Nanjing: city with a tearful past

Another two-hour bus ride took us from Wuxi to Nanjing, where 300,000 people were killed in 1937 during Japanese’s six-weeks occupation. A Deconstructivistic memorial hall was built on the site where piles of skeleton was found. Located by survivors of the Nanjing Massacre, the Memorial hall covers approximately 280,000 sq.m. Before arriving at the exhibited section of the burial ground, Visitors first walked along a tall, dark, and hostile wall at entrance that leads to a lose cobblestone pathway which signifies the multitude of victims. Archaeologists point out that judging from the positions of these remains, many victims died of “abnormal death.” A young boys skull was located on his chest, and long nails were pierced into the bones of different victims, including women and children. The Japanese “sliced babies not just in half but in thirds and fourths,” author Iris Chang wrote in her book, the Rape of Nanjing. Chang succumbed to depression and took her own life in 2004, seven years after writing the book. The Memorial Hall is designed by Qi Kang, a Nanjing Architect who was six years old during the Massacre.