The OC Night Market Brings Asia Home?

On October 10^th, I attended the OC Night Market located at the OC Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, California. This event is associated with the 626 Night Market, which originally takes place in Los Angeles, thus the OC Night Market is a subdivision of this event. I viewed it as an extension of Los Angeles past its physical boundaries, which even to this day are hard to clearly define. Many of the vendors were from LA, as well as Orange County. The Night Market is an event that was created to “bring the Night Markets and Festivals of Asia home” to reunite many Asian Americans with their culture and to let other people experience what Asia has to offer.

I have always been fascinated with Asian Culture and the experiences that come with taking part in culturally based events. Since it was my first year attending the event, I was excited to experience something that I had high interest in. The OC Fairground space is interesting to note because it is not necessarily a permanently titled space. These fairgrounds host many different events and gatherings constantly, thus the connections we make with the space at the time have the opportunity to be altered. The OC Fairgrounds have been used for the OC Fair, Environmental Festivals, Deaf Festivals, the Flee Market, and Farmers Market, to name a few that I have attended. It is a privately owned public space that can be rented out to fulfill whatever its purpose at the time may be, therefore it is made possible to develop multiple connections with different meanings all in one specific space.

While eating my takoyaki, I noticed the heavy influence of American culture within the festival whose purpose was to promote Asian Culture. Many of the venders were selling things such as bracelets or t-shirts with Asian references such as pandas, boba or Pokémon but these have become so Americanized that its hard to say that it is something special or unique to Asia. The purpose became more to find aspects of Asian culture that Americans could connect with rather than exposing us to unfamiliar things. I love kimchi, takoyaki, squid, sushi and all of these delicious foods associated with Asian culture and as I would have expected, they were all present. I found myself attempting to use my knowledge about Asian culture to anticipate what I would expect to see rather than connecting and enjoying the aspects that had never experienced.

Even though the event was in Costa Mesa it reminded me Los Angeles because of its ability to bring together a specific group of people to one space that shared the same cultural background, however much subdued. Los Angeles is a very diverse space yet within that space we see areas such as Korea town, Chinatown, Little Tokyo, and neighborhoods with a dominant race or ethnicity. It is our human nature to congregate or have the desire to associate with those similar to us, which is something very special to LA. It allows for these huge groups of minorities to find a place where they feel as a majority.

           The people in attendance were predominately Asian and if they weren’t Asian themselves, then someone in their group of friends was. Even I went with my friend, Kayson, who is half Japanese. Even though diversity is present, I felt that those who were there had a desire to fit in, in any way possible, which is also highly noted in Los Angeles. A sense of conformity in all spaces is something that we subconsciously succumb to because of our desire to fit in wherever we go which is why in certain situations we gravitate towards spaces that we know that we undoubtedly will have a place where we are comfortable to be ourselves.