The migration of Chinese people from mainland China to Taiwan around 1949 due to the Chinese civil war remains an understudied topic. Nearly a decade after the first English-language monographs on this subject (Fan, China's Homeless Generation, Routledge, 2011 and Meyer, Remembering China from Taiwan, Hong Kong University Press, 2012) comes a more sophisticated, thorough and nuanced study – The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan by Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang. Yang not only traces the history of this group – waishengren or mainlanders – from the 1940s until the 2000s, but more importantly, he argues that the on-going memory boom narrating the great exodus was not the result of just one trauma around 1949, but several “social traumas” tied to the historical, social and political developments on both sides of Taiwan Strait in the past 50 years. Along the way, Yang answered questions, corrected assumptions, revised earlier arguments and provided an update on the on-going identity formation of waishengren in Taiwan.

One major difference from earlier scholarship is Yang's heavier reliance on documentary research. In chapter one “The exodus,” using the two largest Taiwanese newspapers in circulation during the 1950s, recently declassified government files and archival social data, Yang is able to support and validate the individual recollections of waishengren. From the sheer number of “search for missing person notices” and adverts asking for “adoptive parents,” Yang shows that many of the exiles arrived in Taiwan as “disposed and atomized persons” longing for a family. Based on the much higher crime rate and suicide rate among the waishengren, Yang reveals that the desperation and depression voiced in oral history was indeed shared by many. Relying mainly on the 1956 census data, Yang revises the number of this exodus from two million as suggested by earlier scholars to just one million. Finally, he reminds readers that trauma was not just felt by waishengren as they dealt with displacement in a foreign island, but also by the native population or benshengren, who had to deal with the negative effects of this huge influx, such as the danger of deserted soldiers and vagrants, and the incredible strain on services and resources in Taiwan's major cities.

In chapter two “Wartime sojourning,” using major journals and various types of nonfiction writings, Yang argues that 1949 was not a special event for the waishengren during the 1950s; instead it was a continuation of suffering since the Japanese invasion or “longue durée of warfare and displacement” (p. 89). Waishengren came to the realization that they might never be able to return home, what Yang terms “the social trauma of the diminishing hope,” only after the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis, when Chiang Kai-shek was forced by the US to renounce the use of military force to recover the mainland.

In chapter three, “Cultural nostalgia,” Yang shows the effect of this social trauma through the study of tongxianghui (native place organizations) between 1960 and 1980. As the hope of returning faded, the numbers of tongxianghui soared. Yang demonstrates that waishengren were already engaged in root-planting in Taiwan, as they created a repository of knowledge to educate their children and grandchildren who never saw home. They also erected structures for their organizations, constructed symbolic tombs for their ancestors, and created Taiwan-based genealogies, all in the hope of making Taiwan into more a permanent home. It was also clear that the younger generation of waishengren were simply not as engaged in their mythical homeland, and the number of tongxianghui faded over time like the hope of returning home.

In chapter four, “The long road home,” Yang traces the developments on both sides of Taiwan Strait that led to the long-awaited return of waishengren to China. It was only after disappointing returns to mainland that waishengren realized they can never go home again. The markers of home – ancestral homes and graves had been destroyed, grandparents and parents had died, wives had remarried, and children had become estranged. Yang dubs this realization as “the social trauma of the homecoming in China” (p.29). Yang also convincingly credits the Veterans’ Homebound Movement of 1987, instead of Chiang Ching-Kuo's own change of heart, as the key reason for the dramatic change of finally allowing travelling to mainland.

In chapter five, “Narrating the exodus,” Yang deals with the final social trauma – “the homecoming in Taiwan” (p.19). As the waishengren dealt with the trauma of returning to China, major transformations were also happening in Taiwan. The KMT one-party rule came to an end, followed by a shift from China-centred to a Taiwan-centred paradigm or bentuhua in nearly all aspects of daily life. As benshengren sought recognition and compensation for their sufferings under the KMT, they also equated all waishengren as foreign colonizers who were just as guilty. As Yang summarizes, “the mainlanders came home to both ends of the Taiwan Strait only to find out that neither place was really home” (p. 221). Yang's overall argument comes together convincingly in this chapter to show that it was at this moment of being rejected by a society where all waishengren were lumped together as outsiders or even the enemies, that they came together to narrate the one experience that they all shared – the great exodus of 1949. Yang also provides an update via recent governmental and private surveys that showed that waishengren, especially the younger generation, are increasingly identifying as Taiwanese; with a different experience from benshengren and aboriginal Taiwanese, but Taiwanese, nevertheless.

This well-researched and convincingly argued study can benefit readers who are interested in the history of the Chinese civil war, the history of waishengren, social changes in contemporary Taiwan, and identity formation and transformation in Taiwan. Scholars engaged in trauma studies can also benefit as this work urges one to go beyond single event trauma to multiple events of repeated social traumatization.