{"id":299292,"date":"2026-10-03T21:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T21:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/299292\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T21:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T21:24:08","slug":"philadelphia-festival-celebrates-chinatowns-resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/299292\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia festival celebrates Chinatown\u2019s resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Thousands of people filled the streets of Philadelphia\u2019s Chinatown neighborhood Saturday, taking in music and dance performances and participating in arts and crafts and carnival games for people of all ages.\n<\/p>\n

Asian Americans United founded the festival<\/a> in 1995 to mark the holiday, celebrated widely across Asia, that honors family reunions and the end of harvest season.\n<\/p>\n

That first year took place in a church parking lot, said Wei Chen, civic engagement director at AAU. Five Asian American high school students wanted to gather to make older generations feel less homesick during the holiday.\n <\/p>\n

From there, the event has grown and continued to involve Asian Americans of all generations as well as people of other backgrounds, Chen said.
\n\"MembersMembers of Cheung\u2019s Hung Gar Kung Fu martial arts school performed the lion dance to kick off the 31st annual Mid-Autumn Festival in Philadelphia\u2019s Chinatown on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026. (Emily Neil\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

In its 31st edition, the festival Saturday stretched for several blocks along 10th street, with more than 300 volunteers coordinating the day.\n<\/p>\n

Members of Cheung\u2019s Hung Gar Kung Fu martial arts school performed the lion dance to kick off the celebration, parading down 10th street to the stage below the famous Chinatown Arch \u2014 a \u201cvery symbolized location\u201d for the community, Chen said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing here is so privileged because \u2026 Chinatown [has gone] through so much in the past 20 to 30 years, to protect the space, to preserve the space, to save the community, to continue [to] have the vibe of the tradition here,\u201d Chen said.
\n\"MembersMembers of Cheung\u2019s Hung Gar Kung Fu martial arts school performed the lion dance to kick off the 31st annual Mid-Autumn Festival in Philadelphia\u2019s Chinatown on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026. (Emily Neil\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

The festival\u2019s theme this year, \u201cBuilding the World We Want,\u201d focused on how to create supportive spaces for immigrant communities in the midst of President Donald Trump\u2019s federal immigration enforcement crackdown.<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this particular political moment, immigration [enforcement] has been very [challenging] and been very inhumane to the immigrant community,\u201d Chen said.\n<\/p>\n

Chinatown residents and businesses are uneasy neighbors with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency\u2019s Philadelphia office is located at Eighth and Cherry streets, just two blocks away from the heart of Chinatown.
\n\"AThousands of people attended the 31st annual Mid-Autumn Festival in Philadelphia\u2019s Chinatown on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026. (Emily Neil\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

ICE agents often go to Chinatown restaurants to get food, Chen said. Many of the workers at those businesses are immigrants.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s [terrifying],\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes people just feel like, \u2018Oh, the threat is coming now.\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Business owners have told Chen that some workers have been failing to show up because they\u2019re concerned.\n<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s event was a way to resist policies and rhetoric targeting immigrants, Chen said, and also celebrate the community\u2019s resilience.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to celebrate to [make] each other feel that we still exist and we are still supporting each other, and we will continue to support each other by celebrating each other\u2019s culture and value each other,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7447,12063,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-299292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-asian-americans","tag-chinatown","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}