Chinatown came alive Sunday for the August Moon Festival’s opening ceremony as drum beats and cymbal clashes set the celebration’s rhythm.
The moon festival was organized by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of New England, a cultural organization that runs programs to benefit people across ages in the Chinese community. The event began with a performance featuring a lion dance that depicted three smaller dragons dancing around the stage. At times, the dancers threw oranges into the audience, a gesture that symbolized sharing good luck and wealth.
Calvin Chin, who owns Calvin Chin’s Martial Arts Academy in Newton, stood alongside the stage throughout the festival, periodically joining his students on stage to introduce their performances and explain the origins of the moves.
“One of the things that we want to promote and preserve is the tradition,” Chin explained.
The festival celebrates several meanings, including good health, harvest, and joy, according to CCBA’s website. The event runs for one day each year, and is intended to attract visitors to Chinatown’s restaurants and stores, the website said. Other performances throughout the festival included Asian folk dances and Chinese opera.
“We all stand together,” Medford City Councilor-at-Large Justin Tseng said in his opening speech, “[The festival] is about sharing that mooncake with your friends, with your family, and with your adopted family as well.” Tseng was elected as Medford’s first Asian American city councilor in 2021, according to his campaign’s website.
Vendors lined up on both sides of the road, crowding under tents and oil-paper umbrellas to hide from the sun.
Lian Xue, who owns LotusGlow Delights in Weymouth, dressed in a traditional Chinese outfit, alternating between cooling off with a hand fan and a paper umbrella, which she sells in addition to Chinese-inspired jewelry and kites.
“I’m wearing red because it’s perfect for the holidays in Chinese [culture],” she said. “I thought it would match the offerings at my booth because they’re all Chinese culture-related.”
Xue explained that she tries to customize the items at her booth to correspond with the cultural significance of each event so her customers can find something they love, pointing to the many horse-related offerings meant to celebrate the Year of the Horse.
“People attending this festival, they love Chinese or Asian culture,” she said. “That’s my favorite part, when the customers smile, when they get something, I feel even happier.”
The crowds filtered past booths selling everything from clay crafts to massages, skincare, and plants. Some vendors played music while others filled the air with the sweet and savory smells of traditional Chinese foods.
Jacky Wan, who owns BaYao Cafe in Quincy, jumped from one end of his booth to the other as he took orders and filled up cups of the restaurant’s stir-fry spaghetti.
“We mixed a lot of Western food into Chinese food,” he said. “And that’s why we want to bring the authentic taste to Boston.”
Before the moon festival, the cafe had only been to one previous event: The New England Hong Kong Festival in Somerville.
Wan was born in Hong Kong, and started his restaurant with the goal of sharing a bit of his home country with his customers in Massachusetts.
“This is the same food that I grew up with,” Wan said. “This is my childhood memories of Hong Kong.”
Under the golden arch of the China Trade Gate, attendees milled about, eating food and showing off their purchases. At one booth, attendees could sing to American music, while just down the street, one woman performed a song in Mandarin.
“Looking around, I feel like everyone is also so different, but they’re coming to celebrate this one community’s culture,” Tara Lam, a Tufts student from Los Angeles, said while watching one of the performances.
“To show that as a Boston community at large, we support Chinatown and the August Moon concept is really cool,” she said.
Katie Cressman can be reached at katherine.cressman@globe.com.