The Forgotten Occupation: Everyday Encounters between American Soldiers and the Chinese, 1945-1949

FAIN: FEL-294190-24

Chunmei Du
Lingnan University (Hong Kong - China)

Research and writing leading to a book on the US occupation of China at the end of World War II, focused on everyday encounters between US servicemembers and Chinese civilians. 

“The Forgotten Occupation” will be the first book-length study of the everyday encounters between American servicemen and Chinese civilians from the end of World War II to the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Drawing upon official, popular, and personal accounts from both countries, this project expands existing research on the “loss of China” through the novel lens of everyday practice and politics. It examines the sensorial, material, and symbolic exchanges between GIs and ordinary Chinese, including rickshaw pullers, “Jeep girls,” suspected thieves, and black-market dealers and consumers, and uncovers a forgotten history of embodied entanglement beyond the traditional purviews of occupation and resistance. Revisiting a most volatile and critical moment in Sino-U.S. relations, this project reveals how the ostensibly quotidian matters in grassroots interaction affected national identities and global geopolitics.