and egg fried rice ($5); vegetable lo mein ($5); spring rolls (2 for $3); scallion pancakes (3 for $2); chicken dumplings (5 for $2); vegetable steamed buns, pork-vegetable steamed buns, pork with scallion steamed buns or barbecue pork buns ($2 or 2 for $3); bubble tea ($3); Chinese plum juice ($2); Qing Dao beer ($4). There will also be beer, sodas, water and juice boxes.
The chairwomen of the kitchen, Judy Chen and Ai-Guo Lu, are most excited about the Taiwanese popcorn chicken, made with five-spice powder, white pepper, sugar, soy sauce, garlic powder, cornstarch and tapioca powder, a new offering this year. The chicken is marinated overnight, Chen says.
If one of those strikes your fancy, you should strike Friday or Saturday to get it.
“By day three, we are running out of things,” Mo says.
Contact Betsy Price at (302) 324-2884 or beprice@delawareonline.com.
If you go
WHAT: The Chinese American Community Center annual three-day Chinese Festival
WHEN: Friday, 5-9 p.m; Saturday, 11 a.m.-
9 p.m.; Sunday, noon- 6 p.m.
WHERE: Chinese American Community Center, 1313 Little Baltimore Road,
Hockessin
