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In the bustle of crowds amongst booths and the smell of delicious food, club members and attendees mingled, creating a warm, inviting atmosphere despite a slight autumnal chill. For event attendees like Aaron Dorn, a senior civil engineering student, events like the Fall Festival help him learn about different cultures and try new things like seeing performances.
At the Asian American and Asian Resource and Cultural Center Fall Festival, the AAARCC partnered with student organizations to host booths to strengthen community, promote student organizations and connect students to cultural practices for its third year at the alley of the AAARCC on Friday evening.
The booths sprung up, the stage and its chairs were set and the crowd quickly packed in. At this free event, all attendees upon check-in were given two tickets to exchange for food items. While many booths had free candies and snacks for those who participated in activities, the red tickets granted access to AAARCC’s items of mooncakes, samosas, egg rolls, dumplings, popcorn and more.
While one side of the lawn space was occupied by student organization booths of activities including but not limited to fortune telling, calligraphy, bottle ring toss, henna stations and more, the other side held a stage and rows of white lawn chairs.
Live musical and dance performers such as the “Ahjummas”, who performed a rousing dance routine to ‘Gangnam Style’, “Sub33”, who sang anime openings and other classical Chinese dancers, provided energy and fun backdrop to attendees who browsed the surrounding booths.
Keana Wong, a hula performer and freshman in FYE, performed because she wanted to show her friends her culture and display another side of herself beyond “just one of the other engineers.”
Wong recalled encountering the AAARCC by chance when seeking shelter from the rain at BGR, and was welcomed with snacks.
Out of love for the cultural center and admiration for AAARCC’s available resources, she volunteered to perform.
Just a few steps away from the stage, attendees lined up at a booth — the Taiwanese Student Association had set up bottles and mooncake prizes to allow attendees to experience a classic Taiwanese night market experience of ring tossing.
Jason Huang, President of TSA and junior in Business Analytics and Information Management and Supply Chain and Operations Management, views the festival as a good gathering of different social organizations, especially cultural, and seeing the differences inspires respect and learning for the diversity in culture.
Upon first arriving in an unfamiliar environment, Huang found community in events like the fall festival, which gathered different cultural clubs.
For TSA, the “mission is to build a home away from home” by holding “different Taiwanese cultural events, but also for Taiwanese people or students to be involved in Midwest or American culture,” said Huang.
Huang sees the festival as an opportunity to show off Taiwanese culture, but also as potential for future collaborations.
Newly established clubs like the Cross-Cultural Alliance found footing at the AAARCC’s Fall Festival.
“It’s easy to start college, have your group, and stick to your routine. Coming to an event like this and getting exposed to a lot of different student groups and activities is always great,” said Liam Stonestreet, president of the Cross-Cultural Alliance.
The club’s mission is to build a community of people who are cross-cultural, meaning those who grew up influenced by two or more cultures. CCA’s Fall Festival booth reflected this, gaining attendee interaction through a spinner wheel of cultural trivia.
“Everyone is welcome to our club. Because of the name, people feel like they have to be a certain level of cross cultural,” Stonestreet said. “That idea is something I want to eliminate.”
Monica Gonzalez, senior in aviation management and senior advisor for the Purdue University Thai Student Association club boothed at the event to spread awareness of the Thai club.
At their table, attendees could have their fortune told and write their name in Thai. Together, the booth intended to generate interest in Thai as a language and bring together the Thai people at Purdue.
Calligraphy Club President Eric Jin is a returning partner at the AAARCC Fall Festival, and he hopes attendees will remember “the art form (of calligraphy) is still being appreciated and pursued on campus”.
“We’re bringing (calligraphy) back,” Jin said.
He compared calligraphy to cursive, with both mostly practiced in person. In a world of technology, the form is not being taught as frequently as it was in the past.
Consequently, attendees at the booth were encouraged to sit down and practice Chinese calligraphy with the provided brush, ink wells and papers.
“The fall festival is supposed to be a time of great harvest and great joy. While the calligraphy club isn’t exactly harvesting anything, we’re trying to spread joy, spread happiness, and appreciate the world we live in. There’s so much going on right now, and sometimes we need a little time (for) peace,” Jin said.
The event was co-sponsored by Global Programs and partially funded by SFAB.
“Introducing people from other cultures, even if it’s just by inviting a friend, is really important because it not only shows people that this culture is cool, (but) it also shows them that everyone’s human and we all deserve the same space on this earth,” said freshman in FYE Audra Hagerman.
