“L’Étranger” since the Civil War: Writing the Civil War Taiwanese-Guomindang Soldiers in the 1990s Mike Shi-chi Lan Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Email: [email protected] Paper to be Presented at Fifth Conference of the European Association of Taiwan Studies 18-20 April, 2008 Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic ABSTRACT This paper studies the history and historiography of Taiwanese soldiers who served in the Nationalist or Guomindang (GMD) Army during the Chinese Civil War between 1946 and 1949. More than fifteen thousand native Taiwanese were recruited and sent to battlefields in northern China to serve in the Nationalist Army. As the Communist forces defeated the Nationalist Army, most of the Taiwanese soldiers were abandoned by the Nationalist Army in the mainland. After 1949, more than one thousand former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers, commonly known as Taiji Guojun laobing, have settled in mainland China. However, the history of Taiwanese-GMD soldiers was largely repressed and ignored discursively in accounts of the war in both the mainland and Taiwan. This amnesia in public memory remained unchallenged till the 1990’s when Chen Yingzhen’s short novel Guixiang [returning to the native land] emerged, followed by oral history works by Taiwanese veterans themselves. This paper will first analyze—in terms of historiography—how these literary and historical works have brought native Taiwanese-GMD soldiers back into history. Furthermore, this paper will study in terms of practice how these native Taiwanese-GMD soldiers were discriminated in the mainland and Taiwan alike since 1949. Because of their Taiwanese identity and former GMD affiliation, these Taiwanese-GMD veterans—as well as their families—have been subjected to various discrimination and mistreatment under the Communist rule in the mainland, particularly during political campaigns such as the Cultural Revolution. Starting in the 1980s, surviving Taiwanese-GMD veterans in mainland China began to seek ways to visit and/or return to Taiwan. However, the ROC government in Taiwan continuously refused to recognize these former GMD soldiers, suspected them as ‘communists”, and denied them entry to Taiwan. This paper will conclude by juxtaposing Taiwanese-GMD soldiers’ lack of belonging in both their native and settled land with Albert Camus’s play The Misunderstanding (Le Malentendu) and motif of the exile and “the stranger” (as in L’Étranger) which are often found in Camus’s works. 0 “L’Étranger” since the Civil War: Writing the Civil War Taiwanese-Guomindang Soldiers in the 1990s Mike Shi-chi Lan “The world is neither (completely) rational, nor quite irrational either”—Camus1 I. A brief history of Taiwanese-GMD soldiers Between 1945 and 1949, more than fifteen thousand native Taiwanese were recruited to serve in the Nationalist or Guomindang (GMD) Army during the Chinese Civil War.2 Most of the Taiwanese-GMD soldiers, commonly known as Taiji Guojun, were sent to battlefields in mainland China to fight against the Communist forces. As the Communist forces progressed and took over Chinese mainland, the Nationalist Army troops either retreated to Taiwan or surrendered to the Communist. Some Taiwanese-GMD soldiers returned to Taiwan with the Nationalist troops, but most were abandoned by their troops in the mainland. After 1949, as Taiwan was cut off from the mainland, these former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers were forced to stay and subsequently settle in mainland China. As a result of political antagonism across the Taiwan Strait, no former Taiwanese-GMD soldier was allowed to return to Taiwan till 1988.3 Most of the former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers have passed away in Chinese mainland without ever returning to Taiwan; and many, in their seventy’s or eighty’s, remain in Chinese mainland today. II. Taiwanese-GMD soldiers in historiography 1 As quoted in Jean-Paul Sartre, “An Explication of The Stranger” (original French title: Explication de l’Estranger, 1955), English translation in Harold Bloom, ed., Albert Camus’s The Stranger (Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001), p.4. 2 The estimate of fifteen thousand is found in Guoshi guan Taiwan wenxian guan [Taiwan archive section, Academic Historica], ed., Shanghen xuelei [scar blood tear] (Nantou: Guoshi guan Taiwan wenxian guan, 2006), p.286 and Xu Zhaorong, Dongdang shidai de wunai—Taiji laobing xuelei gushi [helplessness in a time of turmoil— stories of blood and tears of Taiwanese old soldiers] (Nantou: Guoshi guan Taiwan wenxian guan, 2005), pp.63, 217. 3 The ROC government started in 1988 to by grant only “permit” to “visit” Taiwan, for a two-month period, to former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers. Later on in 1989, ROC government began to issue residence permit to allow former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers to return to Taiwan permanently. See Xu Zhaorong, Taji laobing de xue lei hen [blood tear hatred of the Taiwanese old soldiers] (Taipei: Qianwei, 1995), pp.569-570. 1 The history of Taiwanese-GMD soldiers, however, was largely repressed and ignored discursively in accounts of the war in both the mainland and Taiwan after 1949. This amnesia in public memory remained unchallenged till the late 1980’s. Several former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers, who retreated back to Taiwan with the Nationalist troops in 1949, began in 1987 to campaign and made appeal to the Republic of China (ROC) government in Taiwan for the right of their former Taiwanese-native comrades to return to Taiwan.4 Soon, several legislators in the ROC congress (the Legislative Yuan) and government officials in charge of veterans’ affairs took notice of the issue,5 so did Taiwanese organizations in the mainland.6 The ROC government in Taiwan eventually approved such request and allowed the first former Taiwanese-GMD soldier living in the mainland to return to Taiwan for a short compassionate visit in the end of 1988. However, former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers were not allowed to move back and settle permanently in Taiwan until 1989.7 According to my survey, the first systematic study of Taiwanese-GMD soldiers was not published until 1995 in Taiwan, authored by Xu Zhaorong, a former Taiwanese-GMD soldier.8 Xu is one of earliest activists who advocate the right of Taiwanese-GMD soldiers to return from Chinese mainland to Taiwan. Xu first published several articles in Chinese newspapers and Taiwanese community newsletter in North America (in the United States and Canada) between, detailing on the plight of former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers in the mainland since 1949. Since then, several oral history projects were conducted by journalists, government agencies, and academics, and the history of Taiwanese-GMD soldiers was known more widely with the publication of additional reports since the mid-1990s.9 In addition, the stories of former 4 Xu Zhaorong, Taji laobing de xue lei hen [blood tear hatred of the Taiwanese old soldiers] (Taipei: Qianwei, 1995), pp.567-568. 5 Several legislators began to raise the issue in 1987. The ROC government undertook concrete measures to allow former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers to return to Taiwan in 1988, see Xu Zhaorong, Taji laobing de xue lei hen [blood tear hatred of the Taiwanese old soldiers] (Taipei: Qianwei, 1995), p.1-2, 533-534, 568-569. 6 Taisheng [Taiwanese voice], a magazine published by the Taiwanese-native Association [Taiwan tongxiang lianyi hui] in Beijing, carried several reports on former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers in Chinese mainland in 1988. See reprints in Xu Zhaorong, Taji laobing de xue lei hen [blood tear hatred of the Taiwanese old soldiers] (Taipei: Qianwei, 1995), pp.189-206. 7 Xu Zhaorong, Dongdang shidai de wunai—Taiji laobing xuelei gushi [helplessness in a time of turmoil—stories of blood and tears of Taiwanese old soldiers] (Nantou: Guoshi guan Taiwan wenxian guan, 2005), pp.193-194. 8 Xu Zhaorong, Taji laobing de xue lei hen [blood tear hatred of the Taiwanese old soldiers] (Taipei: Qianwei, 1995). 9 One of the most notable is the government-sponsored report Shanghen xuelei [scar blood tear] (Nantou: Guoshi guan Taiwan wenxian guan, 2006), published by Taiwan’s national archive. It consists of oral history transcript with more than thirty former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers. Additional report is also found in Chen Ming-cheng, Taiwan bing yingxiang gushi [photographic stories of the Taiwanese soldiers] (Taipei: Qianwei chubanshe, 1997). 2 Taiwanese-GMD soldiers became the subject of literary works, including Chen Yingzhen’s short novel Guixiang [returning to the native land], first published in 1999.10 In terms of historiography, the history of Taiwanese-GMD soldiers has been largely ignored in both sides of the Taiwan Strait since 1949. It gradually began to attract attention in the news media in the late 1980s, and historical and literary works finally brought Taiwanese-GMD soldiers back into history in the late 1990s. III. “Stranger” at Home: Life in the Chinese Mainland At the end of the Civil War, thousands of former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers settled in Chinese mainland. Many of them were recruited and re-grouped into the People’s Liberation Army; some were trained in cadre schools, specifically in preparation for the Communist plan to “liberate Taiwan”. Some were sent to fight in the Korean War, others were discharged as the Korean War halted the Communist plan to attack Taiwan in 1950.11 As they settled, found new jobs, and many got married and set up families in the Chinese mainland, these former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers found their “second home”.12 But many soon found themselves discriminated and ill- treated in this “second home”. As political campaigns spread across the Chinese mainland in the 1950s, most former Taiwanese-GMD soldiers were affected. Some Taiwanese-GMD veterans were severely punished long before the Cultural Revolution, partly because they were able to speak fluent Japanese (as a result of being educated under the Japanese colonial rule).13 One Taiwanese-GMD veteran was sent to labor camp and was forced to stay in a remote settlement in Inner Mongolia for more than forty years; he later remarked that he stayed much longer than the famous Han 10 Chen Yingzhen, Guixiang [returning to the native land], in Chen Yingzhen, Zhongxiao gongyuan [Zhongxiao park] (Taipei: Hongfan shudian, 2001/2004).