Shanghai Saturdays

I'm just wondering, have any of my readers heard of the Rape of Nanjing before? If you haven't, here's the abbreviated story combined with my experiences.

One stop on my recent trip South was Nanjing. The city recieved its name, which means Southern capital, because it was the capital of a couple of early Chinese dynasties. The Ming Dynasty then moved the capital to Beijing, but Nanjing continued to be an important commercial center in Southeastern China.

But once the dynastic system ended and the nationalist government was set up in the early 1900's, Nanjing was again made the capital of the country. In the early 1930's, Japan began an invasion campaign in China, and worked South eventually coming upon Nanjing in December of 1937.

They began to slaughter the locals. Depending on who you ask, between three and four hundred thousand chinese civilians and "unarmed" soldiers died in about a forty day time period. There are a lot of questions surrounding many of the concerns associated with why and how this happened, and I prefer not to get into those questions on this blog.

But while I was in Nanjing, I got to visit the memorial to the massacre. It was a very moving experience. The memorial is built over a mass grave, and after a sombering entrance and walk around the width of the grave site, visitors walk through a cut away section of the grave. Piles of bones fill one section and entact skeletons cover another.

Experiencing this place was a cold, hard reminder of the needless,non-strategic violence that war comes during a long, entense conflict. It was also a reminder of how important love is to a society. Love must be extended to all, even our enemies, or society begins to malfunction and senseless death insues.

This is not to say that war is not necessary at times, but through this experience I've come close (probably as close as possible without actually fighting) to understanding for myself that war is indeed hell.