Feature: Chinese food, culture festival draws throngs of New Yorkers

NEW YORK, June 24 (Xinhua) -- A brand-new Chinese food and culture festival won New Yorkers' hearts and stomachs on Saturday with its debut on a section of a street at Washington Square Park in Lower Manhattan.

The festival showcased authentic Chinese food and culture like soup dumplings, dandan noodles, kebab, pastries, flower cakes, bingtang hulu (sugar-coated haws), jianbing (similar to a burrito), sugar paintings, stinky tofu and others from around 35 vendors.

Foodies waited in long lines at some popular stands, and the waiting time for the jianbing event exceeded two hours.

Summer showers didn't dampen New Yorkers' enthusiasm, and the street was fully crowded in the afternoon.

Over 30,000 people joined the free event from 10 am to 6 pm (1400 GMT to 2200 GMT) on Saturday, according to Xu Xuan, founder of the festival, which is branded as Dragon Fest.

Food is the best starting point for people to understand and appreciate Chinese culture, said Xu.

Vendors from Qingmu Dessert Lab offered Chinese pastries and wore delicate traditional Chinese clothing known as the Hanfu.

A set of four pastries was made to represent four seasons through ingredients collected in respective seasons, according to an associate with Qingmu Dessert Lab.

Jianbing, a popular street food in China's capital Beijing, drew many people's interest as its vendor Gem Bing Shop is nearby.

New Yorkers could also taste flower cake with ingredients imported from southwest China's Yunnan province.

Meanwhile, staff members from the restaurant brand Mala Project were busy fulfilling orders for spicy dry pot, representing neo-Sichuan cuisine.

The presence of Seattle-based frozen dumpling service MiLa at the festival illustrates the popularity of authentic Chinese food in the U.S. market. Its participation in the festival also marks the first large-scale physical promotion of the brand in New York.

Founded in 2018, MiLa switched to online sales of frozen soup dumplings after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and then shipped them to customers across the United States upon its increasing popularity, said Zhang Xiaohan, brand marketing and partnership lead with MiLa.

Zhang saw enormous potential for authentic Chinese food in the mainstream market, with MiLa starting to supply Costco Wholesale stores on the West Coast in June.

Chinese cuisine is not merely fried dumplings, steamed buns or chow mein (fried noodles), nor does it mean American-style Chinese food, said Xu, the event founder.

Xu told Xinhua that she mulled over organizing such a festival as early as 2019 to present people a one-stop experience of Chinese food.

Moreover, people can also try bubble tea, Sichuan-style spicy chili fried chicken, fried skewers, egg waffles, Mochi ice cream and others.

The festival is expected to be held at three other locations in Manhattan in August and September.