One performance of the evening featured partner style dancing with colorful parasols. Dancers spun around each other gracefully while twirling the paper umbrellas. Ella Banken // AS Review
By Jack Taylor
Embracing one’s heritage can happen in many forms. Eating the food of one’s culture or learning traditional songs and dances can bring someone closer to their past.
The Vietnamese Student Association showed love for their history and culture at their heritage dinner on Saturday, April 27. Titled ‘Millennial Night Market,’ Jennifer Ha, the vice president of the club, spoke on the background of night markets and their meaning to Vietnamese culture.
“Night markets mainly started in China, but then it branched out, and for Vietnam, it started with economic struggle because they made imports and exports illegal so it was very hard,” Ha said. “But it shows how much the community starts from the ground up, together.”
A typical night market consists of vendors selling food, as well as trinkets and other items. During the dinner, Ha and Quynh Trinh, the president of the VSA, both talked about how a night market starts and ends with fireworks.
To accommodate not being able to have fireworks in the MAC gym, random audience members got chosen to pop a string of balloons to symbolize the lighting of fireworks.
During the event, students read their poetry as well as sang and danced.
Angelica Satumbaga was one of the students who chose to perform. Singing an acoustic version of the song “Mamma Mia” Satumbaga spoke about how events like the heritage dinner give the underrepresented communities the chance to be spotlighted.
“It’s nice to see this happened around people who have similar experiences and cultures,” Saturmabaga said.
Cindy Pham, one of the many volunteers, spoke about why having events like the night market are valuable to campus life.
“It’s pretty important because it’s important to see my culture shown in a positive light,” Pham said. “There’s a lot of heritage dinners that have happened so far, and it’s really cool to see everyone come together to celebrate our culture when it’s not often celebrated.”
Ultimately, Satumbaga feels like the VSA provides a home-away-from-home for her.
“When I came to Washington I was really nervous, because I did the whole ‘move to an entirely different state’ thing, so it’s nice to be around people that are familiar,” Satumbaga said. “So I think it’s really nice to have a group like this so I feel a little more like I am at home.”
VSA also helped Pham feel at home too. Coming from Olympia, which Pham described as mostly white, finding VSA has helped Pham see people like her in a variety of settings.
“The only time I am surrounded by people from the same culture as me is when I go to church. So it’s really cool to come up here and find a place with people like me,” Pham said.
For more information on VSA, they can be reached through their Facebook page.