The region’s Vietnamese community comes together at Seattle Center Festal: Tet Festival to usher in the Year of the Tiger, Feb. 6 - 7, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m., at Center House.

The annual Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebration, in its 14th year at Seattle Center, embraces Vietnam’s most popular holiday, welcomes the return of spring and chases out evil spirits with the traditional roaring lion dance and the crackle of firecrackers.

The 2010 Tet Festival showcasesVietnam’s rich and colorful heritage with the special theme “Splendor of Regions of Vietnam.” The two-day, FREE event features professional performers as well as talented local artists. Festival attendees will have a chance to explore and immerse in Vietnamese culture through unique dances, martial arts, workshops, children’s stories and hand-on activities as well as a crawfish eating contest, Vietnamese cooking demonstrations and the Regions of Vietnam Fashion Show.

The 22 Festal cultural celebrations underscore the unique contributions of ethnic communities in the Pacific Northwest, while highlighting their similarities through comparable artistic expressions, food preparations, creative inspirations and approaches to their own communities and the world at-large. Our 2010 Did you knows will explore some of these commonalities and differences, festival by festival.

Did you know? Colors of the Vietnamese culture: gold and red both for royalty and the color of skin and blood. Most popular foods: applying the principle of yin and yang throughout – Pho noodle soup, spring/shrimp rolls, rice cakes and Vietnamese shrimp pancakes. Greatest source of cultural pride: the four thousand year history of the Vietnamese culture. Livelihood: throughout a thousand years of hardships and war, the Vietnamese culture embodied compassion and a desire for new learning and community spirit. Today, the livelihood is made through food processing, garments, machine building, mining, glass, tires, oil, coal, steel and paper.

Seattle Center Festal: Tet Festival is produced by Seattle Center in partnership with Tet in Seattle. For a full event schedule, visit http://www.tetinseattle.org/ and for more information on this cultural series and other Seattle Center programming, click on http://www.seattlecenter.com/.