2016 FAPA YPG West Coast Leadership Retreat
2016 台灣人公共事務會美西專業青年領導能力集思會

撰稿人: Alex Hung 洪克璿
簡介:  Alex 是台灣嘉義人, UCSD 生物學博士, 專長為蛋白質生物化學. 目前於生物科技公司任職. Alex 同時也是台美基金會董事, FAPA-SD分會理事.

下面的文章為鄉親報導今年由FAPA-SD分會主辦於台灣中心舉辦的第二屆FAPA 美西YPG (Young Professional Group) Leadership Retreat. 本文並將同步刊載於FAPA 全國通訊秋季號。

CA-SD chapter hosted the 2016 FAPA YPG West Coast Leadership Retreat in the weekend of Oct.22nd. Over 20 FAPA YPG leaders joined us from Oregon-swWA, California North, LA, OC, and SD chapters (including 3 chapter Presidents). The purpose of the retreat is to provide interactive leadership experience to forge great leaders and to strengthen the relations of FAPA West Coast chapters and provide the opportunity to learn from each other.  We are honored to have FAPA National President Peter Chen (陳正義) as our guest and join us to discuss various FAPA-related subjects. We are grateful to have the opportunity to directly communicate with HQ and feel excited to learn issues HQ will promote in the coming year. Leaders from each chapter shared their thoughts on how we can do to promote each specific issue and also reviewed what have been done on Taiwan advocacy lately in individual chapters.

However, the retreat is not restricted to FAPA internal issues. To broaden our view and learn how to make Taiwan better connect to the rest of the world, we also invited four speakers to present various Taiwan-related topics covering policy and media, art and culture, and geography and history. Chieh-Ting Yeh (葉介庭), a FAPA YPG leader from CA North, is the founder of Katagalan Media and the Vice Chairman of Global Taiwan Institute (GTI). Katagalan media is an online news and commentary media that aims to “inform, inspire, and facilitate the movement of ideas and trends between Taiwan, Asia and the rest of the world. “ GTI is a DC-based think tank working as a “policy incubator to enhance U.S.-Taiwan relations and engage Taiwan in its own right.” Yeh talked about why he quitted the well-paid lawyer job to work on Katagalan Media and GTI and compared and contrasted the mission of Katagalan Media, GTI, and FAPA, and gave his insight on how these three organisms can possibly work together.

Another speaker Professor Ping-Hui Liao (廖炳惠), who is the Chuan Lyu Endowed Chair Professor in Taiwan Studies and Head of Cultural Studies at the University of California, San Diego, talked about sinophone artists and their experience in the U.S. He discussed how those artists deal with the identity issues and turn their painful experience to strength and make their art works blossom in the foreign land. Professor Liao’s talk reminded the identity struggle we YPGers might have and inspired us on how to deal with it and make it a productive experience.

The third speaker is Scott Ezell, an American poet, musician, and multi-genre artist who was based in Taiwan from 1992 to 2004. In the last two years of his stay in Taiwan he lived in Dulan (都蘭), Taidong County, where he built a recording studio from driftwood and joined a local Amis (阿美族) aboriginal artist community that strongly influenced contemporary art in Taiwan and beyond. In his talk Ezell described what Taiwan is from his (a Westerner) view and compared his observations on Taiwan to other Asia-pacific regions such as the China-Burma-Laos border zone where he spent the last five years observing and exploring on issues of assimilation, forced migration, and urbanization of ethnic minority peoples. He admired that Taiwan has become the most progressive country in Asia because of the progress of the Taiwanese Indigenous Rights Movement and how it’s received by the Taiwanese society and government.

The last speaker is Feng-En Tu (涂豐恩), a Ph.D. candidate in the History and East Asian Languages program at Harvard University. He was the President of the North American Taiwan Studies Association (2014-15) and the founder of gushi.tw, an online media to tell the story of the world from Taiwan’s perspective. Tu described history as the collection of facts, emotions, and memories. He believed that history is not only about fact: it’s about perspective. Thus it’s important to tell stories of Taiwan and the world in Taiwan’s perspective. He also thought history can be used to unite the country and the society. Tu reviewed the colonial history of Taiwan which started with the onset of the global trade wave and showed us how Taiwan has been connected to the world. And from the reflection of the history we can think about Taiwan’s future on how Taiwan can be better associated with the rest of the world.

Overall the participants agreed that the retreat is an exciting and inspiring experience and they were eager to share with other chapter members what they have learned from the retreat. The host of the next year’s FAPA YPG West Coast Leadership Retreat has also been determined: it’s Oregon-swWA! Can’t wait!