‘Attack on our identity’: Taiwanese Americans come together after tragic California shooting

Violence rocked a community already shook by years of rising hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

When Ho Chie Tsai learned that a gunman had targeted the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian church in southern California, he knew it was only a matter of time before the effects of the tragedy reached him.

The Taiwanese American community is close-knit and, despite living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the pediatrician soon learned of friends and family who had connections to the church where a where a man opened fire on elderly worshipers, injuring five people and killing one before parishioners overtook him.