Festival 6

The 6th Asian American Festival was held on September 10, 2016, on Boston Common.

The 2022 chronology does not give a booth count, a visitor count, or a named sponsor list for this Common day. It does not name a festival theme other than the concert title below.

Asian American Day

The chronology records that Governor Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh (yearbook English: Weish; Chinese: 偉殊) formally designated the second Saturday of September each year as Asian American Day in Massachusetts and Boston.

A later press report on the 9th festival (Youping Wen, China-US Innovation Times, September 17, 2019) says that in 2016 the festival was approved by the Massachusetts State Assembly and the City of Boston, and that the governor signed the second Saturday in September as the statutory Asian American Day. That article then describes three consecutive years of large cultural celebrations on Boston’s Central Park (the 6th, 7th, and 8th) with theatrical performances, food tastings, community parades, and traditional-culture and commercial exhibitions. Those sentences are a 2019 recap of the Common years together; they are not a counted attendance for September 10, 2016.

Program on the Common

Director Phillip Pan’s yearbook profile says that at the 6th festival in Boston Central Park he was responsible for food and booth management, and that he joined the board.

Director and secretary Kewei Gan’s profile says he began taking part in the Boston Asian American Festival as a volunteer in 2016.

The yearbook photograph of the Common stage shows a banner reading 第六屆亞美節 / 6th AA Day.

Lexington concert — September 11, 2016

The Chinese chronology records that on September 11, the AADay concert 「海月景山」 was held in Lexington. Named performers include 李雨兒, 樂漢甯, 馮夢, 段小毅, and Vanessa Salvucci, “among dozens of well-known artists.” The English official PDF chronology page does not include this concert line.

An October 2018 article on Italian American Heritage Month (Boston bilingual site, reprinted in the yearbook) says that at the 6th festival concert in September 2016, the National Italian Union selected the soprano Venessa Salvucci (same artist as Vanessa Salvucci in the Chinese chronology).

After the festival

On December 3, 2016, AAAB and Wan Jia Wang jointly held the Greater Boston merchant annual meeting. The yearbook article on that meeting quotes Honorary Chair Klysler Yen saying that the successful 6th festival reflected a spirit of tolerance, cooperation, and service, and Bai Zhigang thanking businesses that had supported the 6th and encouraging them to take part in the 7th. That meeting is not the festival.

Photographs

The Common group is labeled by the stage banner. The two indoor stage photographs sit in the 2016 chronology block and are not separately captioned as Common or Lexington.

This page is a recap of a festival that has already been held. It is not a notice of an upcoming event.