Hmong Festival Brings Community Together For ‘Entertainment, Competition And Joy’

The Hmong Wausau Festival is young, but it’s growing.

About 8,000 people turned out in its first year in 2017. Organizer Yee Leng Xiong said they’re hoping to break 9,000 at this year’s festival, which happens Saturday and Sunday at the Eastbay Sports Complex in Wausau.

Xiong is the executive director of Wausau’s Hmong American Center, which offers programs and support for the city’s southeast Asian community, including services for youth and elderly people and a community radio station.

The proceeds from the annual festival help to fund Hmong American Center programming.

But the event is also important on its own terms, Xiong said. It brings people from across the country who enjoy connecting with other members of the Hmong community.

“These events are crucial,” Xiong said, “to bring individuals from the Hmong community together to experience entertainment, competition and joy.”

Events at the weekend fest include soccer and flag football, singing and break-dancing competitions. In the evening Saturday, there will be a fireworks show. For spectators, vendors will sell egg rolls and other foods, plus clothing and other wares. Xiong said attendees and participants in the events don’t have to be Hmong, and people of all backgrounds attend.

But for Hmong attendees, he said, the event provides a valuable connection to the broader national Hmong community.

“Events like this allows individuals from the Hmong community from all across the country to come together, because they’re so spread thin. They’re spread across the country, and this gives them opportunities to come together to have fun,” Xiong said.

Marathon County has more than 6,000 Hmong residents. With a population of about 12 percent Hmong, Wausau has the nation’s highest per capita Hmong population. Hmong were allies of the United States in the Vietnam War, fighting alongside U.S. service members in Laos and Vietnam. They settled in the U.S. as refugees beginning in the 1970s.

Other Midwestern Hmong festivals include the Hmong National Memorial Day Festival in Oshkosh and St. Paul, Minnesota’s Hmong International Freedom Festival.