Students Enjoy Taiwanese Street Food, Games and Performances at Night Market Event

More than 200 Harvard students and affiliates packed into the Lowell House dining hall on Friday night to play traditional Taiwanese street games, savor cultural cuisine, and enjoy live musical and dance performances.

The event, hosted by the Harvard Taiwanese Cultural Society, was designed to emulate Taiwan’s iconic street markets, where vendors sell local snacks and visitors compete in street games for prizes.

“A night market is just what it sounds like: street markets in Taiwan that open at night. You can buy hot food, savory snacks, and yummy desserts from street carts and win prizes with street games like balloon darts,” Amy J. Hwang ’26, the publicity chair for TCS, wrote in a statement.

“We hoped attendees would get a chance to enjoy Taiwanese delicacies and boba alongside these street-like games,” she added.

The night market event opened with a piano performance by Harvey Lin ’26, who played works by Bach and Kapustin. Other performances included a traditional dance, a piece by the Veritas Cello Quartet, and a duet by a vocalist and guitarist. Darcy G Lin ’27, a Crimson News editor, and Shiloh Liu ’26 — the two co-presidents of TCS — also delivered an opening address.

“There was this little girl — who, I think it was her mom performing — and she was doing some traditional dance, and that was incredible,” said Hunter M.J. Haynes ’27, who attended the night market event.

TCS also hosted traditional street games in the dining hall, including darts, ring toss, a miniature basketball shooting game, and Mahjong, a traditional Chinese tile-based strategy game.

Students at the event said they enjoyed the food TCS catered, including Taiwanese dishes from the local Taiwanese restaurant Dolphin Bay and boba milk tea from Kung Fu Tea. For Grace H. Zhou ’28, the night market event helped her better appreciate the wide variety of Taiwanese cuisine, which on Friday ranged from fried rice and braised pork to a fried egg and tomato dish.

“It’s like a new way of eating egg, which is pretty cool. It tastes really good,” Zhou said.

Beyond large events like the night market, TCS is a home for Harvard students with Taiwanese heritage or an interest in the island’s culture. Elvin Lo ’27, the co-vice president of the organization, said the 20-member group is “tight-knit” and meets regularly for weekly dinners.

“It really is like a family. Our logo is ‘small island, big family.’ And I think that obviously you can just say it, but I think we really feel it,” Lo said.

Since Taiwan separated from China in 1949, the Chinese government has repeatedly sought to unify the self-governed island with the Chinese mainland and refused to recognize it as an independent country. In this fraught geopolitical context, Lo said that TCS aims to provide a welcoming space for students with connections to Taiwan.

“Obviously our country is — we can’t even really say country — in a situation. But I think for TCS, the main goal is to be a community for us in our home away from home, as best as you can,” Lo said.

For many attendees, the night market event on Friday was an opportunity to learn more about Taiwanese culture and explore the diversity of Harvard’s student body. Timmy Tran ’29, who is half-Vietnamese and half-Chinese, said his heritage inspired him to attend the night market to explore other Asian cultures.

“Being able to experience this, and knowing that Harvard has traditions like this, was something that made me want to go,” Tran said. “Knowing that there’s cultural groups like this on campus makes me realize that we’re so diverse, and especially that fact that we can celebrate our heritage is so important as well.”