On August 30, 2025, AYLUS Fairfax Branch volunteered at the 2025 Chinese Cultural Festival in Washington, D.C.
The Chinese Cultural Festival is a special annual event that celebrates and promotes the rich culture of China in Washington, D.C. The festival was packed with people and featured endless tents offering a variety of delicious food and cuisine, traditional Chinese dance performances, authentic Chinese music, beautiful Chinese art exhibitions, tea, cosplay, and kung fu demonstrations.
Alongside other organizations, our AYLUS volunteers were responsible for promoting this festival. The festival split all of us up into different groups and assigned us to different locations. We were assigned the Washington Monument, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Smithsonian Metro Station. We held up paper banners with festival information and handed out raffle tickets to tourists, which could be placed in the festival raffle box for a chance to win prizes. Each group had a different raffle ticket color to determine which group attracted the largest crowd.
Despite the hot weather and hours of walking, our efforts were worthwhile; we were excited to see a lot of our raffle ticket colors in the raffle box, and we also got to explore the striking architecture and natural beauty of our nation’s capital. Our volunteers also learned a lot about Chinese culture and enjoyed everything the festival had to offer.
Thank you so much to the Chinese Cultural Festival for letting us volunteer. We really enjoyed this volunteering experience and look forward to returning next year!
Special thanks to William Tian (5 hours), Michael Ma (5 hours), Raeka Zhang (5 hours), Amber Jin (5 hours), Eric Tian (5 hours), Ike Chen (5 hours), Jason Zheng (5 hours), Jack Zheng (5 hours), Oliver Lu (5 hours), Aric Chen (5 hours), Michael Jin (5 hours), Kaylie Liu (5 hours), Manyu Luo (5 hours), Sophia Zhang (5 hours), Harry Xu (5 hours), Eileen Ruan (5 hours), Julianna Sun (5 hours), and Andrew Lin (5 hours) for their contributions!
Best,
William Tian
