Williston recently saw a once-a-year, and a once-in-a-lifetime, event.
On the day of the total solar eclipse, April 8, students and faculty gathered around the Main Quad to enjoy a feast created by our diverse student community. This meal included all sorts of Chinese, Japanese, South Korean, Vietnamese, and Indian food.
The school’s third Annual Asian Night Market was, as it has been in previous years, a total success. Many international students are desperately homesick for their cultural food, so with the drastic difference between food here and their home countries, the Asian Night Market is a way for those students to still feel connected to their roots.
Besides the great time and food shared with the community, the time working with the Sage staff in the kitchen and producing this event together brought about a great sense of accomplishment and unity. The organizers had their share of bumps and obstacles, but these situations, through cooperation and discussion, brought everyone closer.
The Asian Night Market is not only for Asian students though; all students and faculty also get the opportunity to taste something new, often foods they are seeing for the first time, maybe even finding a new favorite.
Students spent weeks, in addition to their academic loads, prepping for the event. The Asian Alliance Club, along with faculty adviser Ken Choo, planned out the entire event step by step, from getting the ingredients, to the cooking, to setting the booths up.
For everyone to finish in time, many students squeezed out a big chunk of their Sunday (April 7) in the Sage Dining Commons prepping fried chicken, beef soup, and other delicacies like skewers, bulgogi, bhel puri, chicken tikka masala, pork rice, beef stew, rice balls, and cola chicken.
Sophia Chou, a freshman from Taiwan and Tokyo who helped with the Taiwanese and Japanese food, thinks that even though it took a lot of time, the experience was absolutely worth it.
“I spent an entire eight hours in the kitchen on Sunday, and I did feel like complaining because I had a lot of work due the next day,” said Sophia. “But after seeing the happy faces that night, I felt like my efforts were worth the price!”
Along with the students who spent time cooking, there were also students who performed their talents elsewhere. Some joined to create cutely crafted posters to put in front of their tables, while others joined on the main quad to help set up instead of going with the rest of the school community to watch the solar eclipse on Sawyer Field.
Mayphia Zhou, from Shenzhen, China, prepared trays of egg tarts and coconut milk cubes. From experience, those egg tarts definitely made me feel more at home.
Asian Alliance Faculty Adviser Choo is pleased with how the event turned out, noting the contributions of recent alumni Owen Fu ’22 and Vasu Jain ’22.
“We had more dishes than ever before,” Choo said. “The weather was nice so we had the event outdoors, unlike last year which was in the dining commons.
Choo, however, does believe that students would enjoy the Night Market more if it was more like markets in Asia.
“We don’t have the solution yet, but the idea would be later at night (darker too!), and a much closer and crowded sort of event,” Choo said. “This has a lot of logistical hurdles, but it is fun to think about!”