The Last of the Whampoa Breed

Edited by Pang-yuan Chi and David Der-wei Wang

January, 2004
Cloth, 288 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-13002-8
$30.00 / £17.50

"Seen through the eyes of the exiles' descendants, many of whom are prominent writers in Taiwan, the essays capture the historically tense relationship that still exists between mainland China and neighboring Taiwan." — Asian Week

"This collection offers a unique glimpse into the mosaic ethnic-cultural landscape of contemporary Taiwan. The stories are about former members of the Chinese Nationalist military personnel, who had followed ChiangKai-shek in the mass retreat from Mainland China to Taiwan in 1949, and their children, who were raised within the once-lively subculture of the island's numerous military housing compounds built after the Retreat. As individuals whose loyalty to an obsolete cause is denied and even ridiculed by today's sociopolitical reality and who have no choice but resiliently adapt themselves to challenging new circumstances, characters in these stories are in a peculiar sense representative. For, in the last century, betrayal by the treacherous history has been a common lot shared by millions of Chinese on both Mainland China and Taiwan." — Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang

The University of Texas at Austin, University of Texas at Austin

"The year 1949 witnessed the exodus of more than a million Chinese from the mainland to island Taiwan. This collection of stories gives the historic turning point a human face and human voice that is vivid and memorable." — Michelle Yeh, University of California, Davis

Related Subjects

• Asian Literature

Series

• Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan

About the Author

Pang-yuan Chi is professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at National Taiwan University and editor-in-chief of Chinese Pen Quarterly. She is the editor of An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Literature and Tears of a Thousand Years. David Der-Wei Wang is associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures at Columbia University. He is the author of Fictional Realism in Twentieth-Century China (Columbia)

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