china Worker Merchant student Soldier Officer

Shanghai, 1927

The day before, they were allies.

Shanghai, April 1927, the time of the White Terror. Assisted by police and gang lords, General Chiang Kai-shek surprises students, communists, and labor activists who had been, to that moment, his allies. The White Terror initiates a purge of all leftist influence from the Kuomintang, sparking a civil war that will last twenty years.

For narratives, select faces in the photograph.

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