People's Republic of China

On January 21, 1949, China's civil war— between Communists and Chinese nationalists— came to an end when Communist forces, led by Mao Zedong, defeated China's Nationalist government, which had stopped receiving aid from the United States. The Chinese president, Chiang Kai-Shek, resigned, and shortly thereafter, Mao's forces took over Beijing. During the next several months, those peasants who didn't support Communism—like Waverly's mother and the other mothers in The Joy Luck Club, fled mainland China for American soil, settling in Asian hot spots like San Francisco's Chinatown. Critic Walter Shear, in his Critique review, references this historical situation, saying "those millions of Chinese who were part of the diaspora [migration] of World War II and the fighting that resulted in the triumph of the Communists," were unfortunately left without a home when they were "cut off from the mainland and after 1949 left...