Jiangxi soviets
The early rural war.
Maps of Jiangxi, Yan'an, Manchuria 1948, and the Yangtze 1949 are the four images a reader needs.
A fifth map -- the Strait -- is the afterlife.
Maps
Long March route
A retreat as a national myth-map.
Manchuria 1948
The decisive theatre.
1949 proclamation map
Mainland control vs leftover islands.
Strait
The afterlife line.
Portrayals
PRC "War of Liberation" film
A large official corpus.
Taiwan older textbooks
A rival official corpus, later revised after democratisation.
US "who lost China" press
The English political portrayal of 1949-51.
Nixon in China (opera / TV)
A later cultural thaw image -- diplomacy, not 1948.
The Last Emperor-adjacent Hollywood
Rarely the civil war itself; more Qing and Japan.
Korean War museums
The accidental English sequel portrayal of the PLA/PVA.
Rituals
National Day (PRC)
1 October -- founding as annual theatre.
Double Ten (ROC)
10 October -- a different founding claim.
Martyrs' shrines (Taiwan)
KMT war dead in a later democratic society -- a changing ritual.
Sayings
English "Red China" cartoons of the 1950s are artefacts of fear, not maps of 1948 logistics.
Korean War museums that omit 1949 miss why Chinese armies were available to cross the Yalu.