2019 Multicultural Festival and Bite L&I Event

On October 21, 2019, OACA participated in the multicultural festival taking place at Aspire Middle School. The main activities included displaying OACA banner and projections showing the landmarks of 34 provinces in China, practicing calligraphy writing and chopsticks, translating English names into Chinese, and doing zodiac stamp for every visitor based on his /her birth year. Despite the bad weather and a relatively small crowd, our Chinese table still attracted many students who stopped by and showed their great interest in Chinese culture. They practiced the use of chopsticks with the M&M beans, collected zodiac stamp and Chinese name, talked about every aspect of eastern culture, requested OACA's website and contact information, along with others.

On October 29, 2019, our Greater Olympia area Chinese community once again participated in Bite of L&I, one of the most popular and crowed Combined Fund Drive (CFD) event organized by State Department of Labor & Industries. As in the last few years, our Chinese table was led and coordinated by Alex Ge, Vice President of OACA and a L&I veteran. This year, 16 Chinese individuals and families donated delicious homemade food and another 9 volunteered in serving the food on the event day. Our table alone raised $886, or more than 13% of the total fund raised during the event. We were also the largest food donor to Quixote Village in Olympia, a local homeless shelter. The goal of Bite of L & I is to celebrate the diversity of our state by highlighting food from different cultures and ethnicities, and help those in need. Therefore, the participation of our Chinese community in such event not only allowed us to proudly promote Chinese food culture, but also enhanced our public image as a giving and caring community.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to these two events: Haisheng Mou, Yan Dai, Yan Xie, Nancy Qiongfen Wu, Ivy Jen, Vivian Hinrichsen, Wendy Chen, Karen Tran, Biying Chen, Zexia Wei, Yan Zhu, Xiaomin Quan, Amy Chen, Moli Zhang, Muyan Lei, Qixuan Wang, SallyYun Sun, Wenjuan Zhao, Yan Dong, Henry Cheng, Ruimin Tan, and Alex Ge.

Volunteers Haisheng Mou, Yan Dai, and Yan Xie at the multicultural festival

All volunteer food servers for 2019 Bite L&I event