History in the Making: Everyday Occupation: American Soldiers and Chinese Civilians, 1945-1949 (DU Chunmei, Lingnan University)

Everyday Occupation examines the everyday encounter between American soldiers and Chinese civilians from the end of World War II to the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Drawing upon extensive archives in both countries, this book reexamines the “loss of China” through the novel lens of everyday practice and politics. Focusing on the sensorial, material, and symbolic exchanges between American GIs and ordinary Chinese—rickshaw pullers, “Jeep girls,” suspected thieves, and black-market consumers, the book uncovers a forgotten history of embodied entanglement beyond the traditional purviews of American imperialism and Communist propaganda. Revisiting a most volatile and critical moment in Sino–U.S. relations, this project reveals how the micro, quotidian matters in grassroots interaction influenced national identities and global geopolitics, providing valuable lessons for todays’ bipolar confrontations.

A historian of Chinese history at Lingnan University, Professor Chunmei Du is the author of Everyday Occupation: American Soldiers and Chinese Civilians, 1945–1949 (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) and Gu Hongming’s Eccentric Chinese Odyssey (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), as well as over a dozen articles in The Journal of Asian Studies, Diplomatic History, Gender & History, and Journal of World History. With a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2009, she has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Hong Kong Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Scheme, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society.

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