Holiday Greeting

Dear Members and Hakka Friends,

Greeting from Philadelphia.

I hope this email finds you in best of health and happiness.

This year is drawing near the end. Looking back at this past year, it was a busy and productive year for HAPA-NA and the Hakka Community as well.

In March we held a successful HAPA-NA outreach seminar program, in conjunction with Kaoshiung City Hakka Council on the issue related to Taiwan and Taiwanese Hakka. Many thanks to Thomas Shu and Josephine Pan for their coordination.

In August we participated in THAA conference in Houston Texas, where we established "North American Hakka Friends of Tsai Ing-Wen" to help support her DPP nomination in the coming Taiwan presidential and LY legislative election. We had a successful fundraiser and we also plan to have a 3-day bus tour to go around 3 Hakka counties, Tao-Chu-Miao, on 1/10, 1/11 and 1/12. So far we have 20-30 Hakka friends and our members from the US will join the tour. It will be an exciting experience to have many friends with "Taiwan-in-their-heart" together to act to help Tsai 's election. Taiwan is at a critical juncture, to continue independence or surrender to China. We can not afford to have the KMT win this election.

A few weeks ago, THAA held an election for the next term's president and vice president, our board member Edward Lin was elected as president, and our ex-president William Wei was elected vice president. Congratulations to both of them! I believe HAPA-NA and THAA will work together to better serve the Hakka community in North America and beyond.

HAPA-NA new board member election for 2012-2013 also finished a few days ago. Congratulations to James Liang, Edward Lin and Mike Kwan for being elected and welcome on board!

In the coming weeks, Hakka of Taiwan and North America will run a "Friends of Tsai" newspaper advertisement. HAPA-NA was our cosponsor. Thank you to David Lai for organizing, and to all donors. We appreciate you all!

In summary, HAPA-NA and members are getting more and more attention and involvement in Taiwan affairs, which is very important because we owe so much to Taiwan. Taiwan's election will be held in 3 weeks, and the prospect of Tsai's winning is improving. I really hope that our effort is not in vain, but with whatever outcome, we know we did our best with no regrets.

Thank you very much. God bless Taiwan.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to you and your family.

Chanchi Lee, MD

President, HAPA-NA