Back in 1948, when he was 13 years old, Gao left his home in Shandong province, weathered a perilous cross-country trek to escape the fighting that had engulfed China, and eventually escaped to Taiwan, where he lives today. Chai Jing’s original 2012 interview with Gao aired on CCTV-1 to great acclaim, but there was much content that was elided due to state-media censorship and the sensitivity of the topic. For that reason, Chai and Gao decided to revisit that interview and fill in some of the gaps. In new portions of the interview, Gao recounts his wartime experiences fleeing through southern China; his hardscrabble existence in Taiwan as a newly arrived refugee; his subsequent education and legal career; and his more recent efforts to help repatriate the remains of former Nationalist soldiers who spent their lives longing to revisit their relatives and hometowns in China.
onsdag 2. juli 2025
TRANSLATION OF CHAI JING INTERVIEW WITH CHINESE CIVIL WAR SURVIVOR GAO BINGHAN, PART 2: “WAR IS ALWAYS A TRAGEDY, SOMETHING I CANNOT ENDORSE.”
Amid recurrent China-Taiwan tensions and rising geopolitical instability, investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Chai Jing has revisited and updated her iconic 2012 interview with Gao Binghan, a survivor of the Chinese Civil War who escaped with the Nationalists to Taiwan at the age of 13. Now 90 years old, Gao saw his family torn apart by civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists, and says he fears that the two sides’ successors are once again inching toward war. “Politics is ruthless,” says Gao in his recent interview with Chai. “Those who forget that history of suffering are destined to suffer again.”
Back in 1948, when he was 13 years old, Gao left his home in Shandong province, weathered a perilous cross-country trek to escape the fighting that had engulfed China, and eventually escaped to Taiwan, where he lives today. Chai Jing’s original 2012 interview with Gao aired on CCTV-1 to great acclaim, but there was much content that was elided due to state-media censorship and the sensitivity of the topic. For that reason, Chai and Gao decided to revisit that interview and fill in some of the gaps. In new portions of the interview, Gao recounts his wartime experiences fleeing through southern China; his hardscrabble existence in Taiwan as a newly arrived refugee; his subsequent education and legal career; and his more recent efforts to help repatriate the remains of former Nationalist soldiers who spent their lives longing to revisit their relatives and hometowns in China.
Back in 1948, when he was 13 years old, Gao left his home in Shandong province, weathered a perilous cross-country trek to escape the fighting that had engulfed China, and eventually escaped to Taiwan, where he lives today. Chai Jing’s original 2012 interview with Gao aired on CCTV-1 to great acclaim, but there was much content that was elided due to state-media censorship and the sensitivity of the topic. For that reason, Chai and Gao decided to revisit that interview and fill in some of the gaps. In new portions of the interview, Gao recounts his wartime experiences fleeing through southern China; his hardscrabble existence in Taiwan as a newly arrived refugee; his subsequent education and legal career; and his more recent efforts to help repatriate the remains of former Nationalist soldiers who spent their lives longing to revisit their relatives and hometowns in China.
