I have been posting a few of these informational posts on facebook for a while back. There are times many Chinese items are listed incorrectly (most times trying to provide more info to sellers/dealers, which falls on deaf ears) and they end up selling on ebay for a lot of money. For this thread, post war hat badges will be discussed. 

 

1946-1950

After the war, the Chinese army changed their uniform and insignia designs. However, they continued to use the previous ski caps and other uniform items even towards the very early 1950s. Officer hat badges were changed from the simple sun badge to one that is surrounded by a gold wreath with five plum flowers and a red ring around the sun. These were worn on visor caps, not the ski caps. Visor caps were very seldomly worn during WWII. I believe around late 1945 before adopting the wreath design, they had visor caps with just the round sun badge only.

 

Pictured are some examples that I have of the post war new designs. The top one has a maker stamp on the back, which has a Taipei mark. Interesting how it is purple instead of red. The others are made out of copper material, gilded, and paint or glass enamel. There are bullion versions.

The picture of the troops is from Feb. 1947. Second picture shows General Sun Lijen in March 1949. Third is of General Yan Xishan in July 1947. Sources Life archives through Google.

1950s-1980 Taiwan Era

When the ROC set up the government on Taiwan, they slightly changed the hat badge and removed the red ring. Why did they remove it? The story goes, the red ring represented the communists and it surrounded the blue sky and white sun symbol and was bad type of "feng sui." They kept the rest of the design. With a smaller army and land mass, there was better quality control when producing the hat badges. The design was more formal with a thinner wreath and a standardized sun in relation to proportion size of rays and circle. The hat badges from what I have seen are stamped brass.

 

Badge:

1st Lt. Artillery. He is wearing the Taiwan era badge. The uniform should olive drab or dark green HBT. Note his name patch which is the mid to late 1950s.

 

1955 中華民國四十四年 (44th year of the ROC) dated name/unit patch. On the right is a plum flower.

 

1981-Present

Some changes were made in 1981 to many insignias of the ROC armed forces. The army officer's hat badge had a slight change. The hat badge wasn't made out of thicker metal, thinner now, and used some plastic with felt material. The thinner wreath/plum flowers tries to mimic the bullion style. The middle is made out of two pieces and in plastic. The sun's size was reduced in size, but the blue sky is the same size.

 

There are some that have the enameled sun version. There are also a few with all embroidered (no metal/plastic) examples.