Taste of China Takes Over Downtown on Saturday

The sixth annual Taste of China festival is at and around Downtown Cary Park on Saturday from 11 to 5, and admission is free. If you are downtown that day, you will not miss it.

The Chinese-American Friendship Association of North Carolina puts the festival on with the Town of Cary. The food is clearly the main draw. Past years had booths cooking from regions all over China (Henan, Shanxi, Sichuan, Guangdong), and the lines form for dumplings, noodles, and lamb kebabs. There are also lion and dragon dances, martial arts demonstrations, and folk dancing through the day, and a children’s pavilion with face painting and balloon twisting.

The photo above is last year’s crowd on Academy Street, which gives you a sense of the size of this thing. Per CAFA, over 20,000 people came to last year’s festival, and the street held more than 40 food vendors and 30 artisan booths.

The festival actually started in Raleigh, not Cary. CAFA held the first one at Bicentennial Plaza in 2018 and again in 2019. It then stopped for three years. It came back in Cary in the spring of 2023 as a street festival on Academy Street and moved into Downtown Cary Park in 2024. CAFA was founded in 1996, so this year is the group’s 30th anniversary, and this is the biggest event it runs. CAFA says it has more than 2,000 members, the largest Chinese American organization in the state.

Before you go, know that South Academy Street will be closed to traffic between Dry Avenue and East Park Street from 8 in the morning until 7 at night. Parking will be much easier this year than last thanks to the new parking decks, and the Town’s downtown parking page lays out the options.