New generation takes on mission of remembering Nanjing Massacre
The second installment in Yang Xiaoyan's Nanjing Massacre book series is set in 1937 and follows Wu An, a 12-year-old boy who is sold to a Chinese soldier hoping to disguise himself as a father and a civilian to evade the Japanese troops and rejoin the fight.
"'An' literally means 'safe' in Mandarin, as I wanted him to be safe. Wu is my grandma's surname," Yang said in an interview with Xinhua.
In November 1937, Yang's grandparents fled from Nanjing, then the Chinese capital, shortly before it was captured by invading Japanese troops on Dec. 13. Over six weeks, the invaders killed approximately 300,000 Chinese civilians and unarmed soldiers in one of the most barbaric episodes of World War II.
"I felt obliged to teach our next generation, in the form of children's literature, about the bitter past of our nation," she said, noting that she had read all available survivors' accounts of the massacre to write the series.
As the remaining survivors of these atrocities more than 80 years ago are now passing away, many like Yang are taking over the baton to disseminate the truth of this dark time in history.
AFTER THEY LEAVE
Nanjing, located in east China's Jiangsu Province, was a prosperous city in 1937.
"There were people doing acrobatics in the streets, and people telling stories and selling snacks," massacre survivor Chang Zhiqiang recalled in an earlier interview. He was a happy 9-year-old boy when his life changed on Dec. 13, 1937, along with the lives of tens of thousands of others.
Chang witnessed the torture and killing of six of his family members in the Nanjing Massacre, including his infant brother, who was tossed into the air by Japanese soldiers using a bayonet.
His daughter, Chang Xiaomei, is now 65 but didn't learn the details of the tragedy her father had lived through until about 10 years ago, when a Japanese scholar visited the family.
"Childhood trauma had tormented him all his life, and I knew I had to do something for him," Chang Xiaomei said. After the visit, she began accompanying her father when he went to rallies, gave testament and took interviews, and she gradually grew to understand her family's past.
She found that many people didn't know about the Nanjing Massacre. Once when she was on a train, a young man asked her if 300,000 people had really been killed in Nanjing, she said.
"We must help generations of people to remember that period of history, remember our suffering and inspire us to move forward on the road ahead."
She began documenting her father's life in 2017 to share the impact the events had had on him with other people. Three years later, she published a book that was later translated into Japanese and English.
Chang Zhiqiang passed away in December 2022. Today, there are just 32 registered Nanjing Massacre survivors -- who have an average age of over 94 -- down from the 1,756 figure recorded when Nanjing counted survivor numbers for the first time in 1987.
"There are fewer and fewer survivors who can tell the story," said Chang Xiaomei, who was granted the official status of inheritor of historical memories of the Nanjing Massacre in 2022.
According to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, there are currently 32 people who have been given this status, the youngest of whom is just 9 years old. These inheritors record the lives of the survivors, open social media accounts to spread the truth of this history, and pass that truth on over generations.
Chang Xiaomei often gives lectures in primary schools. She is now considering documenting her father's experiences in a picture book to help more children learn about this period in history.
AFTER THEY GROW UP
Like Chang Xiaomei, author Yang Xiaoyan learned the specifics of her family's bitter past quite late -- shortly before her grandfather died in 1991. She learned that although her two uncles had managed to leave Nanjing before the massacre, they did not survive the war.
It was not until 17 years later, when she came across historical materials on the Nanjing Massacre in a library, that she had the idea to teach children about these events.
With great support from the press, the author and primary school English teacher has completed the first two books in her "Smile in the Thorn Bush" trilogy. And her first book, "Xiaocong," is set to be translated into Arabic.
Yang said that while doing her research, the history she was learning would sometimes plunge her into darkness. During meetings, she had to sit near the door so she could escape easily should she need to.
"I do wonder if children would be able to accept these stories," she said. "So I avoid direct depictions of bloody scenes. But I cannot completely avoid the violence that took place, otherwise the work would not be powerful enough."
Yang once met a young girl at a lecture she was giving who told her that her mother wouldn't allow her to read the books because she thought they were too scary. Yang remembers telling her to read them when she had grown up.
More often than not, Yang's feedback from readers is positive. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she was surprised to see a great number of people at a lecture she was giving during a book fair in Shanghai. Some parents even told her that they hadn't known much about the massacre before they had read her books, and that they would buy more books for their children to read.
In 2014, China's top legislature designated Dec. 13 as a national memorial day for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre. On that day each year, a siren sounds through the city and Yang teaches her students its simple lesson: If they had been in the same classroom more than 80 years in the past, the sound would signal that they couldn't stay in the school and learn. This lesson, she tells the children, teaches everyone to cherish the lives they can lead today.
"A nation without a past has no future," she told Xinhua. "Young people are in a period when their perceptions of the world and of life are being formed. I hope that they will read more history books."
The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, located at a burial site for massacre victims, opened to the public in 1985. Yang said that she had been impressed by the design of a contraption in the hall that releases a drop of water every 12 seconds, with each drop representing someone who was killed in the massacre and the number of seconds between drops reflecting the frequency of deaths during the tragic episode in Nanjing's history.
Since it became the main venue for the national memorial ceremony in 2014, the hall has attracted approximately 5 million visitors every year. It has received 125,278 comments from visitors so far this year, with a daily average of more than 400. Words such as "history," "peace," "remember" and "prosperity" appear frequently in these comments.
According to memorial hall statistics, about 70 percent of all users of its 11 online platforms are below 35 years of age. From 2014 to 2023, content including key words such as "national memorial" and "national memorial day" on its Sina Weibo account saw views increase from 2.03 billion to 32.2 billion.
MAY PEACE PREVAIL
The Nanjing No.12 Middle School was founded by U.S. missionary John Magee, who covertly recorded 105 minutes of footage documenting the barbarity of Japanese invaders in 1937. This footage is thought to be the only film record of the massacre.
Shi Xiaobing, vice president of the school, told Xinhua that the massacre is something that many adults in Nanjing know all about. When the siren wails on the national memorial day each year, his family stands on their balcony to mourn, he said.
"The future is to be carried by generations of children, who should shoulder their own responsibilities," said Shi, 43. "By learning the history we hope to teach them to love their motherland, and to understand the hardship through which the happiness they know today was achieved."
The school puts on a host of activities every December, including speeches, debates and singing competitions. One recent debate marked China's new visa-free policy for Japanese tourists.
Shi used to volunteer in the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, and he found that in recent years, knowledge of the Nanjing Massacre has increased among children and young people. "Children are confident enough amid the fast development of our country, and they can look our devastating history square in the eye."
Chen Baoyi, 16, will be the host of the school's mourning gathering on this year's national memorial day. She has known about the Nanjing Massacre since she was very young. Through education both at school and in the memorial hall, she has developed a rational view of the tragedy. "When it occurred, China was underdeveloped," she said. "So we now have the obligation to build a stronger country to avoid a repeat of such a tragedy."
Her classmate, 17-year-old Gao Jing, sees the study of the Nanjing Massacre as a way to commemorate its victims. Learning the truth about this history has not made her hostile to present-day Japan. Like many of her peers, she likes to watch animated Japanese movies like "Detective Conan," and she often buys cultural products associated with these films.
And that is what Shi Xiaobing likes to see. "Remembering history is not remembering hatred," he said.
Shi's views are shared by Yang Xiaoyan. "The message we would like to send is not that we should hate any particular country, but that we should hate war itself. In Japan, many people also lost their lives in the war," she said. Remembering history is not in conflict with traveling to Japan, she noted, and she herself is a fan of Japanese movie stars such as Yamaguchi Momoe.
"We hope that in the process of learning history, we can cultivate the critical thinking abilities of young people, so that they can gain a proper view of history. We would also like to see China and all countries in the world enjoy peace in the future."
To bring the history of the Nanjing Massacre to a broader international audience, Yang plans to translate her works into English. In addition to her "Smile in the Thorn Bush" trilogy, she has also authored "Ningsheng Ningsheng," which was inspired by a commemorative poster bearing the images of two children -- one from 1937 and the other from 2017 -- looking at each other across time.
At the end of the book, eponymous protagonist Ningsheng has become a college student and reads a comment in the memorial hall guestbook: "History is not horrible. What is horrible is the disregard for and oblivion of history. May peace prevail."