In this interesting book, Joshua Fan tells the story of the roughly two million people, mostly low-ranking male veterans of the Chinese Civil War, who fled to Taiwan by land, sea and air in the late 1940s as the demise of the Kuomintang (KMT) government became apparent. As one of the “largest waves of migration, not just in Chinese history, but also in world history” (p. 19), this is a tale worth telling. His central point, that the overwhelming majority of these individuals remained “homeless” – in the material sense in the 1950s and psychologically for four decades after the war – aims to challenge scholarship and the “commonly accepted oversimplification” (p. 2) in Taiwan that mainlanders (waishengren) enjoyed privileged status in politics and society. With the exception of air force personnel, high-ranking army brass and politicians, Fan contends that most ordinary soldiers suffered widespread discrimination, trauma, marriage woes and heartbreak owing to low rank, poverty, language barriers, lack of education, connections and other family resources, and their association with a despised regime. In this respect, China's Homeless Generation is an important contribution to the literature on veterans in China and elsewhere in the world. This literature is cognizant of variations among veterans based mostly on pre-war socioeconomic variables, while also noting their shared difficulties readjusting to civilian life after war.

Fan's account is based on the personal histories of 890 people drawn from new collections of oral history materials that emerged in Taiwan during the 1990s, as well as 25 interviews with members of this homeless generation. These sources are appropriate for his primary goal of “let[ting] the survivors speak for themselves whenever possible” (p. xv) and “documenting” (p.147) their experiences; the book, therefore, is more descriptive than analytical and theoretical. Arranged chronologically beginning from the circumstances that turned them into soldiers and officers, to their hostile reception on the island, gradual resettlement, employment and marriage in the 1950s and 1970s, and finally to their efforts to reconnect with kin in the PRC in the 1980s and 1990s, Fan provides fascinating details about veterans' daily interactions with neighbours, co-workers, employers, and spouses, as well as their difficult journeys from the mainland to Taiwan and back again. There is little that is redemptive or uplifting in these stories. The fate of most veterans was basically sealed by their poverty, lack of education and the low status of soldiers in Chinese politics and society, but the KMT only made matters worse through their poorly conceived and enforced veterans policy during the war, and the massacre of roughly 10,000 Taiwanese in the 2/28 Incident in 1947. According to Fan, after this incident “all Waishengren, especially soldiers, became the target of Benshengren [Taiwanese] resentment” (p. 16). Lacking an entree into Taiwanese society, most veterans, including officers, lived in relatively exclusive enclaves and only intermittently interacted with the locals. When they did, epithets were hurled. Naturally, limited and strained interaction made employment in the Taiwanese-dominated private sector almost impossible, which increased veterans' dependence on the state, causing further friction and frustration.

Difficulties in finding a spouse made veterans' predicament even worse. Fan finds that veterans' low status and poverty precluded marriages to waisheng women, who, thanks to their smaller numbers (there was a 3:1 ratio of males to females among those who left the Mainland for Taiwan), could easily marry up. Only the lower stratum of Taiwanese, such as “widowers, divorcees, ex-prostitutes, physically handicapped, and mentally retarded” (p.87), and aboriginals for whom a military salary or pension was attractive, seriously considered such a match, but roughly 20 per cent of veterans never married during their entire time on Taiwan. Left to fend for themselves in multiple hostile environments, suicide among young and single veterans appears to have been “common” in the mid-1950s, when they realized that they would never return home (p. 77). “Going home,” however, was not a panacea. In his last chapter Fan describes the sorrow, guilt and disappointment in these reunions as the veterans realized that their parents had passed away and that an unbridgeable gulf separated them from their still-living kin, most of whom suffered because of their association with the KMT. Veterans were dismayed by the sometimes over-the-top materialism among their relatives, who wanted reimbursement for their suffering (p. 131) with gifts, gold and cash. After their return to Taiwan the veterans “competed over whose experience was the most depressing” (p. 139). At the same time, many finally accepted Taiwan as their “home” and appreciated it even more.

The strength of China's Homeless Generation lies precisely in the poignancy of these personal stories, and in the very act of telling them before that generation passes from the scene. At the same time, it is not entirely clear how the book contributes to scholarship on post-war Taiwan. One of Fan's main arguments – that not all Waishengren were privileged in Taiwan – probably will not be new to anyone with some degree of familiarity with its history. Perhaps not coincidently, his review of the scholarly literature only comes up with one book (Copper, 1996) claiming to the contrary. Fan's primary targets appear to be the “popular belief shared by many Benshengren” (p. 61) and other unnamed sources he charges with oversimplification and overgeneralization (p. 82). This is not a small matter. If those who would benefit the most from these findings are the misguided Benshengren in Taiwan, perhaps this book should have been published in Chinese and made widely available there. If Western scholars are the primary audience, Fan should have situated his data more firmly in the existing literature on the post-war scene. China's Homeless Generation also is somewhat of a missed opportunity for a history of veterans that benefitted from accessible primary sources and direct access to informants (unlike the situation in the PRC). At least from my perspective, there is insufficient material about their wartime experiences, such as military life, battles, injuries, and their feelings about the war and military leaders. Finally, Fan might have been more attentive to methodological issues in using oral histories and interviews. In an appendix he might have provided more biographical information about his informants (even the most basic data is missing), explained why he chose those 25 people to interview (a rather small sample, in my view) and how these interviews were conducted. He might have also explained to readers how he assessed the veracity of his informants' memories or came to understand their state of mind. For example, can we rely on several soldiers' recollection that suicide was “common” in the mid-1950s in the absence of evidence from several other sources? How should readers assess the factuality of following sentence: “As the Homeless Generation stood in front of the empty tombs they erected across Mainland China, they also felt empty inside, wondering more than just where their parents were actually buried, but also where their home was” (p. 137)?

Despite these reservations, by amplifying the often mute voices of the lowest ranking soldiers Fan has made an important contribution to the comparative literature on veterans. His book will be of interest to scholars of veterans and their transition to civilian society, as well as students of Taiwan and cross-Strait relations (particularly the chapter on the return of KMT veterans to the Mainland).