Remembering China from Taiwan
Remembering China from Taiwan: Divided Families and Bittersweet Reunions after the Chinese Civil War
Mahlon Meyer
Copyright Date: 2012
Published by: Hong Kong University Press
Pages: 252
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1xw9qf
Search for reviews of this book
Book Info
Remembering China from Taiwan
Book Description:

At the close of the Chinese Civil War, two million Chinese fled from the victorious communist army under Mao Zedong. They fled across a long ocean strait to the island of Taiwan where they waited for almost fifty years, dreaming of their lost homes and relatives left behind, aging and living out their lives as defeated, cursed people. But when both Taiwan and China began to become wealthy, the two sides allowed cautious exchanges. The split families met up again. There was hope, joy, sorrow, and disasters. Yet the losers of the Chinese civil war, who had endured for so long, now found a new reason to persevere: they no longer hated their enemies. In fact, they now wanted to join them.

eISBN: 978-988-220-897-1
Subjects: History
You do not have access to this book on JSTOR. Try logging in through your institution for access.
Log in to your personal account or through your institution.
Table of Contents
Export Selected Citations Export to NoodleTools Export to RefWorks Export to EasyBib Export a RIS file (For EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, Zotero, Mendeley...) Export a Text file (For BibTex)
Select / Unselect all
  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
  3. Acknowledgements
    Acknowledgements (pp. vii-x)
  4. Introduction
    Introduction (pp. 1-14)

    I hope this book will not have the same effect on you as it did on one of my friends. The friend in question is a well-known Taiwanese journalist who helped me on countless occasions, bringing perspective or knowledge to my newspaper and magazine articles. Whenever I wanted to tackle a new topic, I would simply call her up and she would help me outline the main points of my piece, feeding me background information about all the people I was interviewing and generally throwing in her opinion and perspective. She was a mentor and a good friend. But after...

  5. 1 Degrees of Escape
    1 Degrees of Escape (pp. 15-56)

    Hatred of Japanese invaders is almost too big for the mainlanders to get their minds around. Yet one also gets the sense that these feelings, while arising from historical fact, are also some kind of ritual, something they learned from their leaders. For decades within the Kuomintang, hatred of Japanese was played up along with love of China. Lin Ching-wu, a short, balding, eighty-five-year-old man from Fujian, is talking about the Japanese. He glares furiously and jumps up and beats his chest.

    I was just a kid and I saw the most horrible things. The Japanese would fly their airplanes...

  6. 2 Mixing Memory and Desire
    2 Mixing Memory and Desire (pp. 57-118)

    Ko Jen-tao thought he had come so far that the Communists couldn’t get him as they must have gotten his family. He wore his naval uniform like it was a badge, a sign that he was safe. But he was too far from home now to even remember what it felt like to be safe. He actually didn’t know what had happened to his mother and his brothers and sister. He only knew that the Communists had taken their city. He wore the uniform now not like one who was protecting his newfound country but rather as somebody who was...

  7. 3 Low Lie the Shattered Towers
    3 Low Lie the Shattered Towers (pp. 119-178)

    In late August, a radiant blue sky occasionally swoops down over Taipei like a giant tablecloth dropped from heaven. These days are rare. Usually they come when a strong breeze shoots over from mainland China. On other days, the sky seeps grey from its pores like a tree saturated with ants. This is pollution, a wall of it, seeping over from China, where thousands of factories belch noxious air into the stratosphere night and day. The orange cloud crosses the Taiwan Strait, picks up humidity from the ocean, and turns the color of a dead piece of cheese: maggot-grey. On...

  8. 4 Overseas Connections
    4 Overseas Connections (pp. 179-218)

    The countryside is bounded by golden fields of wheat. The grains stand stock still as if pointing at the sky, waiting for rain to come. Cicadas and grasshoppers shrill the air with their cries. The shrillness is like the sound of high-tension electric wires. For his entire adult life in the slum of tiny cement boxes where Tan Zhefu has lived with his wife and daughter, surrounded by the fields, the thrum of the insects has seemed to gain in cadence. After living there for twenty years, the ringing has transferred to the inner porches of his ears so that...

  9. Conclusion: The Other Shore
    Conclusion: The Other Shore (pp. 219-222)

    It started, as much as anything can be said to start, during the high point of the last dynasty. It involved officials, officials who became technicians instead of scholars. Until the Manchus took over China in 1644, Chinese officials had mostly spent their time writing poetry and other efflorescences of a culture steeped not only in its own tradition but in the stewing, masticating and swallowing of that tradition over thousands of years. Under the Manchus, a hardy, clever and ruthless people, Chinese officials became something new: they became experts at statecraft. That meant they had to manage markets, control...

  10. Notes
    Notes (pp. 223-230)
  11. Index
    Index (pp. 231-234)
  12. [Illustrations]
    [Illustrations] (pp. None)
Hong Kong University Press logo