A Lantern Festival Celebration Brings Night Market Vibes to Oakland Chinatown

On Sunday, March 1, Oakland’s Pacific Renaissance Plaza will be festooned with red paper lanterns, lucky New Year’s scrolls and what event organizer Diana Wu describes as “spring blooms vibes.” The sound of taiko drums will echo through the streets of Chinatown. Hungry guests will feast on shrimp dumplings and hand-pulled noodles. Eventually, the whole plaza will erupt into an all-out dance party.

It’s all part of the fourth annual Oakland Chinatown Lantern Festival, which traditionally marks the end of each year’s Lunar New Year festivities.

Wu — the executive director of the kitchen incubator Oakland Bloom, which co-organizes the event along with the nonprofit Sticky Rice Club — explains that when the festival began in 2023, the idea was to bring Chinatown to life with the atmosphere of an Asian-style night market. At the time, the community was reeling in the aftermath of the pandemic shutdowns and a spate of anti-Asian violence.

“And so that’s something we’ve continued — inviting the community out in the afternoon and evening, and then also inviting local businesses to stay open with us and really bring that vibrancy back to the neighborhood,” Wu says.

Like in past years, the Lantern Festival celebration will be a multicultural, intergenerational affair. A variety of all-ages activities will include a scavenger hunt where participants are given photo hints for landmarks located all around the Pacific Renaissance Plaza. (Prizes will include vouchers for a mango piggy dessert from Peony, the plaza’s dim sum standard bearer.) There will be mahjong tables, storytelling tents and even acupuncture booths. Meanwhile, a host of artists and makers will have tables set up to sell their wares.

Foodwise, Oakland Bloom’s curatorial role means the offerings will be a mix of both Asian and non-Asian cuisines, with many of the vendors pulled from the stable of chefs who rotate through Open Test Kitchen, the nonprofit’s affiliated restaurant. Highlights include biang biang–inspired hand-pulled noodles and Taiwanese beef noodle soup from newcomer Lil Devil Noodle Co., Michoacán-style tacos from Tsiri, sweets from Goddess Noir Cakes (which comes out of Black American baking traditions) and heart-shaped empanadas from the Palestinian-Cuban pop-up Asúkar. (Traditionally, the Lantern Festival is also a romantic holiday, Wu explains.)

Wu says that as the festival has formed deeper connections in Oakland Chinatown over the years, more businesses in the neighborhood are now playing an active role in the event. In fact, two of the 10 food vendors are the brick-and-mortar restaurants Ying Kee and Nature Vegetarian, both longtime Chinatown staples. For the Lantern Festival, they’ll serve a selection of classics: from Ying Kee, shrimp wonton soup and shrimp dumpling soup (both lucky dishes for ringing in the New Year), and from Nature Vegetarian, plant-based salt-and-pepper chicken, Chinese broccoli chow fun and more.

And what better way for the whole evening to culminate than with a big dance party? “We just love inviting the neighbors to just come dance together in the plaza,” Wu says.

The Oakland Chinatown Lantern Festival will take place in and around the Pacific Renaissance Plaza (388 9th St., Oakland) on Sunday, March 1, 3–8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, with food available for purchase on an a la carte basis. Guests are asked to wear masks when not eating and drinking.