The Triangle Area Chinese American Society is holding its annual Chinese New Year Festival from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 26 at the state fairgrounds in Raleigh.

The family-friendly event is a food lover's dream. President Lisa Chang wrote in an email that the food will include Americanized Chinese food, including sesame chicken and General Tso's chicken, but also more traditional selections by talented local cooks. Those food items include three flavors of bubble tea, sweet and savory steamed rice cakes, moon cakes, dim sum, Taiwanese-style grilled sausage and Asian-style shaved ice. The latter is not the Italian, Hawaiian or New Orleans styles of shaved ice. Instead, Chang explains, it is "a mound of snow-like shaved ice covered with layers of brown sugar syrup and condensed milk and then topped with fruit flavored jellies, red bean, taro and more."

Tickets cost $5 in advance online at nctacas.org or at local Asian stores, such as Grand Asia in Cary and A&C Supermarket. in Raleigh. Otherwise, tickets cost $8 at the door.

Here is a lovely holiday remembrance from Kenneth Branch, a Raleigh reader and Wake County's principal of the year for 2012. He is now retired:

Starting next week, we who suffer regularly at the Alexander Family YMCA in Raleigh in an effort to keep age, weight, cholesterol and other menaces away will welcome the annual influx of those whom we call "Resolution People." These good folks, who arrive in January with new gym bags, clean name-brand workout suits and bright white sweatbands, are like old friends who have settled overseas but come to camp with you once a year when they're back in the States.

Those of us familiar with the pattern will simply adjust our schedules to arrive later, but members who are not acquainted with the Resolution People will gripe about larger crowds and longer waits for exercise equipment and the like. They're wasting energy, not to mention they really ought to welcome the Resolution People and encourage them to become lifers. 

Alas, that rarely happens. But one must, as the Rev. Jesse Jackson likes to say, "keep hope alive." I was a Resolution Person myself once, and would go to a gym right after the holidays all ready to turn over a new leaf. Then, a month or so into "the program," more amusing pursuits would cut the gym visits down to once a week, then once every two weeks, then...it was "Everybody Loves Raymond" or "Matlock" on reruns. Finally, though, scared straight by a physical exam, I started going five times a week, and still do.

Of our Resolution People, we'll see a few who'll stay with it and carry on. They'll trade in their workout suits for gym shorts and T-shirts and like the rest of us, wear 'em until some EPA agent in a HazMat suit shows up in the locker room to follow up a report of "suspicious odors." 

Besides, all excuses are gone. You can actually watch "Everybody Loves Raymond" on the TVs in the exercise rooms.

Teachers, students and parents prepare for upcoming classes.