Huang Ba-mei: Legacy and Controversy

The press called her a “two-pistol-packing” grandma. She witnessed and participated in the chaos of warlord China, World War II, and the CCP-KMT civil war. 

For a time, she was a criminal. Later she became a household name for her bravery in fighting the Japanese and then the Communists, resisting right up to the evacuation of Dachen Islands in 1955.

Huang Bamei died in Taipei in 1982 (age 76) after devoting the last decades of her long and action-packed life to caring for children orphaned by the Chinese Civil War; an amazing life that, quite honestly John and Eryk would rather talk about than have lived through. 

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