2 Days in Nanjing- 4/1/23 - 4/3/23

Memorial Hall for the Nanjing Massacre -4/1/23

The Nanjing Massacre also known as the Rape of Nanjing (then known as Nanking) occurred during December 1937 to January 1938 after the Japanese army occupied Nanjing City, then the capital of the Republic of China. Over the next six weeks, Japanese soldiers murdered 300,000 Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers, raped, looted, burned, and torture the locals without any restraint.

The Memorial hall of the victims in Nanjing massacre by Japanese invaders officially opened to the public on August 15.1985. After more than 30 years of construction and development, the Memorial Hall has received more than 100 million visitors from all over the world. The Memorial hall is located at Jiangdongmen street witch was a site where thousand of bodies were buried by Japanese soldiers known as the Mass grave of 10,000 corpses.  Today the Memorial Massacre Memorial hall stands a remembrance for the victims of the war atrocity.

The memorial is free to enter and start with outdoor sculptures depicting the tragedies and atrocities of the Nanjing Massacre.

The Memorial hall is a grey-white marble and black-white granite, ensnaring visitors into a feeling of solemnity as they walking through open courtyard to the main building.

 Family Ruined is the 40 ft. tall sculpture of mother and child. 

The sculpture depicts a grieving mother holding her dead son and crying to the heavens. Her body weathered by time and covered in ragged clothes.  The work is a symbol of the millions of suffering mothers in the nation.

Family ruined.

We are now headed to the outdoor square with lots of sculptures depicting the brutality of war.

The square is lined with bronze sculptures by We Weishen who studied at Nanjing University and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

An intellectual bent under his wife's limb body bears the epitaph:

How wretched she was! My dear poor wife! The devil raped you, stabbed you...

We were together even though we died-The helpless struggle of a dying intellectual.

On the left is How wretched she was! My dear poor wife!

On the right is Run, The devils are coming

A thirteen-year old carrying his grandmother who had died in the bombing, Flee-flee-flee

My dear mother in the eighties, Hurry up, run way from the devils

Poignant sculpture of a raped woman, half clothes lamenting:

Never will a sanctified soul bear the humiliation of the devils!

Only to die! Only to died! Only death can wipe off the stain

  Among the sculptures, the most disturbing is the Last Drop of Milk. It depicts the true story told by Chang Zhiping, a massacre survivor who witnessed his baby brother taking the last milk from the breast of his dying mother.

Poor thing.  Not knowing mum has been killed.

Blood, milk and tear have frozen, never melting.

An old man carrying a dead infant.  On the right an old man comforting a dying child: Ah, close your eyes, rest in peace! You innocent soul! You poor boy!

Screams of the souls of the dead sculpture is made of two geometric forms, one with a dying man reaching his hand to the sky and shouting in anguish. A gap between the two forms is the gateway to the museum, symbolizing both a passage to death and life. When walking through the gate, visitors cannot help but to feel a hatred of war and a longing for peace.

Close view of the sculpture.

Close view of the Screams of the souls sculpture.

NEXT...The exhibit