From Oct. 14 to Oct. 22, RM’s Tea Club and Asian American Club partnered together to hold a fundraiser in support of victims of Typhoon Yagi in Vietnam.
The Asian American Club (AAC) has been a fixture at RM since the 20th century. Senior Ngoc Trinh joined the club in her junior year. “I want to spread awareness because there’s a lot of Asian hate, and it’s really normalized,” Trinh said.
At their meetings, club members discuss important facets of Asian-American life such as immigrant experiences, personal stories and significant figures in the community. They also celebrate Asian culture by watching Asian movies and eating traditional snacks.
Senior Emily Shao, co-president of AAC, joined in sophomore year after facing racial hate and slurs as a Chinese-American. “I feel like our community doesn’t speak up as much, and I joined this club because I just want to talk about our issues,” Shao said.
The goal of the fundraiser was to raise money for victims of Typhoon Yagi. All funds received were sent to Red Cross Vietnam for relief efforts. “There are hundreds of thousands of families that were displaced,” Trinh said, who is Vietnamese herself. “[This is] especially in the north, which is not used to typhoons… so it was really impactful this year. It was also a category five storm.”
Students who donated at least $5 were gifted a goodie bag that contained fidget toys, Asian candy, jelly straws, tea packets and stickers.
Tea Club was started last year by senior Mark Yang, current president of the club. “I just wanted to drink tea in school and not have people judge me,” Yang said. “I love Earl Grey with maple syrup. I just really like the way Earl Grey tastes.”
Senior Tiffany Liao, co-president, joined Yang after the former co-president of the club moved to Bangladesh. “I came to Mark’s first meetings and I noticed there were only four or five people going,” Liao said. “I asked him if he wanted any help with marketing and getting more people to come, and he agreed.”
Yang and Liao are both influenced by their heritage. Yang was born and raised in Rockville but his grandparents immigrated from Taiwan. Liao is also Taiwanese and her favorite tea is lychee green tea with lychee jelly. Tea is a prominent aspect of Taiwanese culture, with an annual per capita of tea consumption of 1.7kg.
Today, Tea Club is far more popular with an average of 30-40 members attending. At meetings, they choose a type of tea and present about it. At the end, students are given snacks, get to try the tea, and socialize.
Tea Club sponsor and social studies teacher Charles Holt began teaching at RM last year, when Yang approached him to sponsor the club. “I think it was great to have kids exposed to tea from different parts of the world and get them to know a little bit about the culture of those places,” Mr. Holt said.
Holt believes in the benefits of tea over other forms of caffeine, and has been drinking tea since middle school. “The formality of making the tea is nice. It’s more of a meditative process to make the tea than it is to brew a pot of coffee. It takes more effort and you feel more attached.” Mr. Holt said. “Earl Grey is my favorite tea. I like the flowery taste to it.”
Yang agreed with many of Holt’s sentiments. “I think tea is important because, besides water, it’s the most popular drink in the world… It’s healthier than coffee and energy drinks, and in America, it’s not as appreciated as much as it should be,” Yang said. “Tea is good. Tea is great. Tea we must appreciate.”
This year, Tea Club plans to hold other fundraisers. “This year, we’re doing more fundraising and things like that … this one we did because of events that happened in the world, but we are probably going to do some fundraising just to help with funds for our own club,” Mr. Holt said.
Some students questioned the lack of inclusion of aid for the recent hurricane in Florida. “We started the fundraiser before the hurricanes hit Florida and other parts of the southeast. You can’t raise money for every problem that’s around in the world,” Mr. Holt said. “I do think that luckily, our government is able to do a lot of help for victims in our own country, but that’s not always the case for other parts of the world.”
Students in both Tea Club and AAC felt a personal connection to the victims. “This was something that our students were passionate about too. We have a lot of students from Vietnam and from Southeast Asia,” Mr. Holt said. “So I think it’s great that we’re able to do that help.”
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