• 2020-11-03

On 15 September 2020, renowned author Prof. Hsien-yung Pai released his latest masterpiece, Forty Years of Joy and Sorrow: General Pai Chung-Hsi and Chiang Kai-shek. The book could be said to be a military history of the Republic of China. At the book’s launch, Prof. Pai donated the 483-page manuscript to the National Central Library. It was received by the library’s Director-General, Shu-hsien Tseng.

Forty Years of Joy and Sorrow: General Pai Chung-Hsi and Chiang Kai-shek is Prof. Pai’s third work describing his father, after Father and the Republic: Collected Silhouettes of General Pai Chung-Hsi and Pain Relief: General Omar Pai Chung-Hsi and 228. The book is divided into three volumes:  volume one Northern Expedition · Anti-Japanese War, volume two The Civil War of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and volume three Taiwan Years. The first two volumes are led by Yanbo Liao, and the third volume is written by Prof. Pai. The book makes extensive use of historical materials, including more than 8,400 telegrams, letters, warrants and petitions exchanged between Chiang and Pai, as well as many files, diaries and memoirs, etc.

Among Prof. Pai’s manuscripts about his father in the collection of the National Central Library, apart from Taiwan Years, the third volume of Forty Years of Joy and Sorrow: General Omar Pai Chung-Hsi and Chiang Kai-shek, are also Sixteen Critical Days: Preface, The Guangxi Spirit: Building a Model Province in Guangxi, 1931-37, and The Post-war Struggle Between the Chinese Communist Party and Kuomintang in the North-East: Causes, Consequences and Significant Impacts of the First Siping Street Battle, Spring and Summer 1946.