Activities

Chef Yanjie Lu is a longtime volunteer for CRPF, and is happy to share her homemade food with you! Cooking demos include process of making mooncake, yolk pastry, sweet and sour pork.

Jan Parker Cookery is a mobile food service offering Fresh & Distinct Filipino Food. We have a booth at the Proctor & Broadway Farmers Market. In addition to food, we really love the community we have built through selling our cuisine. Our vegetables and farm fresh eggs come from Share the Wealth Organics, a woman owned farm in Tacoma.  It’s important for us to have relationships with local food producers to create a sustainable future.

Chef Jan Parker’s parents are from the Philippines.  Her mother is from Manila and her Father is from Pampanga.  Filipinx culture revolves around food.  Where there’s food there’s family and laughter.  Chef Jan really enjoys how food can bring joy to people.  She has recently won Best Chef in the South Sound 2020.  One day she hopes to open up a commissary kitchen for Immigrants and Refugees, where she can mentor and assist people in opening their food business.

Please enjoy the video showcasing a spin on squash ginataan.  Ginataan is anything cooked with coconut and aromatics.  Mabuhay!

Pepa Lago was born and raised in Galicia (in NW Spain). She is a literature professor at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. She enjoys reading, gardening, traveling and cooking. Her bilingual recipe book “Veinte flanes de amor / Twenty flans of love” (a collaboration with friend and colleague Mayela Vallejos) will be available for purchase in late 2020.

Ingredients:
1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
½ cup whipping cream
5 eggs (separated) plus 2 yolks
¾ cup dark cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:
Preheat oven at 350°F. Beat the egg whites until stiff with a hand mixer, then add the yolks one by one to make a cream. Beat in the condensed milk. In a blender, mix the evaporated milk, the cream, the cocoa and the vanilla. Pour into the egg mixture and blend together with the hand mixer. Pour the mixture into a caramelized mold. Place in the preheated oven inside a large pan half-filled with water. Bake for 1 hour or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let it cool completely and refrigerate overnight. Remove from the mold by running a knife around the edge to separate it from the mold and turning it upside down onto a platter. To serve, garnish with strawberries and / or raspberries, and pair with mint-flavored whipped cream.

Chinese Calligraphy – a short demo by Lihuang Wung, former project manager of the Tacoma Chinese Reconciliation Park and an amateur calligrapher who performs name translation at the Tacoma Moon Festival every year.

What You’ll Need for the mooncakes:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Jelly or jam
• Chopped nuts
• Raisins or sesame seeds (optional)

Create a Landscape Collage!

A landscape is a work of art that shows nature and the environment.

1) Gather a sheet of paper, smaller scraps of paper, scissors, and a glue stick. Art tip: Construction paper, magazines, tissue paper, newspaper, and even recycled painted paper make great collage materials!
2) Tear scraps of paper into long strips. Experiment with making your strips as thin as your finger and some as wide as your hand.
3) Arrange your strips of paper on your sheet of paper to create a landscape. Overlap your strips. Which colors should go next to each other?
4) One by one, glue each paper strip to the sheet of paper. Trim the edges of the paper strips that are hanging off the edge.

Is your landscape a real or imagined place? Who might live or visit there? Tell a story about who might be in your landscape.

painting: Maynard Dixon, “A Desert Valley,” 1992

music copyright 2020 Peter Berkley, used by permission

This tour takes you to some of the places and people involved with the 1885 expulsion of Chinese merchants, laborers and their families from the city of Tacoma. It broadly recounts the history of the expulsion and provides context to the places associated with activities leading up to these events.

Created by Jennifer Callaghan of the Tacoma Historical Society

Becky Frehse (who illustrated our Moon Festival story) has an exhibition in the Pantages Theater windows on 9th Street at Commerce that is called “The Ninth Street Reconciliation Orchestra.” It features painted cellos and huqin (Chinese bowed fiddles) sitting on painted chairs perhaps playing together the harmony that could have been in Tacoma but never was. Listen for the long ago and far away sound of a very different music playing in its own lost world amid the sound of western instruments…

Just around the corner in the windows on Commerce is another of her installations called Fiddle Woods that features painted violins on tree branches. If you happen to pass by the Pantages Theater in Tacoma Washington, take a look!

We invite you to join us on this virtual walking tour of what was once a vibrant Japantown in Tacoma led by Tamiko Nimura. Tamiko Nimura is a third-generation Japanese American and second-generation Filipina American. She’s a freelance writer, essayist, community journalist, and public historian and the perfect guide for this look at Tacoma’s past.

The Center for Speech and Effective Advocacy at the University of Puget Sound is a free community resource focused on building public speaking skills. Watch the video to learn more or visit our website for educational materials:

Individual virtual appointments and drop-in hours will be available soon!

How can you hold moonlight in your hands?

This original story, commissioned by the 2020 Tacoma Moon Festival, was written by well-known Chinese poet Zhang Er. She grew up in Beijing, in one of the courtyard houses in the “Hutong” alleyway districts of the capitol city. In those days, the houses were being shared by many families tightly crowded together and food and money were constant concerns. This beautiful story introduces us to a family as they celebrate one of the great holidays of China- the Mid-Autumn Festival. It is also called the Moon Festival and it is a time when families come together to celebrate the harvest with a big feast and to enjoy the splendid sight of the full moon.

Author Zhang Er was born in Beijing, China and moved to New York City in 1986. Her writings of poetry, non-fiction, and essays have appeared in publications in Taiwan, China, the American émigré community and in a number of American journals. She is the author of a number of opera libretti and multiple books in Chinese and in English translation. She has read from her work at festivals and conferences around the world and currently teaches at The Evergreen State College.

Artist Becky Frehse exhibits frequently in the Pacific Northwest and in Arizona. She has taught at The University of Puget Sound and Pacific Lutheran University, and now teaches adult art classes in Tacoma. Her current work includes paintings, drawings, mixed media assemblages, and installations.
Don Doman is a Tacoma based professional writer and published author of self-help books for video production, entrepreneurship, and market research. He produces websites, online videos, and social media marketing.

There are many versions of the Moon Festival story. Here is another version for you to enjoy! You can find many more on YouTube also.