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The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan
經歷1949江與海的離散與創傷，
從記憶與書寫探尋外省移民的在地群體認同感。
1949年前後，蔣介石政權遷移至臺灣，百萬人流離失所、飄洋過海，引發被迫流亡的「外省人」與被迫接納的「本省人」，雙方各自歧異卻又彼此相連的衝突與動盪。
本書運用三大理論支柱──創傷、記憶與離散，闡述近代最龐大卻也最不被理解的一段東亞人口大遷徙，但並非深究國共內戰的勝敗，而是藉由書寫平民百姓逃難的苦難回憶，說明他們如何受到影響。作者透過口述訪談及文獻檔案，探討這段歷史軌跡所衍生的四種社會創傷──逃離中國的社會創傷、希望消散的社會創傷、中國返鄉的社會創傷、返回臺灣的社會創傷，以及事件四十年後，他們的後代如何以家族親身經驗為中心，利用共享記憶復原且創造出懷舊文化產物，進而建構一套與離散完全相反的臺灣外省群體在地化與認同感。最終希望讀者由此體會「同理、和解與正義」。
從記憶與書寫探尋外省移民的在地群體認同感。
1949年前後，蔣介石政權遷移至臺灣，百萬人流離失所、飄洋過海，引發被迫流亡的「外省人」與被迫接納的「本省人」，雙方各自歧異卻又彼此相連的衝突與動盪。
本書運用三大理論支柱──創傷、記憶與離散，闡述近代最龐大卻也最不被理解的一段東亞人口大遷徙，但並非深究國共內戰的勝敗，而是藉由書寫平民百姓逃難的苦難回憶，說明他們如何受到影響。作者透過口述訪談及文獻檔案，探討這段歷史軌跡所衍生的四種社會創傷──逃離中國的社會創傷、希望消散的社會創傷、中國返鄉的社會創傷、返回臺灣的社會創傷，以及事件四十年後，他們的後代如何以家族親身經驗為中心，利用共享記憶復原且創造出懷舊文化產物，進而建構一套與離散完全相反的臺灣外省群體在地化與認同感。最終希望讀者由此體會「同理、和解與正義」。
320 pages, Hardcover
First published September 12, 2020
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January 1, 2024
Prologue: Pre-book Thoughts
Taiwan, Taiwaneseness, and non-Chineseness
Before I studied abroad in Taiwan after my freshman year of college, I had very little knowledge about Taiwan or Taiwanese identity. I had met some Taiwanese American people in high school through debate and academic summer camps, but I was never close friends with them, and therefore did not understand their experiences. More importantly, I did not understand why they chose to identify as Taiwanese American and not Chinese American — without knowledge of Taiwan or Taiwanese history, I had trouble understanding its individuality especially because of 1) the larger, highly-publicized CCP narrative that Taiwan is a part of China, and 2) my American affinity to collapse people's identities to their racial category. They looked Han Chinese, they spoke Mandarin, and therefore they were Chinese— at least in some aspects.
This perspective was altered and complicated when I started learning Mandarin and talking to Taiwanese people about their identities. At Stanford, my language tutor was a Taiwanese international student who staunchly defended his Taiwaneseness (and non-Chineseness). When abroad in Taiwan, my girlfriend at the time told me about how personal the Taiwanese identity felt to her, and how she once got incredibly upset with a group of Chinese international students who called her Chinese. When I asked my Chinese teacher in Taiwan about the word huaren (華人), she explained to me the distinct categories of Taiwanese people who migrated from China: with a few swipes on the whiteboard, she wrote benshengren (本省人) and waishengren (外省人), and briefly explained their histories.
After that summer in Taiwan, I did not return to the question of Taiwanese identity or history very often. My sophomore year, I dreamed of Hong Kong and Singapore only to have my dreams crushed (bureaucracy, governments, visa processes...). So my heart wandered back to Taiwan. As it approached time for me to pick a senior thesis topic in urban studies, I looked to Taipei, consulting with a Stanford PhD student in Taiwan Studies (shoutout Yi-Ting) for literature to explore.
When approaching Taiwan studies topics, I had next to no prior academic knowledge. I only had my personal experiences living in Taipei for a summer and talking to Taiwanese people. I knew that I wanted to explore some type of social, cultural, or urban history in Taipei, and after talking to Yi-Ting, I realized that it would be strategic to situate my thesis topic in China studies. To find the intersection of these things, Yi-Ting recommended I look into juancun (眷村) and this book: a case study on the memory and identity formation of waishengren in Taiwan.
Book Review:
Research, Methodology, and Style
This book hits all of the right spots for me when it comes to academic literature: it is incredibly well-researched (Yang goes deep into the archives, looking at census data, tongxianghui magazines, newspapers, and more; he also conducts a large number of in-depth interviews), it is incredibly well-argued (the structure of argumentation is phenomenal; his roadmapping is consistent and clear), and it is incredibly groundbreaking (he challenges a number of assumptions/ideas in the discourse in trauma studies, Chinese Civil War studies, Taiwanese waishengren history, and more). On top of great academic research, argumentation, and contributions, I found that Yang's prose was concise and pleasant to read. Throughout each chapter, he wove in individual stories to ground the bigger picture in narrative.
Argumentation and Contributions (to the literature)
Yang's book takes us through a social history of Taiwan's waishengren, a group of people who left China in 1949 after the Chinese Civil War. In writing this social history, he treats testimonies and writings by waishengren not as truth or fact of what happened, but as examples of memory construction shaped by and in response to a series of social traumas they experienced. Specifically, he challenges the idea that the cultural trauma shared by waishengren surrounding the 1949 great exodus is the singular defining traumatic event. In each chapter, he explores the deep histories of each social trauma of the late 20th century and their subsequent mnemonic productions.
He starts off with the "social trauma of the exodus" in 1949 as experienced by both waishengren and benshengren. He explores this with great depth, and complicates common assumptions that 1) all waishengren were higher-up KMT elites (most of them were Chinese civilians fleeing wartime OR young boys and men involuntarily kidnapped and drafted by the KMT) and 2) all waishengren were refugees with an awful plight (some arrived safely and soundly to Taiwan and even reject the label of refugee). He also explores the experiences of benshengren receiving waishengren, which were largely colored by fear and discontent with the disillusioned veterans (who were unemployed and often committed heinous crimes against the civilian population).
In his second chapter, he examines the social trauma of "wartime sojourning" from 1949-1958, wherein waishengren believed that their time in Taiwan was temporary and that the KMT would retake the mainland too. Holding onto this belief was not because of their unrelenting loyal support to the KMT, but rather because of what Yang calls "the long durée of war and displacement" during Japanese invasion; they believed that they were going home because they had gone home before. Yang also explores the complex relationship that waishengren had with both the KMT ("the unholy alliance" — they latched onto the KMT because there were absolutely no other alternatives on this island) and benshengren ("coachable compatriots" — they believed that benshengren were below them because of their Japaneseness; waishengren were the true, superior Chinese people).
In the third chapter, Yang writes of the "social trauma of the diminishing hope (for return)" in the 1960s and 1970s. Here, he argues that upon realizing they would not return to the mainland, waishengren localized to Taiwan by 1) establishing tongxianghui (同鄉會) communities and networks and 2) publishing histories and memories of their home provinces.
Chapter 4 describes the "social trauma of the homecoming in China" in the 1990s, wherein waishengren, after decades of yearning for the mainland, finally return to their home provinces. Yang challenges the idea that Chiang Ching-Kuo (蔣經國) simply grew sympathetic to disenfranchised KMT veterans in his old age, and asserts instead that the Veterans Homebound Movement forced CCK to give into their demands to return home, as he was afraid of losing their support to the party. In this chapter, Yang explains that this homecoming was shocking and traumatic for several reasons: many of their relatives had died, nobody in their hometowns recognized them anymore, living family members were greedy and demanded money and gifts rather than being happy about reunification, China was underdeveloped and dirty compared to Taiwan, etc.
The final chapter is about the "social trauma of the homecoming in Taiwan" in the 1990s, which was characterized by feelings of isolation and shame felt as waishengren during the Taiwanese bentuhua (本土化) movement and democratization. During these movements, waishengren were suddenly characterized as foreign colonizers associated with the oppressive KMT government. In response to this, waishengren "narrated" the exodus in an effort to prove their non-Chineseness and their localized Taiwaneseness. They pulled on 1949 stories, as well as current-day plights of laobing (老兵) and juancun (眷村). For my urban studies brain, it was exciting to read about how waishengren used juancun as physical, spatial proof that they, too were Taiwanese.
I found this extensive social history to be very compelling, as it allowed me to understand the nuances of mainlander history in Taiwan and their complex relationship with identity.
Epilogue: Post-book thoughts
Trauma, Memory, and Identity (and how it relates to me)
In the Epilogue, Yang ties all of his arguments together and places them in the context of mainlander history/memory/identity and writing about trauma. He pulls in his own positionality as a benshengren immigrant to Canada, and explains why this research was personal to him:
Throughout the book, I had been reflecting on my own history, memory, and identity as a 2nd generation Vietnamese American. In addition to all of the academic reasons I found this book compelling, it also spoke to me because it was part of the larger discourse surrounding on displacement, diasporic identity, cultural nostalgia, trauma, memory production. As I read the book, I thought a lot about Việt Thanh Nguyễn's Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War and my own family's remembrance of Vietnam and the Vietnam War. Yang's book on Taiwan's waishengren therefore tapped into a very personal topic for me, and allowed me to understand these topics and feelings in the context of a different war, a different place, and a different group of people.
Specifically, I appreciated Yang's reflections on what responsibilities historians have while writing about trauma. Here, he cited Dominick LaCapra's "empathic unsettlement", which "negotiates the polar extremes between detached objectivity and full identification with the traumatized historical subjects". Yang's positionality as a benshengren allowed him to 1) start off by being rather "unsympathetic and skeptical of waishengren’s trauma", and 2) after gaining knowledge and perspective, "create a critical distance from the fidelity to [his] own family trauma."
For me, this becomes relevant as I explore and understand my own complicated feelings about being Vietnamese American, especially as my parents' and grandparents' trauma was not unidirectional — my maternal grandfather worked for the Americans (who undoubtedly had a negative influence in the war in Vietnam) and my paternal grandparents were wealthy, French-educated, French-speaking bourgeoisie who were buddy-buddies with the colonial government. Việt Thanh Nguyễn's Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War had certainly allowed me to question the self-victimization that many first-gen Vietnamese Americans hold onto, but Yang's The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan allowed me to think about how I will move forward with second-gen Vietnamese American identity formation and memory production. If I decide to pursue mnemonic studies in Taiwanese waishengren urban spaces (ex. juancun and identity formation through space) or in Vietnamese American spaces, I want to be cognizant of of Yang's framework of "multidirectional empathic unsettlements" in my own research, writing, and personal reconciliation.
P.S. — Reflections on Taiwan, Taiwaneseness, and non-Chineseness
Clearly, Taiwanese people are not Chinese people; that much is clear to me now, and has been clear to me for a long time. However, this book allowed me to understand the nuances of that statement, specifically when it comes to academia, wherein most of Taiwan studies is situated within China studies. As I explore Taiwan studies then, I hope to research Taiwan as a separate social, cultural, and political entity from China, but nevertheless understand its constantly changing and evolving relationship with China.
Taiwan, Taiwaneseness, and non-Chineseness
Before I studied abroad in Taiwan after my freshman year of college, I had very little knowledge about Taiwan or Taiwanese identity. I had met some Taiwanese American people in high school through debate and academic summer camps, but I was never close friends with them, and therefore did not understand their experiences. More importantly, I did not understand why they chose to identify as Taiwanese American and not Chinese American — without knowledge of Taiwan or Taiwanese history, I had trouble understanding its individuality especially because of 1) the larger, highly-publicized CCP narrative that Taiwan is a part of China, and 2) my American affinity to collapse people's identities to their racial category. They looked Han Chinese, they spoke Mandarin, and therefore they were Chinese— at least in some aspects.
This perspective was altered and complicated when I started learning Mandarin and talking to Taiwanese people about their identities. At Stanford, my language tutor was a Taiwanese international student who staunchly defended his Taiwaneseness (and non-Chineseness). When abroad in Taiwan, my girlfriend at the time told me about how personal the Taiwanese identity felt to her, and how she once got incredibly upset with a group of Chinese international students who called her Chinese. When I asked my Chinese teacher in Taiwan about the word huaren (華人), she explained to me the distinct categories of Taiwanese people who migrated from China: with a few swipes on the whiteboard, she wrote benshengren (本省人) and waishengren (外省人), and briefly explained their histories.
After that summer in Taiwan, I did not return to the question of Taiwanese identity or history very often. My sophomore year, I dreamed of Hong Kong and Singapore only to have my dreams crushed (bureaucracy, governments, visa processes...). So my heart wandered back to Taiwan. As it approached time for me to pick a senior thesis topic in urban studies, I looked to Taipei, consulting with a Stanford PhD student in Taiwan Studies (shoutout Yi-Ting) for literature to explore.
When approaching Taiwan studies topics, I had next to no prior academic knowledge. I only had my personal experiences living in Taipei for a summer and talking to Taiwanese people. I knew that I wanted to explore some type of social, cultural, or urban history in Taipei, and after talking to Yi-Ting, I realized that it would be strategic to situate my thesis topic in China studies. To find the intersection of these things, Yi-Ting recommended I look into juancun (眷村) and this book: a case study on the memory and identity formation of waishengren in Taiwan.
Book Review:
Research, Methodology, and Style
This book hits all of the right spots for me when it comes to academic literature: it is incredibly well-researched (Yang goes deep into the archives, looking at census data, tongxianghui magazines, newspapers, and more; he also conducts a large number of in-depth interviews), it is incredibly well-argued (the structure of argumentation is phenomenal; his roadmapping is consistent and clear), and it is incredibly groundbreaking (he challenges a number of assumptions/ideas in the discourse in trauma studies, Chinese Civil War studies, Taiwanese waishengren history, and more). On top of great academic research, argumentation, and contributions, I found that Yang's prose was concise and pleasant to read. Throughout each chapter, he wove in individual stories to ground the bigger picture in narrative.
Argumentation and Contributions (to the literature)
Yang's book takes us through a social history of Taiwan's waishengren, a group of people who left China in 1949 after the Chinese Civil War. In writing this social history, he treats testimonies and writings by waishengren not as truth or fact of what happened, but as examples of memory construction shaped by and in response to a series of social traumas they experienced. Specifically, he challenges the idea that the cultural trauma shared by waishengren surrounding the 1949 great exodus is the singular defining traumatic event. In each chapter, he explores the deep histories of each social trauma of the late 20th century and their subsequent mnemonic productions.
He starts off with the "social trauma of the exodus" in 1949 as experienced by both waishengren and benshengren. He explores this with great depth, and complicates common assumptions that 1) all waishengren were higher-up KMT elites (most of them were Chinese civilians fleeing wartime OR young boys and men involuntarily kidnapped and drafted by the KMT) and 2) all waishengren were refugees with an awful plight (some arrived safely and soundly to Taiwan and even reject the label of refugee). He also explores the experiences of benshengren receiving waishengren, which were largely colored by fear and discontent with the disillusioned veterans (who were unemployed and often committed heinous crimes against the civilian population).
In his second chapter, he examines the social trauma of "wartime sojourning" from 1949-1958, wherein waishengren believed that their time in Taiwan was temporary and that the KMT would retake the mainland too. Holding onto this belief was not because of their unrelenting loyal support to the KMT, but rather because of what Yang calls "the long durée of war and displacement" during Japanese invasion; they believed that they were going home because they had gone home before. Yang also explores the complex relationship that waishengren had with both the KMT ("the unholy alliance" — they latched onto the KMT because there were absolutely no other alternatives on this island) and benshengren ("coachable compatriots" — they believed that benshengren were below them because of their Japaneseness; waishengren were the true, superior Chinese people).
In the third chapter, Yang writes of the "social trauma of the diminishing hope (for return)" in the 1960s and 1970s. Here, he argues that upon realizing they would not return to the mainland, waishengren localized to Taiwan by 1) establishing tongxianghui (同鄉會) communities and networks and 2) publishing histories and memories of their home provinces.
Chapter 4 describes the "social trauma of the homecoming in China" in the 1990s, wherein waishengren, after decades of yearning for the mainland, finally return to their home provinces. Yang challenges the idea that Chiang Ching-Kuo (蔣經國) simply grew sympathetic to disenfranchised KMT veterans in his old age, and asserts instead that the Veterans Homebound Movement forced CCK to give into their demands to return home, as he was afraid of losing their support to the party. In this chapter, Yang explains that this homecoming was shocking and traumatic for several reasons: many of their relatives had died, nobody in their hometowns recognized them anymore, living family members were greedy and demanded money and gifts rather than being happy about reunification, China was underdeveloped and dirty compared to Taiwan, etc.
The final chapter is about the "social trauma of the homecoming in Taiwan" in the 1990s, which was characterized by feelings of isolation and shame felt as waishengren during the Taiwanese bentuhua (本土化) movement and democratization. During these movements, waishengren were suddenly characterized as foreign colonizers associated with the oppressive KMT government. In response to this, waishengren "narrated" the exodus in an effort to prove their non-Chineseness and their localized Taiwaneseness. They pulled on 1949 stories, as well as current-day plights of laobing (老兵) and juancun (眷村). For my urban studies brain, it was exciting to read about how waishengren used juancun as physical, spatial proof that they, too were Taiwanese.
I found this extensive social history to be very compelling, as it allowed me to understand the nuances of mainlander history in Taiwan and their complex relationship with identity.
Epilogue: Post-book thoughts
Trauma, Memory, and Identity (and how it relates to me)
In the Epilogue, Yang ties all of his arguments together and places them in the context of mainlander history/memory/identity and writing about trauma. He pulls in his own positionality as a benshengren immigrant to Canada, and explains why this research was personal to him:
"Being an immigrant and a '1.5-generation' Taiwanese Canadian who now works in the United States, I know what it feels like to be an outsider, a diasporic subject."
Throughout the book, I had been reflecting on my own history, memory, and identity as a 2nd generation Vietnamese American. In addition to all of the academic reasons I found this book compelling, it also spoke to me because it was part of the larger discourse surrounding on displacement, diasporic identity, cultural nostalgia, trauma, memory production. As I read the book, I thought a lot about Việt Thanh Nguyễn's Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War and my own family's remembrance of Vietnam and the Vietnam War. Yang's book on Taiwan's waishengren therefore tapped into a very personal topic for me, and allowed me to understand these topics and feelings in the context of a different war, a different place, and a different group of people.
Specifically, I appreciated Yang's reflections on what responsibilities historians have while writing about trauma. Here, he cited Dominick LaCapra's "empathic unsettlement", which "negotiates the polar extremes between detached objectivity and full identification with the traumatized historical subjects". Yang's positionality as a benshengren allowed him to 1) start off by being rather "unsympathetic and skeptical of waishengren’s trauma", and 2) after gaining knowledge and perspective, "create a critical distance from the fidelity to [his] own family trauma."
For me, this becomes relevant as I explore and understand my own complicated feelings about being Vietnamese American, especially as my parents' and grandparents' trauma was not unidirectional — my maternal grandfather worked for the Americans (who undoubtedly had a negative influence in the war in Vietnam) and my paternal grandparents were wealthy, French-educated, French-speaking bourgeoisie who were buddy-buddies with the colonial government. Việt Thanh Nguyễn's Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War had certainly allowed me to question the self-victimization that many first-gen Vietnamese Americans hold onto, but Yang's The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan allowed me to think about how I will move forward with second-gen Vietnamese American identity formation and memory production. If I decide to pursue mnemonic studies in Taiwanese waishengren urban spaces (ex. juancun and identity formation through space) or in Vietnamese American spaces, I want to be cognizant of of Yang's framework of "multidirectional empathic unsettlements" in my own research, writing, and personal reconciliation.
P.S. — Reflections on Taiwan, Taiwaneseness, and non-Chineseness
Clearly, Taiwanese people are not Chinese people; that much is clear to me now, and has been clear to me for a long time. However, this book allowed me to understand the nuances of that statement, specifically when it comes to academia, wherein most of Taiwan studies is situated within China studies. As I explore Taiwan studies then, I hope to research Taiwan as a separate social, cultural, and political entity from China, but nevertheless understand its constantly changing and evolving relationship with China.
August 5, 2025
In 2016 I was studying Mandarin at the Confucius Centre at Newcastle University. I wanted to travel to a Chinese speaking country to put into practice what I’d learnt. Two years previously I had travelled throughout China. I knew little of Taiwan but decided to spend a month there.
I had a wonderful time. Taiwan is a modern, well serviced innovative country. Some beautiful beaches on the eastern seaboard and stunning mountains up its spine.
I remember going on a walking tour in Taipei led by a university student. At Liberty Square she explained the role of students in demonstrating for democracy. Her passion and enthusiasm captured the wish the Taiwanese had for democracy.
I had never given consideration to the impact of the retreat of over a million nationalist Chinese to Taiwan. Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang has written a highly professional and personal account of the lives of those who fled the mainland to set up, what they thought, would be a temporary life on the small island off the coast of China.
With meticulous detail gained from research and personal interviews the author tells a moving story of the many difficulties these would be sojourners faced.
In his writing Yang addresses the many trajedies that the waishengren (mainlanders) faced. Yang’s writing expresses an empathy for the subjects of this book that I have seldom seen in other historical texts.
With the passing of time the original ‘migrants’ are fast disappearing, and Yang does touch on the lives of the second and third generations in Taiwan. He taps into the turmoil of migration and identity which is such an evident issue across many parts of the world.
This is a highly readable and warm account of the movement of a mass of people forgotten because of the pressures and problems Taiwan faces in the mid 2020s.
I had a wonderful time. Taiwan is a modern, well serviced innovative country. Some beautiful beaches on the eastern seaboard and stunning mountains up its spine.
I remember going on a walking tour in Taipei led by a university student. At Liberty Square she explained the role of students in demonstrating for democracy. Her passion and enthusiasm captured the wish the Taiwanese had for democracy.
I had never given consideration to the impact of the retreat of over a million nationalist Chinese to Taiwan. Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang has written a highly professional and personal account of the lives of those who fled the mainland to set up, what they thought, would be a temporary life on the small island off the coast of China.
With meticulous detail gained from research and personal interviews the author tells a moving story of the many difficulties these would be sojourners faced.
In his writing Yang addresses the many trajedies that the waishengren (mainlanders) faced. Yang’s writing expresses an empathy for the subjects of this book that I have seldom seen in other historical texts.
With the passing of time the original ‘migrants’ are fast disappearing, and Yang does touch on the lives of the second and third generations in Taiwan. He taps into the turmoil of migration and identity which is such an evident issue across many parts of the world.
This is a highly readable and warm account of the movement of a mass of people forgotten because of the pressures and problems Taiwan faces in the mid 2020s.
December 11, 2024
4.5 one of the best history books i've ever read.
September 1, 2025
A good book that discusses the trauma of the ‘mainlanders’ who moved to Taiwan after the Second World War.
November 26, 2024
A heartrending account of the Mainlander exilic psyche in Taiwan, detailing how the civil war migrants to Taiwan sought to reinforce, monumentalise, and re-negotiate their notion of Chineseness in the face of various traumatic societal upheavals across more than half a century which disoriented their identity. Yang's work is a sensitive treatment of the condition of exile - an unhealable rift between a person and his native place, the essential sadness of which can never be surmounted.
What most captivated me was how the feeling of rootlessness, the sense of inhabiting a liminal space between various identities of the mainland migrants, resonated with my experiences as a 1.5th generation Hongkonger. Although feeling quite comfortable in the imagined community that is Hong Kong, I at times, much like the mainland migrants, feel entrapped in a melancholic limbo between my adopted homeland and a cultural nostalgia for China. I agree with Yang that the CCP's essentialist notion of 'Chineseness,' that there can be no qualifiers to "Chinese," alienates many with diasporic identities in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The historical, man-made calamities in Mainland China, coupled with the CCP's continued intolerance for any brand of Chineseness at odds with its belligerent irredentism, remains the chief source of the identity crises for many Chinese today.
Yang rightfully points out that the ordeals suffered by even our dearest can never be our own - The effect created by secondary witnessing can be enraging to the point of creating vicarious trauma for the witness. Perhaps waishengren will cease to be a meaningful label in Taiwan in the coming decades as the descendants of the 49ers reject it for the new Taiwan-centred paradigm.
In the words of a representative in the ROC's National Assembly whose name is unknown to me - 「我們談中國問題的真解決，就是反共，還應該是反共。」(When we discuss the real solution to the China problem, there is anti-communism, and then there is anti-communism.)
What most captivated me was how the feeling of rootlessness, the sense of inhabiting a liminal space between various identities of the mainland migrants, resonated with my experiences as a 1.5th generation Hongkonger. Although feeling quite comfortable in the imagined community that is Hong Kong, I at times, much like the mainland migrants, feel entrapped in a melancholic limbo between my adopted homeland and a cultural nostalgia for China. I agree with Yang that the CCP's essentialist notion of 'Chineseness,' that there can be no qualifiers to "Chinese," alienates many with diasporic identities in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The historical, man-made calamities in Mainland China, coupled with the CCP's continued intolerance for any brand of Chineseness at odds with its belligerent irredentism, remains the chief source of the identity crises for many Chinese today.
Yang rightfully points out that the ordeals suffered by even our dearest can never be our own - The effect created by secondary witnessing can be enraging to the point of creating vicarious trauma for the witness. Perhaps waishengren will cease to be a meaningful label in Taiwan in the coming decades as the descendants of the 49ers reject it for the new Taiwan-centred paradigm.
In the words of a representative in the ROC's National Assembly whose name is unknown to me - 「我們談中國問題的真解決，就是反共，還應該是反共。」(When we discuss the real solution to the China problem, there is anti-communism, and then there is anti-communism.)
Read
February 18, 2024有贊同之處、不贊同之處、疑惑之處，寫了17頁筆記，感想待補。
February 4, 2023
Very informative! I never know about this history and was keen to know. Very interesting writing!
October 23, 2023
Quite academic but still very readable, very well researched and a lot of intriguing information about a relatively unknown topic in the west.
December 31, 2023
- 口述歷史、闡釋和理論平衡恰到好處，易讀且無錯字，蔡耀緯也譯得很好
- 對同為加害者和受害者的外省人產生同理是很特別的事
- 緒言：太多理論，可跳過
- 喜歡作者記敘外省人的反應而不只是證言得悉他們的想法
- 透過諸多與外省平民、老兵、二代溝通蒐集口述歷史並加學術分析，迄今未見
- 提到政府對政權到台灣描述的叫法轉變：播遷台灣？流亡？撤退、轉進？值得思考
- 對同為加害者和受害者的外省人產生同理是很特別的事
- 緒言：太多理論，可跳過
- 喜歡作者記敘外省人的反應而不只是證言得悉他們的想法
- 透過諸多與外省平民、老兵、二代溝通蒐集口述歷史並加學術分析，迄今未見
- 提到政府對政權到台灣描述的叫法轉變：播遷台灣？流亡？撤退、轉進？值得思考
June 18, 2024
Such an amazing historiographical account of Waisheng people. A must read!
October 24, 2024
作为一个大陆人读来也有许多感触，曾祖也曾因为国军效力，新朝之后承受极大苦难，但在乐观坚毅的内心下活到百岁…那段内战史的创伤记忆与认同一直在重塑变迁与慢慢揭开，放在更大自由主义与社会主义之下，新旧中华之间，或缩小至省份乡野的区分离散漂泊，唯有更多的揭开往事与记录讲述，让更多人发声让更多人被看到，同理倾听对话，更让后人自由平等相处…
November 18, 2024
总的来说，除了80年代探亲使外省人从有家不能回变成了永远无家可归之外，好像也无甚新鲜之处。
March 9, 2022
The author focuses on the migration of waishengren外省人, who moved across the 1949 divide and the Taiwan Strait, and examines their collective memory, trauma, and identity formation. I found several arguments intriguing: (1) The author seeks to complicate the narrative that waishengren in Taiwan is "diasporic Chinese", as the concept still presumes a center, a homeland to come to. By investigating the collective memory of waishengren, the author suggests that a local identity has gradually emerged since the 1960s. The author explicitly push back against the assumptions that waishengren is by nature closer to mainland China. (2) The author refutes the "(single-)event-based" model of trauma studies. What he proposed seems to be what I will call "time-series-based" model of trauma studies. The author highlights multiple events that shaped collective trauma in different directions: the 1949 migration; the Joint Communiqué of October 23, 1958 that made many waishengren realized that they might not be able to come "home"; local writing, native associations (同鄉會), root-seeking activities; home-coming activities starting from 1987, their engagement with younger generations in the 2000s, etc. As a result, trauma became rooted in the collective consciousness of waishengren, stopping many of them from making deep connections with mainland even after 1987 and helping them form the identification with Taiwan. (3) The author also reminds readers not to forget how the KMT regime brought catastrophic harms to local people during the 1949 migration. This criticism does not seem novel, but I found a sentence extremely powerful. In his criticism of 大江大海一九四九， the author writes, "While the stories she tells are certainly heartrending and her plea is as noble as it is compassionate, what Long has managed to create in Big River is an empty universe of human misery in which history itself was the sole culprit, and being born into the wrong time was the main cause of suffering." (p268) This sentence, to be honest, sums up my feelings towards many memoirs and biographies, pretty well. (4) In the Epilogue, the author makes his own positions and politics explicit (surprisingly, he is not a waishengren). I really appreciate his honesty and self reflections.
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