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A sizable crowd gathered in Martin Luther King Jr. Park under the sun and blue skies Saturday for the singing, dancing, and other forms of presentation at the sixth annual Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Festival. 

Put on by the Asian Pacific Islander Committee, which is primarily composed of Berkeley High School students, the festival experienced one of its best turnouts in six years of existence. 

The theme of this year’s festival was “Through Our Eyes.” Coralie Chan, a Berkeley High senior and co-chair of the Berkeley High School Asian Pacific Islander Committee, explained that the theme reflects how Asian and Pacific Islander youths feel about being the new leaders of their communities while at the same time trying to keep certain traditions. 

“Since it’s a new millennium, we as Asian youth want the public and the rest of our community to realize that this is how we’re seeing things: through our eyes,” Chan said. 

The festival kicked off with kung fu presentations and a lion dance, courtesy of the Ying-Hung Kung Fu Club, which has performed at many shows in over 20 years of existence, including at the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade.  

Patty Chu’s Dance Group followed the Kung Fu Club. The Dance Group members, all girls ranging from 5 to 12 years old, performed four different traditional dances. 

Chinese Folk Dance Association, another group of young girls, did several traditional Chinese dances during the second half of the four-hour festival. The dances were meant to reflect the traditions passed down through generations. 

The festival also featured some modern entertainment. Singers like Repatua, Realism, Jannel and Karen Mora took the stage several times throughout the afternoon. While almost all of the songs were done in English, Mora, a 16-year-old, sang one song in Filipino. Street Poppers, a group of break-dancers, also took a turn at entertaining the crowd onstage and then spent most of the rest of the afternoon practicing moves on the grass.  

The mix of traditional and modern forms of entertainment symbolized both the old – traditions of ancestors – and the new – customs of the current generation. 

“This year the turnout was good and there was a lot of energy,” said Chan, who has been involved in the Asian Pacific Islander Festival for the last three years. 

Mayor Shirley Dean, who gave a speech about the city’s observation of May as Asian and Pacific Heritage Month, noted that this year’s festival had a larger turnout and featured more culture than in the last five years. 

“I think (the festival) is getting better,” said Dean, who has attended the festival all six years. “It’s getting a bigger turnout and I’m really pleased to hear that because I know that the club works very hard to put this thing together. 

“The important thing is the heritage that they are trying to let everybody know about. And they learn about it as they tell everybody else about it. So I would like to see that kind of emphasis continue.”