Christmas Travels Numero Tres - The Nanjing Massacre Museum and then --> Suzhou.

The next day was our final day in Nanjing. Nanjing is also famous for being the site of vicious Japanese attacks during the Japanese War of Agression and occupation of China, and one cannot really go to Nanjing without seeing the Nanjing Massacre Museum, so that was our plan for the morning. We caught a bus that I thought would go to the museum, and clearly my psychic vibe was switched on that day because not long later we were there. The museum really shocked us to the core. The Japanese idea was that if they decimated Nanjing, the then capital, the country would not be able to recover, and from 13th December 1937 to January 1938, so that is what they did. They killed indiscriminately. Their excuse was that any soldier could take off his uniform and blend in with civilians, so they must cull the civilians too in order to cut out the military threat. But that doesn't explain why they killed women and innocent little children too. And raped them without a care in the world. They also set fire to the city and dropped bombs all over it. The final death toll was over 300,000 people. Regular Nanjing citizens had tried desperately to clear up the dead and had created mass graves, which now lie underneath various Nanjing tourist and shopping sites. The Nanjing Massacre Museum itself lay over one of the biggest mass graves, which held 10,000 people. Apparently blood was running through the streets like rivers, and the stench of burning flesh was overpowering. The Japanese did not stop there and occupied Nanjing for years, until finally they were turfed out by the American attacks at the completion of the Second World War, and through the combined efforts of the Communist People's Liberation Army and the Capitalist Nationalist Army, who held off their own civil war to get rid of the Japanese presence. While they were in Nanjing, the Chinese were forced into effective slavery. The Japanese set up Comfort Centres, which were basically forced brothels filled with Chinese women for the enjoyment of the Japanese soldiers. To this day, the official Japanese line is that the entire massacre did not happen and that the comfort centres did not exist, despite the fact that hundreds of Japanese soldiers have confessed to it of their own initiative. The Chinese are now saying that they do not wish to punish the Japanese in any way, but want the Japanese to admit and apologise so they can continue in peace.
There were many moving exhibitions, including the Crying Wall, which was a giant motif with merely some of the names of the victims in that particular grave. As the wall stretched into the distance, we realised just how many innocent people had been massacred. We also saw some Japanese forms of torture, including a big tube with spikes on the inside; they would cram a Chinese person inside and then roll it around. Lovely fellows. There were a few parts of the museum where you could see what the ground was like underneath, and it was just a mass of bones. It was barely possible to see which parts of the human form they were from. We also saw the skeleton of a baby and a nine year old girl both of whom had had huge long nails hammered into several parts of their body, including the skull; this was one of the many Japanese methods of killing. The most affecting exhibition was a dark room with just the sound of a water drop every 12 seconds, with the names and photographs of victims reflected onto the walls. The drop represented the death toll; for an entire THREE WEEKS, a Chinese person died on average every 12 seconds. Utterly shocking.
Throughout the entire museum visitors are requested to keep a respectful silence, which made the atmosphere very sombre and glum. It was broken up by a huge group of schoolchildren who were much more interested in me and Liam than the displays of their murdered countrymen and in fact followed me around the museum until I told them off. They were much too young to know what they were seeing and could often be seen laughing. Their particular favourite was a painting entitled 'The Rape of Nanjing' which depicted the horrible scenes of the violence; the kids were amused to see naked people and clearly didn't understand that this was a painting of people twisted into horrific agony. It was a shame to see but I suppose the teachers should be blamed for bringing a giant group of small kids to such a moving place. We were pretty impressed with the museum's quality of exhibition, as for China it was of excellent standard, and we were both left fairly shellshocked by the massacre until we reached the final part of the museum, which really let the rest of it down. It was effectively a big rant at the 'foreign imperialist powers' (they like that phrase a lot in China) and how if they hadn't weakened China, then this would never have happened, so really, France Britain and America, blame yourselves. Oh, and Taiwan is ours, so there.


The huge and very moving statue outside the massacre museum. The poem underneath reads:

Never returns the son killed

Never returns the husband buried alive

Sorrow drowns the wife raped

Heavens...

Just about says it all, really.

Equally huge and equally emotive is the gigantic memorial cross inside the museum grounds.

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A bit of a disappointing and hugely irrelevant ending to the museum, and then we were out in the bright sunny open air. Just time to sample some street food (omelette wrap with spicy sauce and wafer curl things) and then we took ourselves off to the train station. The next train to Suzhou was not leaving for quite some time and was annoyingly expensive. We wasted some time in an internet cafe, looking at things to do in Suzhou in preparation so that we didn't waste time like on the first day in Nanjing. I was starting to feel quite under the weather at this point but was hoping I wouldn't get ill.
We had no seats for the train to Suzhou so perched outside in the corridor bit. It was quite a short journey, though it was already late evening. When we got to Suzhou we got straight into a taxi and asked for a Hostelling International hostel. The hostel was located on a beautiful old style street. Suzhou is one of China's water cities and is sometimes described as the Venice of China. There were canals everywhere lined with little lights and it was all very nice to look at. The hostel we originally wanted to stay at was being renovated or something, but they pointed us in the direction of another one very nearby. We wandered down the quaint little streets until we found our hostel, which was the former house of an important family in Suzhou, the Pangs. Our hostel room was lovely and felt like pure luxury to us! We went out found some street food for dinner. Liam had some chow mein and I had some spicy chilli fried shredded potato. It was Chris' birthday so I gave him a call from the hostel phone and then off to bed.

Pretty pretty Suzhou.