JEDDAH, 25 January 2005 — Taiwanese, 31 of whom performed Haj, hope to have a bigger mission for the next annual pilgrimage.
“We had a highly successful Haj,” said Dawood Ma, leader of the 27-member official Haj mission that came from Taipei, at a reception hosted by Sheng-tsung Yang, representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Riyadh, at the official residence of his Jeddah counterpart Chin-Ray Liu yesterday.
Three Taiwanese residents from Australia and Chicago-based Attorney at Law Marian S.K. Ming joined the mission in Jeddah.
The official delegation, comprising 13 men and 14 women, will next proceed to Madinah to pray at the Prophet’s Mosque before returning to Taipei.
Yang recalled how Taiwanese missions had been coming for Haj over the years. “Our first Haj mission came in 1925,” he said, adding that in 1936 as many as 200 members comprised the Haj mission.
Ma said all of his mission members were caught in the flash floods on Friday, “but we managed to wade through knee-deep water to a safer place.”
