An era of anguish

For the occasion, a new permanent exhibition was launched in July in the Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japanese Aggression located by Lugouqiao (also known as Marco Polo Bridge) in the southwest outskirts of Beijing, where the war broke out.

Gunshots ring out. Flares roar with smoke. A two-and-a-half-minute multimedia show, which combines oil paintings and various types of technical effects, vividly takes visitors back to Lugouqiao on July 7, 1937, when Chinese troops’ persistent and courageous fight against Japanese invasion began in earnest.

The 6,700-square-metre show displays 1,170 pictures and 2,834 pieces of wartime cultural relics, compared with around 900 pieces in previous exhibitions.

The show “Great Victory, Historical Contributions” is the museum’s biggest expansion since its opening in 1987. About 100,000 people have seen it so far, according to museum statistics.

Eight sections highlight the united struggle against the invasion initiated by the Communist Party of China and supported by different social strata in the country and overseas Chinese communities. The timeline starts with regional warfare in Northeast China dating back to 1931, to the ultimate victory in 1945.

“For a long time, the West has generally considered World War II to have begun in 1939 in Poland,” says Li Zongyuan, deputy curator of the museum. “We expect the exhibition to tell the world that it actually began in this land two years earlier, a fact that has gradually been recognised by academia overseas.” One of the new displays is a juxtaposition of seized Japanese guns in a transparent showcase under visitors’ feet, a way for people to step down on the vicious machines of war – for good.

Li says the details of many touching individual stories in the displays resonate with visitors. These include farewell letters left by Chinese soldiers to their families before setting off for battlefields.

Also highlighted is the international cooperation to fight against the Axis during WWII including the Kuomintang-led Chinese Expeditionary Forces to Burma (today’s Myanmar) and the efforts of a Chinese diplomat, He Fengshan, in Vienna, to save Jewish people from Hitler’s gas chambers.

Tools used by people in Sichuan province to construct an airport were also collected by the museum to put on show.

During the war, the Allies’ air forces once launched most of their raids on Japanese targets from Chinese bases. Some US bombers that ran out of oil also landed in China, like those in James Doolittle’s famous raid on Tokyo in 1942. Bulletins guiding Chinese people to save US pilots are among the exhibits. Some previously lesser known perspectives of the war for the Chinese public are also revealed, like a Chinese journalist’s reports from the Eastern Front, and Chinese engineers’ contribution to the success of the Normandy landings.

“When we put Chinese people’s resistance in the backdrop of the world’s fights against fascism, it shows how many contributions we made to the final result,” Li adds.

According to official Chinese statistics, the Japanese side had 1.5 million casualties. Before the Pacific War broke out, about 70 per cent of Japan’s troops were stuck on Chinese battlefields. However, the Japanese invasion also led China to lose about 35 million soldiers and civilians.

An online platform memorialising that war was also launched on the museum’s official website. Web users are able to provide their old pictures and file records of the war at this virtual memorial hall.

“We stick to the facts and history talks,” Li says. “Only the abundant files can vividly show Chinese people’s persistent struggle and glorious victory.”