Manhattan, KS Chapter / TAA (全美台灣同鄉會曼哈頓分會)
Identity Snapshot
- English: Manhattan, KS Chapter / TAA
- Chinese: 全美台灣同鄉會曼哈頓分會
- Era: Contemporary
- Geography: Taiwanese American community
- Core roles: Community organization (TAH directory)
The Taiwanese Association of America Manhattan Chapter was founded in January 1985 in Manhattan, Kansas, with Chen Shu-Mei serving as its first president. The chapter has approximately eighteen member families, many of whom are also honorary and supporting members of the Kansas State University Taiwanese Student Association. The organization hosts four to five events annually, including Taiwanese New Year gatherings, spring barbecues and picnics, softball and tennis tournaments, and a Christmas social. The chapter has also co-organized Plains Region Taiwanese conferences and camping events drawing nearly two hundred attendees. It maintains close ties with the KSU Taiwanese student community and actively supports cultural preservation efforts for the next generation.
Role in the Community
The chapter is documented in the TAH story corpus:
- TAA 全美台灣同鄉會曼哈頓分會 — TAH organization directory record (2015)
- Manhattan, KS 曼哈頓台灣同鄉會簡介 — chapter-written brief history, 2017-10-05; part of the same chapter-history series as Wichita and Colorado, placing Manhattan KS within the national TAA chapter network
Founding host of the Plains Region Camp Meeting (平原區台灣人秋令會)
Per 童海南’s memoir excerpt from 平原區台灣人夏令會 1996 (Our Journeys 296):
- The camp meeting was conceived in 1983 by Manhattan, Kansas chapter pioneers 范良正、楊景文、刁明華、黃金來, pressed forward by 徐福棟’s proposal, and organized/convened by 林啓東.
- The first Plains Region Taiwanese camp meeting was founded in 1985 at Rock Spring, the 4-H Club training grounds near Manhattan, Kansas, covering six Plains states (Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma — as listed); 林啓東 set the first theme 「大家來，來做堆」, deliberately distinguishing the Taiwanese identity from a Chinese one.
- The Manhattan, KS chapter served as host again in 1992 (chair 張洋銘, theme 「Love Taiwan 愛心連愛心，痛惜咱台灣」) and 1997 (chair 吳志行, theme 「誰來救台灣」), per the host-chair roster in the same memoir.
Blacklist note (HOLD)
- 何文亮’s ROC blacklist essay (Our Journeys 106, 中華民國的黑名單) records 曾昆聯博士 (台大化工 → KSU Manhattan 化工博士) as blacklisted 「大概是任職八九年同鄉會會長之故」. HOLD: the essay’s context is the 北加州 blacklist roster and 「八九年」 is ambiguous (8–9 years vs 1988–89) — his Manhattan chapter membership is not established; not linked as a chapter officer.
Founding chapter of TAA (HOLD on founding date)
- The TAA national history memoir (Our Journeys 76 (EN), TAA history) lists Manhattan as one of the 28 founding chapters of the Taiwanese Association of America, with Kang Lu Wang named as the chapter’s president at founding. HOLD: conflict — the TAH directory record says the chapter was founded January 1985 with 陳淑美 (Chen Shu-Mei) as first president, while the chapter-history memoir implies a pre-1985 founding-chapter status with a different first president; neither date nor name merged.
- Corpus re-grep 2026-09-21 (slice 09210051-1): Manhattan-KS chapter hits unchanged — the only works matches are the already-linked directory record, chapter brief history, and the FAPA NYC disambiguation page; no new chapter-attributable material (SKIP-with-reason, page otherwise saturated).
- 複核（deepen-x slice 09212352-1, 2026-09-22）：re-grep 新增命中 mystories550（蜀湘園）、ourjourneys300 經查皆指紐約曼哈頓（同鄉會活動地遷皇后區脈絡），非本分會材料 — SKIP-with-reason：無新增堪薩斯曼哈頓分會語料。
Not to be confused with the New York chapter: FAPA 台灣人公共事務會紐約州曼哈頓分會 is a different organization (FAPA, NYC).