Annual TASA Night Market yields large turnout

The Taiwanese American Student Association (TASA) held their annual Night Market in the Mattin Center last Saturday. The market focused on collaboration this year, working with Japanese Student International (JSI), the Korean Student Association (KSA) and the Chinese Student Association (CSA).

The Night Market is TASA’s biggest event of the year and takes a lot of work. TASA started planning for the market at the beginning of the year.

“We put a lot of effort into it,” senior TASA Co-President Charles Wang said. “The weeks leading up to it were very busy.”

Its goal is to expose students to Taiwanese culture and allow them to experience what a “night market” in Taiwan might be like.

“At night markets, there would be a lot of vendor food, so that’s what we tried to recreate,” senior Co-President Stephanie Lin said.

Since food is a large part of the Taiwanese culture, there was a myriad of treats at the event, including fried rice, noodles, scallion pancakes, fried egg pancakes, bubble tea and shaved ice. Most of the food was homemade.

“Food is obviously a really a big part of the Taiwanese culture. It’s actually our biggest, I think,” Lin said. “We tried to get pretty traditional dishes that everyone would eat. We had two meat tables and a vegetarian dish.”

Freshman Becky Sturner enjoyed the variety of food available.

“[The market] is really cool, it looks really impressive and the food’s great,” she said.

However, freshman Jess Strull thought that the market could have been organized better.

“I thought the food was really good, but I think the setup could have been a little better. All the plates were just at one of the food stations, so there was a really long line there,” she said.

She did enjoy the food and the atmosphere, though. “It was fun to go around to all the different vendors and see the food that they had,” she said.

TASA also brought in famous YouTube performer Jason Chen, who they think contributed to the large turnout at the market.

“We know that he has a lot of fans here, so that’s probably why there was such a huge turnout,” Lin said. “It’s bigger than last year’s, for sure.”

Wang estimates that about 250 students showed up throughout the afternoon. There were many booths for students to explore, including a booth run by the JSI to raise money for Japanese relief.

Tzu Chi, a Taiwanese volunteer organization that does relief efforts around the world, had a booth as well.

“We brought them in to explain what they do, and talk about how to go green and recycle, “ Wang said.

“They are a nation wide group and they are also a Chinese school,” freshman TASA representative Jasmine Wang said. “They raise a lot of money for events like this and send volunteers over to Taiwan.”

CSA and KSA did not set up any booths, though they did help out with the event. Along with the booths, there were many traditional games available for students to play as well.

Overall, TASA felt that the market went very well, though it had to be moved indoors because of the threat of rain.

“We thought it was going to rain all day, otherwise we would have had it outside,” Lin said.

The co-presidents would have liked to get more SAC funding for the event, but they were very pleased with the student turnout.

“It [was] a good time for everyone to enjoy free food and entertainment, and to try and learn a little more about the Taiwanese culture,” Lin said.