1. President's address:


 Dear ONMUAA Members:

On behalf of the Governing Board, led by Shan Lu, Youcheng Liu, Yongjian,
and Liangfeng Tao, we would like to extend to you our congratulations to the
birth of our Overseas Nanjing Medical Universty Alumni Association (ONMUAA)
on the 18th of August, 1996! It is the first time in the history of NMU
since 1934 that we alumni around the world are united and have established a
formal organization outside the motherland for us to communicate effectively
with the mother university and many other sister associations around the
world as well as among ourselves.

On behalf of you, we would like to express our sincere thanks to the
Steering Committee, led by Youcheng Liu and Yongjian Liu, the Board members,
and many of you, who have historically donated their precious time and made
their personal sacrifice in the course of the founding of our ONMUAA. We are
indebted to them.

We would like also to express our sincere thanks to you who have given us
genuine trust to lead the Association through your representatives, the
members of the Board, in the official election conducted last weekend, an
unprecedented moment we all will remember as the history.

We, Qingyi Wei, Benquan Shen, Fuhu Wang, and Ning Jin, as a team under the
guidance of all of you through the Board, will do our best to service your
needs, to provide you a forum for information exchange, to facilitate the
delivery of help to those who need the most, and to visualize the image of
our mother university in the world.

Like any newborns, the ONMUAA is still weak in her infancy.  She needs
nurture and support.   In a week after her birth, we are working hard to
keep her healthy and strong.  Although she is vulnerable to any harms, she
is growing. Please take a minute to have a glance on the newborn in our
homepage in the web site (http://www.jax.org/~jlm/), though not
complete yet. To help us work more efficiently and to accommodate your
needs, please send us your comments and suggestions (njin@umich.edu) for
ONMUAA's future agenda.

Let's work together in the year to come and do our best to make the ONMUAA
healthier and stronger...!

Qingyi Wei
The President
ONMUAA
August 23, 1996



2. Message from Board Chair:


Dear board memebers,

At the midnight of Aug. 18, 1996, we formally announced the founding of
overseas alumni association of Nanjing Medical University. Even though it
was done at a dash time by a group of alumni who do not even know or ever
meet most of the others, the association is there. Even though the bylaw was
written in two languages, we almost forgot to formally vote on it-- but
magically we all abide by it. Even though we merely miscounted the number of
board members, it is a non-deniable entity with our faith on it. Even though
the elected-chair of board should be completely ignored because he was not
making enough contribution to the whole process, he was still informed of
the result and asked to take the position when the clock was steadily
approaching the mid-night deadline. Why did all these happen?

It was 11:52 pm EST, Aug. 18, 1996. I just hang up the phone. I just
accepted the final vote result to become the 1st chair of our board despite
the fact I did not even have time to ask what was the actual number of vote.
It was a good thing my wife called me at the hospital earlier that there was
a message from Youchen Liu. She turned up the volume of our answering
machine, so I could hear clearly how serious the message was. I called
Youchen. He was still in his lab. There was no room to change. Suddenly, I
felt I am in a position never before. It is clear that there is an
irresistable force which has been deeply kept in the minds of our alumni and
now it is the time to erupt. Overseas alumni, combined with the wisdom from
the East and the West, are making their decisions. The long cultural roots
growing 10 or 15 or 20 years back from Nanjing Medical University are
fertilized in
democratical soil. Therefore, we have been experiencing many unthinkable
things to happen.

Being one of you, I felt very happy and proud. At the same time I realize we
all have huge responsibility. I do not know exactlly how many years' history
NMU has had and how many alumni are spreading "over the seas". But now we,
29 alumni, are making the history. Will history eventually recognizes us? In
the last 48 hours since I have accepted the Chair title, I think only one
thing: be humble.

The past is passed. We have made huge success. The upcoming home page may be
a monument to record the hard work from everyone of you. But we still need
to remain sober while we are celebrating the founding of our organization,
especially to me. I can not refuse to work because you have pushed me
forward. It definitely is an honor, but it is more a trust. You have given
me your confidence which make me very nervous. I do not know what I should
do while I know we have million
things need to be done. But on the other hand I think your concensus
suggests that we need someone to pull together the wisdom from everyone.
There is really no need to have a head to lead a group like you, but there
is need to have ears and eyes to collect the right information at the right
time for you to make the right decisions -- because you are the brain of our
organization.

Therefore the most critical thing for me to do is to maintain the free flow
of information, be it from inside or outside. The past one month has shown
that once everone can openly discuss things, we can make quick and solid
progress. We should continue our great start by encouraging alumni to
exchange ideas among each other, between board members and non board members
and between board and EC.
We will have some simple working procedures to guide us how to work together
and what will be the responsibility for each of us. The ultimate goal of our
work is to have all of our overseas alumni to recognize the organization we
just founded as their own organization. For us, the first term of board
members, the number one thing would be to continue building our
organization. If there are enough
new alumni to joint the organization so that they can easily form a board
and select new chair, co-chairs, president, vice-presidents and secretaries
no matter whether we 29 alumni continue next term or not, it will be my
dreamed success. We may not reach there in one term, but it is my goal.

One year will be short. I am ready to work with you and other overseas
alumni. Are you ready? Let's start the engine and run.

Shan Lu
Chaiman of the Governing Board
Aug. 20, 1996


3. Board Chair's Letter:


Wed, 21 Aug 1996 Shan.Lu@BANYAN.UMMED.EDU:

Hi, Chairs, presidents and secretaries,

I have been trying to reach each of you in the last 24 hours to discuss some
of the things we need to do. So far, I have only spoken to some of you, and
I'll try to finish the calls tomorrow.

Immediately I think we need to take care some of the urgent topics.

1. the relationship between EC and Board

I suggest the president/vice president should be translated in Chinese as
"hui zhan/fu hui zhan". Also, EC should be the one to deal with outside even
though any board member can be used for EC use. Only in rare situations, the
board chairs can be involved, such as deal with organizations which also
have board, to NMU (for formality purposes) and any situation which needs
very strong board support (fund raising etc. ). Board design and fix
"hardware"-related questions. EC runs the "software" and links to the world.

2. working procedure of the board

I propose to have a simple way to work in a group of 29 with three-layer
system.

1) Chair conference: composed of chair, co-chairs and secretary of the
board. This group make daily decisions. Based on each member's life
schedule, one member of these 4-member group will be "on-call" with the
right to decide for the group when the other three are not available.
2) Special task force. In order to avoid overlap with the EC, there will be
no standing committees in the Board. But based on the need, some special
task forces may be established. The members, term and goals of the task
force will be assigned by the Chair conference.

3) Full board meeting. 4 times a year to a) review the EC quarterly report.
b) to review the chair-conference quarterly report. c) to discuss and vote
on important future topics. Note: the first meeting will be in mid-October
(?)

3. the board members should minimize the interference with the EC. Any board
member including myself can only raise questions to EC as a regular alumni.
Anything passed by Board or Chiar-conference will be presented to EC as
official decision by one board member selected by the Chair conference.

4. Any written document, including official letters representing the whole
organization should be presented by EC to Chair-conference before sending it
out. Similarly, if it is possible, try to test run the homepage and ask at
least some of our "8 officers" to preview it. This should be done at least
in the initial phase (next three months). Then, some standard forms can be
generated to submit the similar type of documents.

5. EC need to complete the planning process Qinyi has started. In the near
term, the following may need some consideration:

1) structure of EC at first term.
2) some simple procedure may be needed, such as for "financial procedures"
3) fund-raising (see below)
4) e-mail system: to avoid the multiple mailling yet guarantee the proper
receiving, we need to design a system and several "mail-men" to centralize
the huge and frequent e-mail load.
5) a Chinese software, one or several assigned Chinese-language working
force with some PC capability: to translate, type and transfer documents
necessary to be in Chinese.
6) a letter (in Chinese) to NMU
7) "membership" drive: to have more alumni participation in more
activities.8) organize local activities: Boston, SF, StLouis may start
early. Other areas can follow, once you
started in one place, people may well willing to drive 6 hr to come. Do some
geographic analysis and
help alumni to connect. They may live in the same neighborhood without
knowing it.
9) using Public Relation/International relation for Foreign Affair?
10)...

6. Board may do something EC does not feel comfortable to do:
1) fund raising: it is not too early to start send out letter to ask for
alumni's contribution. It is a general call but the board members can donate
first and set example. If everyone send $10, we will have ~$300 for EC to
spend. This way we can set up account, let the ball rolling. For $10, no
need to worry about the tax-exempt status, but we still need to research on
registrate or not issue.
2 ) local activity or setting up chapters. As long as consistent with the
bylaw, it should be fine.
3).....

The above are just some of my quick thoughts. Please fill in and make
changes, each of the 8-officers. Youchen, could you take over for the Board
from this point to finish this discussion while I will be away again for the
next 3 days and we can talk over during the weekend. Qinyi, make any changes
you would like - you decide what EC wants and does not want to do, but
basically you are the "working class" for many daily work in the future.

Sorry for the rush and I appreciate to work with you all.

Shan Lu
Chaiman of the Governing Board
Aug. 20, 1996