Taiwanese American Organization at UC Irvine
Identity Snapshot
- English: Taiwanese American Organization at UC Irvine
- Chinese: —
- Era: Contemporary
- Geography: Taiwanese American community
- Core roles: Community organization (TAH directory)
The Taiwanese American Organization (TAO) at the University of California, Irvine is a student organization founded in April 2009. It serves as UCI’s primary community for Taiwanese Americans and students with an interest in Taiwanese culture, and is listed among the Asian American organizations recognized by the UCI School of Humanities.
Role in the Community
- 2012-10: UCI Taiwanese American club joined the inter-campus Mini Olympics & Social with UCLA: Mini Olympics & Social with UCI + UCLA Taiwanese American Clubs, 2012 (record names “UCI … Taiwanese American Clubs” generically; attributed to TAO on name-match only — HOLD if other UCI clubs existed on campus at the time).
- 2014-04: hosted a Lantern Festival and Night Market event at UCI, recorded in the community press: Lantern Festival and Night Market with TAO at UCI, 2014.
- 2010-11: named by full name — “Taiwanese American Organization (TAO) at UC Irvine” — in Ho Chie’s retrospective of the dozen-plus campuses and conferences he visited that year: On Discovering Passion & Purpose, 2010. This is the corpus’s earliest explicit TAO-at-UCI naming; it supersedes the earlier note that the 2014 Lantern Festival record was the first explicit naming, and confirms the club was already active by late 2010, consistent with the April 2009 founding.
- 2012-01: recruitment/party notice in the community press: College Students! Party with UC Irvine’s Taiwanese American Organization, 2012.
- 2011-02: earliest recorded TAO event — Lantern Festival & Night Market at UCI: TAO Lantern Festival & Night Market at UC Irvine, 2011. This predates the club’s first recorded Lantern Festival note above (2014) and shows the event was already held by its first year after founding.
- 2012-02: the Lantern Festival & Night Market ran as an annual series — “3rd Annual” edition recorded: TAO Presents 3rd Annual Lantern Festival & Night Market at UC Irvine, 2012, implying the series began c. 2010 despite the club’s April 2009 founding (HOLD: 3rd-annual count vs 2009 founding — the club may have counted a pre-recognition pilot event).
- 2012-02: winter community event — Tang Yuan tasting and red envelopes: Tang Yuan Tasting & Red Envelopes with UC Irvine’s TAO, 2012, showing TAO ran seasonal cultural programming beyond the Lantern Festival.
- 2010-02-06: an even earlier Lantern Festival Night Market at UC Irvine is recorded (Lantern Festival Night Market at UC Irvine, 2010) but the record does not name TAO as host — HOLD: if this is a TAO event, the “earliest recorded TAO event” date above moves to 2010 and the 3rd-annual 2012 count resolves without a pilot-event assumption.
- 2013-02-24: the annual Lantern Festival & Night Market series continued: 2013 Lantern Festival and Night Market at UC Irvine.
- 2013-10-02: social programming recorded — “UC Irvine TAO Hosts Boba Social”: UC Irvine TAO Hosts Boba Social, 2013.
- 2011-04-02: a free screening of the Taiwanese film “Winds of September” at UC Irvine was recorded in the community press — campus Taiwanese film programming consistent with TAO’s activity that year (Free Screening of Winds of September — UC Irvine, 2011); the record does not name the host club (attribution to TAO inferred, HOLD).
- c. 2009-2010 (record Era 2009): a behind-the-scenes report from TACL’s Leadership In Development camp names Amy Lee and Mendel Lin as organizers of the “newly formed Taiwanese American Organization at UC Irvine” — the corpus’s first naming of individual TAO officers, corroborating the April 2009 founding and showing TAO recruiting into TACL camp leadership in its first year: The Return of TACL’s Leadership In Development Camp.
- Corpus re-grep 2026-09-25 (DEEPEN-X slice 09240600-1): fresh ZH+EN grep of works+articles returned only already-linked records plus the TACL-LID camp record above; page otherwise saturated, existing HOLDs (2010 host attribution, 3rd-annual vs 2009 founding) unchanged.