Nanjing Massacre Memorial - Febuary 25th 2012
I recently have returned from my Nanjing weekend trip. It was a great visit for many reasons and over the next few entries I will be talking about it.
Randy (the other teacher from Seattle and Olympia) and I arrived in Nanjing Saturday afternoon. After getting set up at our hotel we decided we would be visiting the Nanjing Massacre Memorial.
This memorial is one of the most powerful places I have ever been to. How the site is laid out is as you walk through the entrance you see plaques with words in Chinese and English of survivors writing about what happened that day and what they went through. Above the plaques are statues, the first is a woman holding her dead child and underneath is described the rape she experienced and the killing of her child. There are ten statues like this as you enter the Memorial proper.
The Memorial has many squares the final of which is the Peace Square which we accidentally saw first. The peace square has a huge pool of water leading to a giant memorial with an angel at the top. The Memorial is called the Peace Memorial.
The Memorial as a whole, but especially this park is very peaceful. It's easy to just enjoy the moment and reflect on what happened and existence itself.
We then retraced our steps to go through the Memorial Hall itself. The Hall expressed the history behind the tragedy and had artifacts from people who survived, at least in the Museum area...there were iron nails that came from the bodies of victims that had been stabbed into the corpses, and bullet cartridges...
the next area was a mass grave that had been discovered in the 1980's. The bodies that were open were small corpses, most likely the bodies of children.
A large area with flowers, to honor the dead where incense could be burned. Remembrance, nation, ancestors, the past brought to the present.
Atrocities like this have occurred throughout time and continue to happen. What can we do as people to prevent it from happening? How can we help the victims heal and the bullies from harming them in the first place? The question of healing is something I can answer, not so much the question of how to stop it from happening in the first place, beyond education...I'm still figuring it out.
After leaving the room of the mass grave there was a room with black marble and water with lights hanging from strings burning like stars. The room was the room of reflection and as music played in the background we arrived once more at Peace Square. Where the Peace Tower given new strength and meaning.
Randy (the other teacher from Seattle and Olympia) and I arrived in Nanjing Saturday afternoon. After getting set up at our hotel we decided we would be visiting the Nanjing Massacre Memorial.
This memorial is one of the most powerful places I have ever been to. How the site is laid out is as you walk through the entrance you see plaques with words in Chinese and English of survivors writing about what happened that day and what they went through. Above the plaques are statues, the first is a woman holding her dead child and underneath is described the rape she experienced and the killing of her child. There are ten statues like this as you enter the Memorial proper.
The Memorial has many squares the final of which is the Peace Square which we accidentally saw first. The peace square has a huge pool of water leading to a giant memorial with an angel at the top. The Memorial is called the Peace Memorial.
The Memorial as a whole, but especially this park is very peaceful. It's easy to just enjoy the moment and reflect on what happened and existence itself.
We then retraced our steps to go through the Memorial Hall itself. The Hall expressed the history behind the tragedy and had artifacts from people who survived, at least in the Museum area...there were iron nails that came from the bodies of victims that had been stabbed into the corpses, and bullet cartridges...
the next area was a mass grave that had been discovered in the 1980's. The bodies that were open were small corpses, most likely the bodies of children.
A large area with flowers, to honor the dead where incense could be burned. Remembrance, nation, ancestors, the past brought to the present.
Atrocities like this have occurred throughout time and continue to happen. What can we do as people to prevent it from happening? How can we help the victims heal and the bullies from harming them in the first place? The question of healing is something I can answer, not so much the question of how to stop it from happening in the first place, beyond education...I'm still figuring it out.
After leaving the room of the mass grave there was a room with black marble and water with lights hanging from strings burning like stars. The room was the room of reflection and as music played in the background we arrived once more at Peace Square. Where the Peace Tower given new strength and meaning.