Some people say: Without her, the world would not know about the Nanjing Massacre.
Some people say: Many people know about the Nanjing Massacre, but they don't know her.
She, probably many Chinese don't necessarily know yet.
Once, there was such a question on Zhihu: We always say that we must not forget the national shame, but does the "Nanjing Massacre" have anything to do with us?
There is an answer that has been praised nearly 20,000 times, and many people have shed tears after reading it.
This is probably one of the most profound ways for the younger generation to remember history.
Related to this answer is her, Zhang Chunru.
On April 8, 2017, @Jiangsu China posted a message on Twitter:
On the north bank of the Guhuai River in Huaiyin District, Huai'an City, The Zhang Chunru Memorial Hall, which covers an area of 36,000 square meters and has an exhibition area of about 1,000 square meters, is officially opened to the public.
The memorial is named after Zhang Chunru.
She is Zhang Chunru
Twenty years ago, Zhang Chunru published a book that shocked the world, "Nanjing Massacre", and once published, it was on the New York Times bestseller list, translated into 15 languages, and caused a sensation in the world.
She fully demonstrated to the people of the world the crimes against humanity committed by the Japanese army against the Chinese people in World War II.
That is why, without her, the world would not have known about the Nanjing Massacre.
Knowing Zhang Chunru, we may wish to look at the answer that has been praised nearly 20,000 times.
The answer is as follows:
"What does the Nanjing Massacre have to do with me?"
Answer: Objectively, it doesn't matter.
You are an independent person, an independent individual. No one has the power to kidnap you with such historical events, and you can choose not to pay attention and express your opinion. It's your freedom.
But what does the Nanjing Massacre have to do with her?
Beautiful bar. She is Chinese-American. Happy family and happy marriage. He graduated from the University of Illinois in the United States in 1989 and later received a master's degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University. Her first book, "Silk – Qian Xuesen, the Father of Chinese Missiles," was critically acclaimed and won the MacArthur Foundation's Peace and International Cooperation Program Award. The future is bright.
Before the publication of her book, Western society knew little about the Nanjing Massacre. They knew about Auschwitz, about the millions of Jews, Poles, Soviets, and Gypsies who had been slaughtered by the Nazis, but if she hadn't chosen to study the Nanjing Massacre, they wouldn't have known what kind of atrocities the Japanese army had committed in the ancient capital of Jinling during World War II.
1997 marks the 60th anniversary of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre.
In that year, she published what is considered the first book in human history to "fully study the Nanjing Massacre in English" (by William Kirby, chair of the history department at Harvard University, who also wrote the preface to the book).
▲ "Nanjing Massacre - The Forgotten Catastrophe of World War II"
It was hard to imagine what forces sustained her research.
After reading one document after another, reports, diaries, and transcripts, how sad and indignant was she in her heart? What a shock?
Please read the original paragraph of the book:
In the two rows of captives in front of him, a pregnant woman began to fight for her life, desperately grabbing and beating the soldier who tried to drag her out and rape her, desperately resisting. No one came to help her, and in the end the soldier killed her and cut open her stomach with a bayonet, not only ripping out her intestines, but even picking out the squirming fetus. ”
This scene is not an isolated case in the book.
On December 13, 1937, 30 Japanese soldiers came to the home of Chinese, No. 5, Xinlukou, southeast of Nanjing. They killed the landlord who came to open the door, and then killed the tenant who knelt down and begged them not to kill the others, surnamed Xia. When the landlady questioned why they killed her husband, they beat her to death. Mrs. Xia hid her 1-year-old baby under a table in the living room while the Japanese dragged her out.
They stripped her naked and raped her, then stabbed her bayonet into her chest. The soldiers also inserted a perfume bottle into her vagina and killed the baby with bayonets. As they walked to another room, they found Mrs. Xia's parents and two teenage daughters. The grandmother was killed with a revolver by a Japanese soldier to protect her two granddaughters from rape; the grandfather clutched his wife's body tightly and was immediately shot.
The soldiers then stripped the two girls of their clothes and gang raped them: the 16-year-old was gang-raped by two or three people, and the 14-year-old girl was gang-raped by three people. Then the Japanese not only stabbed the big girl to death, but also inserted a bamboo pole into her vagina. The little one was only stabbed to death, so that she was not subjected to the atrocities of her sister and her mother," one foreigner later wrote about the scene. The soldiers also stabbed another 8-year-old girl while she and her 4-year-old sister were hiding under blankets on the bed. The 4-year-old girl spent too long under the blanket and almost smothered. Yuko was deprived of oxygen, and she suffered severe brain damage for the rest of her life. ”
……
"Almost no one knows that Japanese soldiers picked up babies with bayonets and threw them alive into boiling water pots," Yongfu said, "and they ganged up to rape women between the ages of 12 and 80 and killed them as soon as they could no longer meet their sexual demands." I have cut off people's heads, starved people, burned people, buried people alive, and more than 200 people have died under my hands. It was horrible, I literally became an animal and did all those inhuman things. It is really difficult to describe my atrocities at that time in words. I'm a devil. ”
This is the original words of Nagatomi Kakuto, a former Japanese soldier.
What is valuable is that in this book, she does not blindly accuse or vent, but analyzes at a deeper level why the Japanese army appeared this kind of anti-human atrocity, and analyzes the situation in the Japanese army at that time.
In her research, she also found important historical materials for the study of the Nanjing Massacre, "Rabe's Diary" and "Wei Telin's Diary". This is a more powerful proof of the crimes committed by the Japanese army.
During the writing of "Nanjing Massacre", she often "trembled with anger, insomnia nightmares, weight loss, and hair loss."
She is facing a history full of bad human nature, cruelty and bloodshed, and the Nanjing Massacre is an encyclopedia of torture, which she must face specifically and narrate: beheading, burning alive, burying alive, drowning in the cesspool, digging up the heart, splitting the body...
After writing the book, she had to face retaliation and harassment from the Japanese right-wing forces.
She kept receiving threatening letters and phone calls, which made her constantly change her phone number and afraid to reveal information about her husband and children, and she once told friends that she had been living in fear all these years.
Later she developed depression. In 2004, she shot herself in her car. He was 36 years old.
Her name is Chunru Zhang, a high-achieving student at Johns Hopkins University. Happy family and happy marriage.
He died young, only 36 years old.
Some say that despair of humanity is the main reason for pure suicide.
Zhang Chunru said that writing has given her a new understanding of human nature, that is, people can do everything, both the potential to do the greatest cause and the potential to commit the most evil crimes.
For me, who is also engaged in writing, I can empathize with it: she has seen through the fierce and vicious side of human nature, and her eyes are full of haze and sores.
What makes a person so casual when he picks up a knife and slaughters his own kind?
"What is twisted in human nature makes the most unspeakable sin become ordinary trifles in an instant," she said. ”
She learns deeply about history, remembers history, and that deep understanding makes you tremble, makes you collapse, makes you despair. Those things are so heavy that you can no longer smile at life, and only grief and sores remain in your heart.
So suicide seems to be the only way out.
She can choose not to take such a path, she can do other research in her lifetime, and realize the "American Dream" that everyone envies. The Nanjing Massacre was originally for her, and it had nothing to do with it.
Lu Xun said: Infinite distances, countless people, are related to me.
Zhang Chunru chose to study this period of history and present it to the world in this way until he sacrificed his young life. This is the responsibility that historical research should bear, and it is also the responsibility that our new generation of young people should have.
Oh, by the way, you said Zhang Chunru's contribution?
That is, Japan's pursuit of political power was interrupted.
In 2005, after Japan submitted its application for regularization, a petition initiated by South Korea and with the participation of 40 million people worldwide against Japan's regularization began. The United Nations received the petition on June 30. The petitioners demanded that Japan publicly apologize and make reparations for the crimes committed in World War II, or oppose Japan's becoming a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
The Japanese government has so far not apologized. A series of activities such as revising textbooks and visiting the Yasukuni Shrine also showed that he had no remorse in his heart. After the war, the Japanese government did not formally apologize, and the Yasukuni Shrine where it visited was still enshrined as Class A war criminals in the war of aggression against China.
Poor Japanese people also live in a kind of "collective amnesia", not because the suffering is too painful to choose to forget, but artificially delete it.
But the evidence left by the Japanese army is enough.
Today, we go to the Nanjing Massacre Victims Memorial Hall, where the bones of the victims, children's clothes and shoes, images of Chinese women forced to be comfort women, black-and-white photographs of the Japanese army that took pleasure in the massacre, not to mention the vast clouds of historical materials and archives.
I love Japanese anime, cherry blossoms, sushi, and Hokkaido in March.
I also appreciate the rigorous professionalism and excellent personal qualities of the Japanese people...
But for such a country, I have always held a deep fear and resistance.
I will always encounter some self-righteous "Chinese" who will stand in a seemingly rational, cultured, and learned perspective to explain how stupid it is for the masses of people to cry out because of patriotism.
But in this world, it is necessary to be so tough, stubborn, and do not accept the so-called "interest-oriented" people, such as Lu Xun and Zhang Chunru.
What do you say the Nanjing Massacre really has to do with us?
I think the relationship is: those of us who have not experienced war, and now on this land, there has been a massacre, so far, only a few short decades have passed.
We will carve it into our bones, put it into our blood, always take it seriously, always grieve, and our children and grandchildren will never forget it for generations to come.
It's easy to resonate with an emotional chicken soup for contemporary new media readers, but how much effort does it take to awaken half the world's memories of a piece of history?
So, remember, Zhang Chunru! This person was called the daughter of the city of Nanjing.
She used her life to run for 300,000 sleeping undead, but she was forever adrift overseas.
In her lifetime, she had only three books, "Silk," "Nanjing Massacre," and "History of Chinese Americans," but she assumed the responsibility of a flesh-and-blood Chinese child.
The Zhang Chunru Memorial Hall collects 129 physical objects donated by Zhang Chunru's parents, and is the first panoramic museum to display Zhang Chunru's life experience.
This is a permanent memorial to commemorate her exposure of the truth of the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese army invading China, and it will also become a communication platform for the sons and daughters of China at home and abroad to engrave national shame and cherish peace.
She made the world forget the way the word "conscience" is written
Source: Xinhua News Agency, Xinhua Net