CCFWNY Community Engagement Update | May 31, 2026

A fine Sunday it was, the kind that draws active folk out of their houses and into the cheerful Asia Food Market on Niagara Falls Boulevard. There, amid the smells of good food and the thunderous enthusiasm of a performance stage, the CCFWNY team — Brad, Zhen Jiang, Victor, and Hattie — planted their table and set about the noble American art of talking to strangers.

And strangers there were plenty. The Asian American Heritage Festival, running from eleven in the morning until five in the afternoon, drew crowds from both within the Asian community and well beyond it — which is, without doubt, the point of a heritage festival worth its salt.

Brad, who arrived before the first table leg was unfolded and stayed until the last one was folded back up, reported conversations with some thirty souls, all of them friendly — a statistic that ought to restore one’s faith in humanity, or at least in Amherst. Among them was Dr. Junzhe Xu, with whom he spoke for nearly an hour, and a young couple who received the full treatment. Eight contacts were collected — a respectable harvest by any measure.

Zhen arrived at half past noon. She noted with some diplomacy that the proximity to the performance stage rendered conversation challenging — the audio made it feel rather like conducting a community outreach inside a bar on a lively Friday night.

A visitor who had once studied at Capital Normal University in Beijing paused to ask her whether the future culture center might serve people beyond the Chinese community. While the answer was a 100% Yes, the question was, perhaps, the most revealing one of the afternoon.

At the end of the day, when the team unpacked their engagement experience in the message group, the verdict was unanimous: a very good one, loud and all.