Willard Middle School’s Asian Pacific Islander Club (APIC) hosted their fourth annual night market on Thursday, April 26, 2025. Stalls and booths were set up in the school’s main courtyard with 11 countries being represented by students and adult volunteers.
“When you walk in, there’s a bunch of different stalls. It’s supposed to replicate a night market as if you’re in Asia,” Anais Mendoza Juachon, a Berkeley High School sophomore and Willard graduate, said. Traditional night markets, which originated in China, are open-air events, featuring a variety of vendors, food, merchandise, and other goods. “Each stall you go to, it’s a different country and they have a game and some food and you learn more about that country,” Mendoza Juachon added.
The first Willard night market was hosted in 2022 in their cafeteria. Mendoza Juachon recalled the unanticipated popularity they garnered. “It had grown so much by my eighth grade year that we had to bring it outside, and ever since then it’s been getting bigger and bigger,” Mendoza Juachon said.
Mendoza Juachon estimated around 250 people attended this year. “There’s a lot of people. Everyone brings their whole family, grandparents. … It’s really fun and I’m sure it’ll be even bigger and more exciting next year,” she said.
The event even interested students from other schools. Nachi Villanueva-Torres, a seventh grader at Longfellow, explained his favorite parts of the night market were learning new things, seeing people from different schools and communities connecting, and learning about all the different cultures.
An aspect of the night market that has developed over the years are performances organized by Willard teachers Ryan Chinn and Johanna Paraiso, who have been running APIC for five years. During Willard’s second ever night market, they hired performers which included a dragon dance group, a lion dance group, an acrobat group, and a Taiko drumming group. Since then they’ve switched to student performances led by Paraiso.
“Over the years we’ve decided we wanted to focus on our Willard students. Ms. Paraiso has an extensive background in dance and wants to share that with our students and with our community,” Chinn said.
Many attendees said that these performances were their favorite parts of the night, including Chinn who explained he enjoys watching his students push themselves out of their comfort zones in this way.
Isabella Israel, a Willard student who contributed to night market planning, participated in the Muslim Filipino scarf dance, a traditional dance from the southern Philippines where scarves are used as expressive props. Other performances of the night included Karate and Tinikling, another traditional Filipino dance involving precise footwork around bamboo poles, mimicking the tikling bird.
“I really like events like these because we’re able to teach other people about our culture,” Mendoza Juachon said. There were at least five Willard graduates, all current BHS students, who attended the event to help run the snack stall, featured in between the scattering of individual country stalls. Money raised from food being sold goes towards future APIC events and general costs of organizing the night market.
APIC has grown tremendously since its creation in 2020. “The number of kids we have who are not of Asian descent, and are supporting us has definitely increased, and they take a nice role in helping us pull this up,” Chinn said.
As APIC continues to grow, Chinn is excited to see how the night market will develop. “The kids have been working all year long,” Chinn said, “We get parents involved, we have community members, we have people who are not even affiliated with our school come here to support it, it’s really great.”