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

Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang examines one of the least understood migrations in modern Chinese history—the human exodus from China to Taiwan when Chiang Kai-shek's regime collapsed in 1949. Peeling back layers of Cold War ideological constructs, Yang tells a very different story from the conventional historiography of the Chinese civil war that has focused 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 and the recurring search for home, belonging, and identity. This thought-provoking study challenges the established notions of trauma, memory, diaspora, and reconciliation.