The Chinatown Night Market aims to educate people about the culture and to gain more public interest for shops to stay operational.
Winnipeg's Chinatown Night Market begins Friday, October 7 at noon and it will include free bouncy castles, food trucks and food stalls, cultural performances, live bands, and a K-pop street party all for free.
"With COVID and the shutdown and the lack of traffic downtown, it hasn't been driving traffic down there for businesses to sustain themselves and so this is why the importance of the Chinatown Night Market is hoping to bring down that traffic, to revamp Chinatown, to bring and to introduce folks about what's in Chinatown besides the grocery stores," says Amy Tung who is an ambassador for the Winnipeg Chinese Cultural and Community Centre. "That's why we want to bring more traffic, to really tighten up that space, revitalize it, to bring life and energy back into it and to infuse our culture, the history, more storytelling to really tell people what is the Chinese Cultural Centre, or what do we consist of and what are our traditions, our values of the Chinese culture."
Currently, Chinatown offers grocery stores, a variety of restaurants, different cuisines, and historical sites.
"The Winnipeg Chinese Night Market will have many international delights from food trucks and different food stalls and lots of cultural performances and live bands going through the entire day. It's on October 7 and 8 from 12:00 p.m. to 9:0 p.m."
The hope is that with the Chinatown Night Market able to operate fully with no restrictions, it will increase interest which will lead to renovations, refurbishing, and revamping of the cultural buildings.
"It's not just about the red lanterns, the nice traditional Chinese dress, the tea, there's so much more to that. What we're starting to slowly see is that kind of being ripped away, being disintegrated, dissolving very quickly after COVID because there are not enough people and so by bringing in more people we hope to infuse more of that energy and to bring more of that tradition, that storytelling to folks."