This Year’s Oakland Chinatown Night Market Will Be Even Bigger

Before last year’s inaugural Oakland Chinatown Night Market, community leaders had long dreamed of hosting a big, rollicking night market event — the sort of outdoor bash you’ll find in cities across Asia. Oakland Chinatown Improvement Council (OCIC) Executive Director Tony Trinh says the hardest part was getting the Chinatown shopkeepers and restaurant owners themselves to believe such a thing was possible.

“A lot of the merchants were very doubtful that we could pull off an event like that. Historically, Chinatown is a ghost town by like four o’clock,” Trinh says. When fears of anti-Asian violence surged during the COVID era, he explains, “Everybody was just too afraid to be out here.” As a result, only a couple of Chinatown restaurants set up booths at last year’s market. Most of the food vendors wound up coming from outside the neighborhood.

In that sense, the inaugural event was a proof of concept — a test to see if Oakland Chinatown actually could host a bustling night market. And it proved to be even more successful than Trinh and his team had dared to hope: 14,000 people poured into the streets of Chinatown on a Saturday night. Food vendors were completely sold out by 8 p.m. Even the restaurants that chose not to actively participate still benefited, reporting a 200% increase in revenue that night, Trinh says.

It’s with bolstered confidence, then, that OCIC is running the event back this year. The second annual Oakland Chinatown Night Market will take place this Saturday, Sept. 13, 5–10 p.m., bringing the neighborhood to life with a mix of street food, antique trinkets, sports and live music — this time with much more robust participation from businesses within Chinatown.

“Now the food vendors believe in us,” Trinh says.

Part of what that means is that many more restaurants will set up booths selling street food in front of their shops, including neighborhood staples like Alice Bakery and Shooting Star Cafe. Though one of last year’s core vendors, Lounge Chinatown, has since closed, its Jack London sister restaurant, Dragon Gate, will also have a booth.

This year’s featured food theme will be a “Taste of Chinatown,” highlighting the kind of classic dishes that are most emblematic of the neighborhood: chicken wings and spring rolls from New Gold Medal, the legendary late-night spot, and a roast duck rice plate from newcomer Hay Yue. Both of those plates will be available at OCIC’s own booth at the market.

All told, there will be more than 20 food vendors. The layout of the event will be inspired by Hong Kong’s traditional night markets, with a mix of food and retail, including Chinese antique vendors from the Laney College Flea Market.

This year’s night market will also have a car show, curated by Castro Valley’s Nakayama Motorsports. And it will bring back the most popular elements from last year’s event, including a performance stage featuring live music and DJs. This year’s featured artists will include Oakland’s own “minimalist hyphy” rapper Seiji Oda, up-and-coming R&B singer Kiyomi and a traditional Cantonese cover band Midnight.

Also returning from last year: a pan-Asian basketball tournament at the Lincoln Square Park rec center starting at 1:30 p.m., with local squads representing China, Japan, Laos/Cambodia and the Philippines. Led by two popular streetball influencers, the Filipino squad took last year’s cup. But Trinh says the other teams have powered up with new recruits this year — they’ll be out for revenge.

Trinh says that he’s been to other night markets around Oakland, but this one will always feel “just a little more special.”

“It really showed a sense of community,” he says. “It was a lot of people coming out and just supporting because they know that Chinatown has dealt with so much.”

The Oakland Chinatown Night Market will take place on Saturday, Sept. 13, 5–10 p.m. on 8th Street in Oakland, between Webster and Broadway.