waishengren

alternative Waishengren

1. a category of people and their descendants who fled mainland China for Taiwan after 1945 in response to the Nationalists losing the Chinese Civil War; sometimes regarded as an ethnic group.

   Recent studies and surveys have shown that most of the Waishengren have already taken this opportunity and are gravitating toward a “New Taiwanese” identity.

   2011, Joshua Fan, China's Homeless Generation: Voices from the Veterans of the Chinese Civil War, 1940s-1990s, Routledge, →ISBN, page 151

   2 more examples

   What surprised me was that it was not a "waishengren" who had such a deep consciousness of Chinese history, but a "bensheng-ren"[...]Many Japanese people residing in Taiwan, including myself, receive a lot of help from benshengren, who are fluent in Japanese. We often hear them complain about waishengren and China, while they appear to cherish Japan.

   2000 August 18, Takefumi Hayada, “The complexity of the Taiwanese”, in Taipei Times

   The tsunami of around 1.5 million exiles who accompanied Chiang to Taiwan produced two castes: benshengren — people from this province — and waishengren — people from outside this province[...]Nancy’s father identified as Chinese, waishengren from Jiangxi Province, like his father before him.

   2021 August 4, Sarah A. Topol, “Is Taiwan Next?”, in The New York Times Magazine

1. Alternative letter-case form of waishengren (“migrants from Mainland China to Taiwan post-1945 and their descendants.”).