The Queens Night Market Is John Wang’s Mark On NYC

How this former lawyer started one of the city’s most popular, and diverse, cultural festivals from scratch

Photo courtesy of Storm Garner

Please don’t call the Queens Night Market a food festival. Or an Asian night market. Or some hybrid of those two labels.

“It’s definitively not that,” said John Wang, founder of the cultural festival — that yes, does feature plenty of food vendors — in Queens that’s currently in its fourth year of bringing New Yorkers together every summery Saturday. Since its debut in 2015, there has been a steady flow of media coverage about the event that primarily focuses on its culinary presence, but Wang wants to rid of the misconception that food was the driving force and focus behind his idea.

“I kind of resist the idea that this is a food festival. I know why people call it that, but in terms of the social mission of it, it’s not just feeding people. It’s about getting people to think about the cultures,” said Wang, who was inspired by the sprawling night markets in Taiwan where he spent his childhood summers. But beyond the format of the event, the Queens Night Market is markedly different from the synonymous ones halfway across the world. For starters, one of Wang’s goals is to eventually have the vendors reflect the extremely diverse makeup of the city’s population.

“If you’re in New York City, why not bank on the fact that almost every country is represented here. So the one thing I tried as hard as possible to steer clear of was having an Asian-themed night market,” said Wang. He pointed out the ease of creating such an event in places that have a high Asian population, with several already in existence such as 626 Market in L.A. and Happy Family Night Market right here in Brooklyn. But ease was never really something he had in mind when this idea was first conceived.

In fact, Wang had no event planning experience or food background, skills that one may assume a thriving night market’s creator would have. He was just a lawyer, tired of the corporate world, who woke up one morning with a grand endeavor in mind.

“I spent close to four years as a lawyer to pay off my loans, then I decided to take a year to figure out what I really wanted to do. I spent some time traveling, dabbled in a couple other projects that didn’t work out, and the short story is one day I woke up and thought, ‘You know, what New York doesn’t have is the night market,’” said Wang. He was getting ready to pack up and leave for New Orleans (“I love New Orleans”) and gave himself two weeks to figure out if there would be anything worth staying for. For Wang, this thing needed to “have a lasting effect on New York City, speak to New York City, and in some way, shape New York City.”

Wang said the process took just about a year, and the first thing he had to do was figure out a location for this event. His method? Literally scouring all of Manhattan and beyond. “I used Google Earth and went, I don’t know, hundred yard by hundred yard through New York City, zooming in and checking all the places,” he said. Thousands of emails, a few meetings (“The few meetings I got, they were like ‘oh it sounds great, let me know if it gets started’ which is kind of a euphemism for ‘there’s no fucking way this is gonna happen.’”), and a failed Kickstarter later (Wang explained that the point was to really get people talking about the event and generating buzz around it, which worked excellently — however, the financial benefits were not as strong), the Queens Night Market was born. Of course, that’s the sweet and simplified version of the story.

Photo courtesy of Manuel Kim

“The first two years, I’m not sure I slept the entire time — I was just doing things nonstop. Everything was completely foreign to me. It wasn’t like I had a partner or anything, so there wasn’t anyone I could lean on or ask for advice. I had never given an interview before, never done a press release before,” said Wang. “They talk about lawyers having really long hours in NYC, and this was far longer than that.” But the payoff was immense, with plenty of visitors — there were even two nights that Wang occasionally still has nightmares about, where the sheer amount of people streaming through the surrounding public transportation resulted in quite a lot of trouble for him.

“The gates [at the night market] are 100, maybe 200 yards apart. It took me 45 minutes to walk from one gate to another. It was crazy. That will always shock me, how many people were there that day,” said Wang. Despite the clearly scarring experience, There is also a sense of optimism and pride from him regarding those numbers. “What surprises me is that people still cover it, amazed that people still go to it and how many repeat visitors we have.”

The Queens Night Market has been in both local and national press, even getting attention internationally (“New Zealand did a report on the night market last weekend”), and the type of coverage it receives is something that Wang appreciates.

“Without us telling them, they really pick up on the social mission of the night market. Reporters often comment on how diverse it looks, not just with the vendors but also with the visitors. Same with visitors — they’re commenting about how cool it is that you look around and it looks like how New York City is,” he said. Not only is there a pleasantly heterogeneous crowd where there’s a good chance of looking around and seeing someone who looks like them, but there is also an outlet to dip into other cultures that may be inaccessible otherwise. A $6 price cap for vendors also helps draw in a larger population, with food that’s affordable enough where one dish won’t leave your wallet feeling empty.

And just because it’s not a food festival at heart doesn’t mean the food isn’t worth talking about. The vendors have grown from about 20 to over 400 rotating ones, and it’s incredible to see the variety in all of those who share their culture through the universal language of food. Surprisingly, less than 10 percent of the stalls are backed by brick and mortar stores, and less than half even have businesses at all.

Photo courtesy of Sharon Medina-Chavez

“We have a lot of tents with people that have no interest in starting a food business,” said Wang. “They just want to be there with their family, cooking whatever they cook at home, sharing their stuff with people.” It’s this sort of passion, for community as opposed to profit, which also lends to a friendlier, convivial environment at the event.

“If they make a buck, they lose a buck, they don’t care as much. The vendors are nicer, they’re more smiley — they just want to have a good time there, which is pretty remarkable for a startup food festival where not everyone cares about how much money they make,” said Wang. It appears that Wang connects to that sentiment in a way, judging by the intense amount of effort he pours into the night market.

When Saturdays roll around, Wang’s day starts at 5 AM and doesn’t end until the same time the next morning. It’s not an easy task, getting tents and vendors ready for the 6-hour-long festival, especially if you’re the only one rolling out orders. Wang has a crew of volunteers, who he calls “amazing,” that work alongside him on the day of the event, but he operates solo at all other times. His dedication to the night market is more than apparent, staying strong even when he had to get his appendix taken out a few weeks ago. “I went into the O.R. at like 4 AM, got out at 6 AM, but then I forced them to release me at noon so I could go to the night market because it’s never operated without me.”

For someone who describes himself as “not the most upbeat person, not the most optimistic person,” Wang has enough determination to make up for those qualities. And for him, it pays off on those crazy Saturdays when he takes a moment to look at the crowd around him, whether they’re hanging around for a second dinner or watching a performance with their grandparents.

“That’s probably what gives me a little bit of gratification — stopping and saying like, holy shit, people from all over the city and all over the world have come here,” said Wang. “There’s no sort of tension. Everyone has a smile. And it looks like New York City is there, without cultural barriers.”

You can check out the Queens Night Market every Saturday between September 29th and October 27th at the New York Hall of Science in Corona Park, Queens.