Nanjing - The Flowers of War

On Tuesday night we went to go see a movie called "Jin líng shí san chai" or "The Flowers of War" with Joe and Bernardo. It was a drama that took place during the rape of Nanjing in 1937. Prior to the film we had discussed a bit about history and I became increasingly aware of the gaping hole in my knowledge of the Japanese role in world war two and about Asian history in general. I'll go ahead and blame most of this on the American education system but I really didn't learn much about Asia in school. Primarily because I was interested in learning more about the Nanjing massacre I wanted to go to Nanjing and see the war memorial.

It ended up being me, Danny and three of the post docs that went on a day trip to Nanjing. Danny and Joe did most of the planning. They mostly just wanted to see a new city and check out the sights. I wanted to see the war museum and whatever else was there I figured was fine too. We took the high speed rail. Danny, as usual complained about how ridiculous it is that America hasn't built high speed rail yet. It is quite efficient, we traveled about the distance between NY and DC in an hour.

When we got to Nanjing, first we looked around the war memorial. It was not too different from visiting the holocaust memorial in a lot of ways. The entrance had several sculptures inscribed with text describing the massacre.












Once we entered there were a lot of photos showing the brutal ways the Japanese behaved in the war. There were also Japanese items from the war and newspaper articles published during the massacre. I read the New York Times article. It didn't have any details of what was actually happening in Nanjing. After all the time I spent in school learning about the Nazi's and World War 2, it was sort of amazing how little I knew about the Japanese, aside from Pearl Harbor. The Chinese army (including Danny's grandfather) retreated to a city called Chong Qing because they felt a resistance in Nanjing was futile. The Japanese soldiers killed around 300,000 civilians in Nanjing, only people who managed to flee survived. The soldiers violently raped and looted in the city. The Japanese also had a unit called 731 that used really scary germ warfare comparable to Dr. Mengele's experiments in the Holocaust. Unit 731 did things like human experiments with frostbite or leaving chocolates filled with poison for the children to eat. The Japanese also captured women and had a system of forced prostitution. I had heard of some of this before, but not much.














There was also information about people who set up relief and tried to help civilians including a Nazi chairman named John Rabe. He was working in China at the time and took charge of the safe area for Chinese refugees from Nanjing. He used his position as a Nazi to save about 200,000 people.













The thing that stood out the most in the memorial was the site of the mass grave. The museum was built on top of the excavated site of mass graves which were displayed for visitors to see. Me and Danny were debating how we felt about treating the victims' bodies this way. On one hand it felt disrespectful not to bury them properly but on the other hand it was meant to be a memorial to them. There was also a feeling of trying to show the remains as evidence of the atrocities committed because the Japanese government never apologized for their actions and there are still deniers of any wrongdoing.












As we left there was a garden that was meant to be sort of tranquil and victims' names were engraved on the walls and they had a bunch of white birds in a bird coup. I learned a lot about the Asian history of World War 2 but I left feeling like I wanted to know a lot more.

















Random and unrelated thing I learned: I kept wondering why they kept painting the bottoms of trees white and Joe told me the trees are actually covered with insecticide.

 After the memorial we got a quick lunch and then grabbed a bus to Zhong Tong Fu, the former home of the president Chiang Kai Shek when the KMT, Chinese Republican Party, was in power. We just took a quick look at the outside and then continued on by subway to the Purple Mountain.

At Purple Mountain we went to see the tomb and memorial to Sun Yat Sen. It was a really pretty monument with a ridiculous number of steps and a pretty view. I don't know that much about Sun Yat Sen except that he overthrew the Qing dynasty and everyone in China seems to think he is great.






















Our last stop was to take the cable car to the mausoleum of the first Ming emperor, Zhu Yuan Zhang. We got to see a bit more of the pretty Ming architecture. It was nothing compared to the Forbidden City though in my humble opinion. Overall Nanjing was an interesting place to visit. We may try to go back again and see a few more sights there.