Dragon Festival in St. Paul, Minnesota

Dragonboat races aren't just for China and the coastal cities: for 12 years the Dragon Festival in St. Paul, Minnesota has been celebrating the vibrant and growing Asia-Pacific culture here in the Midwest.  This year's event took place July 12-13, right in the thick of Minnesota's festival season. The venue as always is Lake Phalen Regional Park, where a number of dragonboats are permanently stationed for practice through the warm season.

The Twin Cities area is home to a number of businesses and educational institutions with deep links to Asia, and many of them sponsor dragon racing teams, such as Wells Fargo, Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Seagate, Hormel, and Target. There are also community and family groups who participate. My daughter's school, Yinghua Academy, also had a team this year!

Team booths

The racing is really a chance to get friends and family together for a day at the lake 

Many corporate sponsors also set up advertising tents. Political candidates' teams were out in force, as well as local cultural centers and gift & bookshops.

Wells Fargo makes a really strong / cute effort to tune its messaging to specific cultural audiences.  The company has also just recently opened its first office in Beijing & they brought materials used to kick things off there to show folks here in MSP.

In addition to the boat races and vendor / sponsor booths, there were also a number of stages for performances and fun-fair activities for kids.

The festival has consistently advertised and gotten PR from local media - free events are always popular but it is nice to see strong turnout from the general Twin Cities population (also helped by the diverse participation among the racing teams.)

Practice sessions took place during morning hours, and competitive heats in the afternoons.  Competitive matches would be between two teams, two races each, best time overall advancing to the next tier. There would be four boats on the water at any given time so you would get to see a race every five minutes or so; one pair racing while the other pair paddled back to the starting point and rested... 

From the shore it was easy to hear the drumming and chanting of the race teams

And plenty of excitement for each heat!

Food of course is terribly important when celebrating Asian culture! I think back to our first visit in 2006 and being disappointed at the range & quality of offerings -so was thrilled at the diversity available this year!  Food trucks are catching on in MSP & were here, as well as a half-dozen local East and SE Asian restaurants.  Two different places selling bubble tea! 

We need to get some of these guys into the Minnesota State Fair! They all certainly proved they could crank out high-quality tasty dishes for a festival crowd.

"A Passage to China" at the Mall of America

For six years now in April, the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN has hosted "A Passage to China," a 2-day festival put on by Minnesota's Chinese Heritage Foundation and local newspaper China Insight. This year's festival involved over 45 organizations & businesses - some there to sell merchandise, others to talk about programs they put on, and others to grow membership.

There were demonstrations of cooking, dance, martial arts, singing, painting, calligraphy, and many other crafts - kids received a "passport" and would get a stamp at each booth they visited, then redeem the stamps for a necklace or bracelet.

It was great to see so many Asian faces and hear so much Mandarin in one place here in Minnesota - and it was heartening to see so many non-Asian faces watching the performances with interest and walking through the booths with their kids!

My dear daughter had a fine time, of course. Now that she's a little bit older and able to speak in Chinese for herself, she got a lot more out of this year's presentation:

Having the Starbucks in the background makes it more authentically Chinese ;)

Moulding-your-own Terracotta Warriors

Little Warriors for sale...  we're holding out to get a life-size one for the garden in the backyard

We stayed for a number of vocal performances and dance numbers

Paper-cutting, a traditional folk craft from Shaanxi province - it can get amazingly intricate.  (She did not pay any attention to the American Girl shop just beyond :)  )

United Noodles' Unideli, Minneapolis MN

Have often tweeted ( I'm at @weninchina ) about the great food being served at United Noodles' own Unideli.  Here are some more photos from lunch our family had there a couple weekends ago:

The Unideli is open for lunch and early dinner.  Most items are cooked-to-order so expect about a 5-minute wait after ordering at the counter.  Find a seat & they'll call your name when your food is ready.  

There can be a good line going on weekends, we like to get there about 11:00 before the crowd shows up!  

You could probably have a reasonable meal with just the "appetizers" - here's a couple taiyaki - deep-fried batter (tastes a lot like waffles) with sweet red-bean filling (tastes a lot like chocolate).  These are awesomely great on a cold winter's day.

Takoyaki, served in a little bamboo boat!  Lots of bonito flakes, Kewpie Mayo, and other furikake on top...  The puffs are steaming hot when you get them so give them a little bite to let the heat out, but then gobble down a minute later!  Nice chewy fried texture on the outside, pancake-batter creamy on the inside, with a nice meaty chunk of octopus!

I tell the owner he really needs to get a stand at the Minnesota State Fair to dish up snacks like these; they're totally festival foods back in Asia...

We've been trying different ramen bowls in recent visits - see how creamy that tonkotsu looks that my daughter's digging into!  That's from pork fat that's been boiling for hours and hours!  Man, it's good!

Here's a different recipe, more of a clear broth.  The swirly piece at the top is chewy and meaty (processed fish - kind of like those "crab" chunks) - and check out that nice hunk of BBQ pork on the left ... there are several more pieces like that underneath!  (The vegetables are really flavorful too.)

Impressive updates to the international gates at Minneapolis/St.Paul!

My hometown airport of Minneapolis / St. Paul has been in a constant state of updating, which makes every trip fun to discover what is new.  Our hub carrier, Delta, has made big investments to the international and long-haul gate areas that Northwest Airlines had custom-built back in the 1980s and that re-construction has just recently been completed.

On a business trip last week I was able to check out these renovated gate areas and came away very impressed with how family-friendly they turned out!

The gates at MSP are arranged something like a letter "H", and the international gates and Customs facility is in the middle of the left-hand side of that "H". The short hallway to get to those gates used to have a big McDonald's on one side and a gift shop on the other.  No more McDonald's ... and the hallway runs right through a much bigger retail area (kind of like how Copenhagen does it...)

I had read in local media how this remodeling was supposed to appeal to business and high-end travelers, and I agree that it certainly does that job.  The finish, lighting, and quality of goods & foods make this part of MSP every bit as interesting as what I've seen in Tokyo or Amsterdam - well done! But as soon as I saw this frozen-yogurt self-serve bar I thought "my daughter is going to go nuts here when we go on vacation in March!"

They have those new Coca-Cola Freestyle make-your-own-mix dispensers, which is neat. But as a parent what I really appreciate is the big assortment of healthy and tasty deli food & bottled beverages.  Fast-food has its place (and you can still get your fill of it at MSP just a few minutes' walk from here) but when you're on the road you crave fruit ... vegetables ... fresh bread ... a simple bottle of water.  And you can get it all right here.  (And of course if the kids are eating healthier, they're going to be behaving better on the flight...)

A bit more variety of travel-gear than I usually see at most airports, too, in case you need an extra bag or pillow...

You pass through the retail space into the light-filled gate areas. I wasn't expecting the seating to have changed, but this was a real surprise ... extra-wide chairs with tables and electric outlets all over.  If you're holding an infant or toddler there's enough room on that seating to still be comfortable and not stick halfway out into traffic. 

And of course the iPads.  You can't do *everything* on them - and they're meant first to place orders at the food vendors right behind you - but I've been told there are games on these tablets, too.

I don't know what the kids are going to be doing while you're playing games on the iPad.

This used to be kind of a dumpy wall with a few pay phones and people sitting on the carpet.  Now, wow.  That tile curves all the way up onto the ceiling.  The TVs are there, but you're not being blasted with audio, either.

This is the back part of what used to be McDonald's - a nice bistro with plenty of table seating inside. So people who really want to be "in a restaurant" to eat have their space, and people who want to relax in the gate area have their space, and everyone has power and iPads to play with.

And here's looking back through the retail hallway to get back to the main part of Concourse G and the rest of the airport.  Concourse G has been re-done all the way down to the end in a similar fashion, although the seating areas are the best here in G1-G6.  I see restroom upgrades, too (more about that after our next trip) - and some work being done in other Delta gates on the F concourse.

If you're taking Delta to Asia on the Minneapolis-Tokyo run, these updates will make your family travel experience much more relaxing and fun.

I'll be updating the Minneapolis / St. Paul airport guide on weninchina.com this season to incorporate this fresh information, and with more photos, too.

Photos: Soups at Obento-ya, Minneapolis

Obento-ya is our favorite Japanese restaurant here in the Twin Cities - an intimate, inexpensive bistro serving homestyle izkaya cooking and sushi. I took our daughter there last night after school...

 You can never go wrong with a nice big bowl of udon. The shrimp and vegetables are lightly battered and fried - seaweed and green onion on the side to mix in.

She loves the miso with tofu cubes - and so do we. If you have a cold or are feeling run-down, a nice bowl of this will bring your health and spirits right back up.

This Saturday - the Day of Flying

I'll be in the skies all day this Saturday, May 28, scoping out the family-friendly amenities and hidden quiet places of three more Transpacific gateway airports: Detroit, Dallas/Ft. Worth, and Atlanta.

My day will begin in Minneapolis/St. Paul at 6:35 am, where I'll be boarding Delta flight 2240 for Detroit. I'll be at DTW's McNamara Terminal from 9:20 through 12:30, when I'll board Delta 5762 bound for Dallas.

At DFW, I'll be arriving at 2:30 and checking out the new Terminal D, as well as C and E, then boarding Delta 2212 for Atlanta.

At ATL, I'll be arriving at 7:05 and departing at 9:55 back home to MSP on Delta 300, where I'll be landing about 11:30 pm.

If you have suggestions on play areas, restaurants, shopping, good restrooms, and spaces to chill out in, please send a reply here at Blogspot, or through my Twitter feed, @weninchina.

Am I a little nuts? Perhaps, but the fare was amazingly good and I need the segments :)

Family-friendly airport guides

The big children's playspace in Terminal 2 at Chicago O'Hare Airport.

For many families, the adoption trip to China may be their first time across the Pacific or even out of the country. Even for experienced road warriors, a flight home from Asia may take them into an unfamiliar airport. Combine that with serious sleep deprivation and taking care of a new little person whom you've just met and are still trying to bond with, and you may not even be able to find your way through your own hometown terminal.


We're starting a new series of articles at weninchina.com to guide you through the primary North American gateways to Asia. We'll talk about your arrival, how long it will take to get through Customs, where your connecting flights are, and the features of the airport from a family-travel perspective. How are the restrooms? Where can we sit quietly and decompress? Where can the kids blow off excess energy?


This season, we've already posted guides to Seattle/Tacoma, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Chicago O'Hare, with Portland OR, and Vancouver BC next on the list.


If you have suggestions, feedback, or want to share your stories with other travelers, please leave a comment here or email us at weninchinainfo (at) mac (dot) com. Hope you find these new guides useful.