Every year, the festival offers entertainment, food, and crafts that celebrate the people and cultures of Asia and the Pacific Islands. A pageant of authentic dances, music, costumes, and food from this year’s featured culture, the Philippines, highlights the event. For the Filipino-American community, 2006 is also a very special year: it marks the 100-year anniversary of large-scale Filipino migration to the United States, which began in the early twentieth century as Hawaiian agricultural interests searched abroad for plantation labor.
The Lotus Festival also includes the annual dragon boat races, in which local non-profits and government officials take with their staffs to the high seas in fierce competition. This year we're being joined by a motley seafaring gang impressed by blogging.la. Of course, I wish all challengers good luck; you'll need it against the CD13 boat, rulers of the lake for four years in a row.