The Great Exodus from China
Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan

Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang examines the human exodus from China to Taiwan in 1949, focusing on trauma, memory, and identity.

Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang (Author)

9781108746878, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 September 2021

329 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.444 kg

'This book is an exceptionally careful and interesting study of the politics of memory by an author who is passionately engaged in this subject.' Henrietta Harrison, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang examines one of the least understood migrations in modern East Asia - the human exodus from China to Taiwan when Chiang Kai-shek's regime collapsed in 1949. Peeling back layers of Cold War ideological constructs, he tells a very different story from the conventional Chinese civil war historiography that focuses on debating the reasons for Communist success and Nationalist failure. Yang lays bare the traumatic aftermath of the Chinese Communist Revolution for the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who were forcibly displaced from their homes across the sea. Underscoring the displaced population's trauma of living in exile and their poignant 'homecomings' four decades later, he presents a multi-event trajectory of repeated traumatization with recurring searches for home, belonging, and identity. This thought-provoking study challenges established notions of trauma, memory, diaspora, and reconciliation.

Introduction
1. The exodus
2. Wartime sojourning
3. Cultural nostalgia
4. The long road home
5. Narrating the exodus
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: The Cold War [HBTW], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], Asian history [HBJF]