Asian Culture Club revives Culture Night
March 8, 2016
On Saturday, Solon High School’s Asian Culture Club (ACC) brought back a previously annual event: Culture Night. The event was revived with the help of other SHS clubs including American Field Service (AFS), Amnesty International, Diversity Acceptance Program (DAPs) and Spanish Culture Club.
Sophomore Lewis Zou played Chopin’s “Sonata No. 3” representing Polish Culture.
Culture Night was open to SHS students along with community members for a $5 fee. The event featured games, raffles and information boards created by club members. There were also many different foods for the participants to try representing Greek, Russian, Italian, Taiwanese, Spanish, Japanese, Indian, Chinese and South Korean cultures.
“Asian Culture Club was the creator of Culture Night, and hosted it a few years ago,” ACC Secretary Aarti Raghavachari said. “Our advisors and officers all thought it would be a great and fun event to bring back. ACC’s goal is to promote diversity and inclusion throughout the Solon community, and we decided Culture Night would be a wonderful method to bring about this goal,”
ACC President Michelle Li wanted to use Culture Night to educate SHS and the Solon community about less mainstream cultures.
“A lot of these cultures, people don’t really know about and we wanted to spread some information in a fun and interesting way,” she said.
Junior and Culture Night emcee Jessica Pan particularly enjoyed learning about Korean culture and trying the Korean dishes available including Ddukbokki, soft rice cakes in a sweet red chili sauce.
“I tried Ddukbokki,” she said. “It’s a Korean dish. It is so great, because I love Korea.”
After the participants browsed the displays and tasted food from around the world, Culture Night featured
performances from SHS students.
Chinese 3 student Justin Prindle played “Mo Li Hua”, “The Jasmine Flower” on the traditional Chinese flute.
The performances were a mix of both the traditional and modern styles. Junior June Fan performed “Xi Bei Qing Yun” on the Gu Zheng, a traditional Chinese instrument plucked with the fingers and sometimes called the Chinese piano.On the modern side, the Cha siblings, Joanna, Deborah and John, played a medley of K Pop songs by the group Big Bang on the viola, piano and cello respectively.
Raghavachari represented India by singing the song “Swagatham Krishna” praising the Hindu deity Krishna. Other performances included Chopin’s “Sonata No. 3” by sophomore Lewis Zou, an Irish dance by sophomore Caleb Grignon and Meghan Trainor’s “Like I’m Going to Lose You” by senior Kiara Kind to represent American culture.
The ACC officers hope to expand this event next year by bringing in more groups to participate and increasing attendance through advertising.
“I hope that in the coming years, we are able to invite more clubs to help us put on such an event, and we would get their support earlier in the year,” Raghavachari said. “I also hope that we can sell more tickets to people, so that more people can enjoy it!”
ACC Secretary Aarti Raghavachari and Karla Benitez representing India with Marika Atwah representing Japan.
“I think next year we hope to have more performances, and more people that would come,” Li said. “I feel like a lot of the kids didn’t really know about Culture Night, but it’s definitely a success this year. We hope that next year more people will come.”
Raghavachari wanted to thank all of the clubs and individuals who helped ACC bring back Culture Night to SHS.
“ACC would like to thank everyone who helped us put on this event, we would not have been able to do it without them,” she said. “We want to thank Amnesty International, American Field Service, DAPs, and Spanish Club. Also, a huge thanks to the school staff and all administrators. Finally, thank you to all the parents and students who took time out of their schedules to pull Culture Night off.”