After the Russian invasion of the Japanese puppet state of Manchuria (Manchukuo) in 1945, fourteen-year-old Akihisa Takayama escapes with his family to their ancestral Taiwan. Here they find themselves under the brutal Chinese dictatorship of the Kuomintang. In the 1960s, now a physician calling himself Charles Yang, he escapes with his young family to the United States, from where they finally go on to Canada to become among the first Taiwanese Canadians in Vancouver. Charles Yang’s experiences illuminate the “White Terror” of Taiwan, and the geopolitical dispute between Communist China and Taiwan over the meaning of “One China.” This is a rare, humane, and personal account of the little known histories of Manchukuo and Taiwanese immigration to North America.

“. . . seamlessly interweaves history and memory in this fascinating narrative . . . compelling.”
–CD Alison Bailey, Dept of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia

“The detail is extraordinary. No other book I know has made Japanese Manchuria spring to life in the way Julia Lin (who was born in Taiwan) does here, with the Japanese-Russian hostility in the region especially vividly presented. And she proceeds to exhibit a similarly extensive command of life in the periods relevant to her story in Taiwan, the US and western Canada. The result is an enthralling narrative featuring Taiwan and some of the many places that Taiwanese have migrated to.”
–Taipei Times