Today (March 28) is the birthday of Chinese female writer Zhang Chunru. The Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre victims of the Japanese invasion of China released a video on the official weibo to pay tribute and commemorate it.
Flowers bloom on the clouds| pure, eternally swaying irises
She made the world aware of the truth of the Nanjing Massacre
Zhang Chunru is a native of Huai'an, Jiangsu Province, and was born in 1968 in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. She had a well-to-do and peaceful life, working as a reporter for the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune before writing and speaking full-time.
In December 1994, Zhang Chunru saw several photographs of the Nanjing Massacre:
The bodies of hundreds of Chinese civilians floated across the river, as well as severed heads, severed bellies, and, their faces twisted and deformed, with expressions of pain and shame that are unforgettable.
These sights, in her school library, in the city's public library, in the world history textbooks she had studied, found nothing, not even her teachers. She said that the Nazi massacre of Jews was well known all over the world, but in the West, the facts of the Nanjing Massacre were unknown, and it was my duty as a descendant of Chinese to write about it.
Zhang Chunru traveled to Nanjing in 1995 to interview survivors of the Nanjing Massacre and visit the Memorial Hall of the Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre by the Japanese Invasion of China. (Source: Yangtze Evening News Network)
She spent three full years investigating in Nanjing, Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and other places. She searched for and excavated a large number of archival historical materials, including unpublished diaries, notes, letters, government reports, transcripts of the Trial of War Criminals in Tokyo, and letters with Japanese veterans of World War II.
During this time, she also unexpectedly found the "Chinese Schindler" Mr. John Rabe's "Rabe Diary" detailing the Nanjing Massacre, as well as another precious historical material, "Weitlin's Diary".
John Rabe and Wittlin.
But writing is a nightmarish process, and she not only has to face but also narrates the heinous atrocities one by one: "beheading, burying alive, burning alive, digging up hearts, splitting corpses, drowning in cesspool..." She often "trembled with anger, had nightmares of insomnia, lost weight, and lost her hair."
In December 1997, after endless inner torment and grief, her book Nanjing Massacre: The Forgotten Catastrophe of World War II was officially published in the United States.
Zhang Chunru is the author of "The Nanjing Catastrophe - The Forgotten Massacre".
The publication of the book brought her great academic honors, and Professor William Kirby, chair of the Department of History at Harvard University, said in his preface that it was "the first english book to fully study the Nanjing Massacre."
But her life has since fallen into endless fear. Retaliation and harassment by the Japanese right-wing forces also followed, and she could only change her phone number frequently, never daring to disclose information about her husband and children at will.
On November 9, 2004, Zhang Chunru, who was exhausted by depression, committed suicide by drinking a bullet in her car in Gallos, California, ending her short life of 36 years.
salute! Iris that never fades
On March 28, the topic of #Iris that never withered was on Weibo's hot search, and netizens left messages to remember this Chinese female writer who spent her life to justify history and ask for justice.
Tribute, commemoration!
Remember her name!
Source: China Overseas Chinese Network (ID: qiaowangzhongguo) comprehensive Invasion of China Nanjing Massacre Compatriots Memorial Hall Weibo, China Overseas Chinese Network, netizen comments, etc
Editor: Han Hui
Editor-in-charge: Li Mingyang