By Nina Huang
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Seattle Rise Collective Lunar New Year Festival at Washington Hall. Photo courtesy of Wendy Kato.
The Lunar New Year Festival, hosted by Seattle Rise Collective at Washington Hall on Feb. 21, brought together food, music, art, and small businesses in a space that felt both celebratory and deeply personal.
More than 800 attendees explored the vibrant marketplace that featured 41 vendors, centering Asian-owned businesses, while making room for the diversity and nuance of Asian American identities across generations and cultures.
Finding joy through art
Taiwanese American artist Lily Jao, owner of lilyofthesea. Photo by Nina Huang.
For Taiwanese American artist Lily Jao, the festival was as much about self-discovery as it was about sharing her work. Jao is the illustrator behind lilyofthesea, a live portrait business she has been growing through local markets since moving to Seattle two years ago. Although she has been making art her entire life, from knitting to drawing, working in live portraiture is more recent. Jao noticed other artists offering portraits at markets and began imagining how she could create something similar.
“I’ve always enjoyed drawing people,” Jao said. “My favorite moment is seeing people smile when I hand it back to them. I always try to make art that conveys joy.”
That sense of joy was especially meaningful in the context of Lunar New Year. Growing up, Jao said cultural traditions were not emphasized at home, because her parents wanted their children to assimilate. She described feeling uncertainty around her identity and even shame at times, particularly when navigating how others perceived being Taiwanese or Chinese.
“When I think about Lunar New Year, I’m still learning what it means, and what being Taiwanese means,” she said. “This market feels like a nice way to be more involved in the Asian community and meet people I didn’t get to growing up.”
Reconnecting with tradition through creativity
Emmaly Nguyen, left, of Yumhoneycrisp. Photo by Nina Huang.
Nearby, illustrator Emmaly Nguyen of Yumhoneycrisp shared a similar sense of reconnection through art.
Nguyen, who grew up in Orange County, California, described Lunar New Year—Tết, in Vietnamese—as a rare time when her large family could all gather together.
“We always share food, play games like Bingo, and give out lì xì,” Nguyen said. “As adults, you don’t get red envelopes as much, so I’ve grown more grateful for celebrations like that.”
After moving to Seattle for work, Nguyen said that finding cultural community has been grounding.
Her recent work, including prints and stickers inspired by Lunar New Year imagery, reflects both nostalgia and her present-day relationship to the holiday.
“I don’t celebrate it in the same way anymore, but I still want to show appreciation for what it means to me now,” she said. “This market felt like a great opportunity to find community in the Asian art space and meet people who care about sharing art and culture.”
Brewing up cultural memories
Emily Chan, left, co-founder of Muni Cafe. Photo courtesy of Emily Chan.
Coffee vendor Emily Chan, co-founder of Muni Cafe, brought her own memories into the festival through drinks inspired by childhood flavors. Chan, who grew up in New Jersey after her family emigrated from China, said that moving to Seattle was pivotal in helping her reconnect with her cultural identity.
“I didn’t grow up surrounded by a lot of Asians,” Chan said. “Moving to Seattle was when I started exploring that part of myself more fully. It’s been really amazing.”
One of Muni Cafe’s most popular drinks, the banana cloud latte, was inspired by a banana popsicle Chan associates with her childhood in China. She said that sharing such flavors with customers has been a way to tell stories through food and drink.
“Our specialty drinks are where we really shine,” she said. “We bring our backgrounds and lived experiences into them, and everything is made in-house.”
For the Lunar New Year Festival, Muni Cafe unveiled new offerings, including an Earl Grey latte and tea-forward drinks, and gave out red envelopes to customers as part of the celebration.
Building space for Asian and gender-expansive creatives
Anna Tono, left, and her mother Kimie. Photo courtesy of Wendy Kato.
Behind the scenes, the festival reflected months of collaboration among Seattle Rise Collective’s co-founders, including Tammi Lee and Anna Tono, who are also vendors themselves. Phoebe Hayes is also a co-founder.
The trio formed the collective just a few months ago with the goal of creating a “creative community for women to rise together,” emphasizing gender-expansive and inclusive spaces.
Lee and her family started kkot, a Seattle-based skincare brand born out of a family’s collective health struggles. Tono is the creator of Happitat, a temporary tattoo business centered on self-expression and body positivity.
Lee said the idea for a Lunar New Year market felt especially important given how Asian culture is often simplified in Western contexts.
“In Western culture, Asian culture is simplified, extremely,” Lee said. “We wanted to show the vastness of Asian cultures and what ‘Asianness’ can look like.”
Drag performance by AZN GLO. Photo courtesy of Anna Tono.
In addition to the marketplace, the festival featured five musical performances by Srey Selepak SEA, The Chao Thai Seniors, Vietnamese Student Association Green River College, AZN GLO, and Lee herself, who is also an opera singer.
While Lunar New Year is particularly significant in Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean cultures, Lee emphasized that the event was intentionally inclusive of South Asian and Southeast Asian vendors as well, reflecting the breadth of identities within the Asian American community.
Attendees celebrate culture and connection
Attendees traveled from across the region, including Bremerton and Tacoma, to take part in the festivities. Giovanni Morales and his brother discovered the event through Google and saw it as a meaningful way to celebrate Lunar New Year, purchasing small trinkets and cookies from vendors.
Olivia Royle and Karna Rowan drove up from Tacoma after finding the event on Eventbrite, leaving with art prints and stationery.
“I think just learning about other people’s belief system and just seeing how they celebrate is a very unique thing as well,” Royle said.
Looking ahead
The success of the festival builds momentum from the collective’s earlier holiday market and pop-ups. The founders say future plans include more vendor-focused networking, continued public events, and potential programming tied to Pride later this year.
“We’re still learning a lot,” Lee said. “But our priority is supporting small businesses and creating something that feels fun, inclusive, and community-centered.”
For many vendors and attendees, the Lunar New Year Festival was not just a marketplace, but a space to explore identity, creativity, and belonging. As Jao put it, it was a chance “to have fun with our culture” together.
Nina can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.
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