Chapter 3 investigates the frequent accidents caused by American military vehicles, the most common trigger of everyday tensions, as well as GIs’ turbulent relationships with rickshaw pullers. Following frequent accidents caused by drunk driving, speeding, and negligence, the Jeep turned from an object of enchantment, being a symbol of Allied prestige and a cultural spectacle and popular commodity, into a military tool of intimidation, danger, and harassment, threatening the existing order of the Chinese society and nation. As the two sides fought over speed limits, economic compensation, moral responsibilities, and legal justice, the Jeep–GI duality, embroiled in local street politics with rickshaw pullers, became the ultimate symbol of prolonged American occupation trampling Chinese sovereignty.

Chapter 4 examines American soldiers’ actual and perceived sexual relations with Chinese women, the most sensitive subject that triggered the strongest anti-American sentiment. While Chinese conservatives, out of racial and sexual anxieties, maligned women who consorted with GIs, liberals and self-identified “Jeep girls” ingeniously invoked the language of modernity and patriotism. However, in the wake of the Peking rape incident, the once lively debate over modernity was quickly silenced as nationwide protests raged against American imperialism.

Chapter 2 explores American servicemen’s everyday lives through their sensory encounters with China. While largely maintaining a privileged lifestyle separate from Chinese society, they also forged intimate connections with local populations by exchanging goods, service, language, and culture, an encounter that both followed and contradicted official policies and popular representations. As tourists, consumers, cultural messengers, and diplomats in the field, their encounters with China were characterized by fascination and contempt, enchantment and alienation. While their sensorial experiences and narratives were conditioned by preexisting Orientalist beliefs and racist prejudices, GIs’ cultural identities were reshaped by daily interactions involving new sights, smells, tastes, sounds, and touches.

The epilogue explores the enduring legacies of this historical encounter between American soldiers and Chinese civilians. In the People’s Republic of China, the recurring persona of the Chinese victim facing American brutality, further popularized through propaganda during the Korean War, continues to influence popular Chinese anti-American nationalism. In the United States, while the occupation of China remains a largely forgotten history, practices in China created important precedents and patterns for US military involvement with other nations in the following decades. As tensions between the two nations reach new heights today, the legacy of this “lost era” continues to be contested through divergent historical accounts from both countries, shaped by radically changing geopolitical concerns. The shadow of the American occupation remains long and haunting.

The introduction provides historical and theoretical framings for this book. It situates the American military presence in postwar China within two interconnected contexts of China’s civil war confrontations and America’s global occupation. It engages with existing historiographies by locating China in the American empire and locating America in Communist propaganda. Through the micro-lens of the everyday, it also analyzes the actual and critical links between grassroots frictions and Sino-US relations.

Chapter 5 analyzes the everyday impact of American goods on Chinese lives and views of America. Massive quantities of industrial products such as instant coffee, Coca-Cola, canned food, penicillin, and DDT poured into postwar China through American aid and war surplus sales, creating new and the only direct experience many had of America. This growing consumption engendered Chinese fears of capitalism crushing domestic industries and US materialism corrupting Chinese morality. Meanwhile, American military’s stringent “halt or shoot” policy, implemented to protect US properties from theft and black marketing, led to frequent killings of civilians. The policy gave rise to the deadliest type of grassroots encounters, resulting in legal disputes and political crises.

Chapter 1 examines the the US military operations in China within the volatile context of the civil war and the emerging Cold War. As the US forces accepted the Japanese surrender, clashed with Communist forces in sporadic skirmishes, and adjudicated trials of Japanese criminals in China independent of the Nationalist Government, they staged an American victory, might, and justice to both enemies and allies. The tactic of “show of force” was used in a “peaceful” mission to ensure submission and deference. However, its diverse, ambiguous, and at times contradictory objectives created significant military and political challenges. Ultimately, occupying China became a mission impossible.