Nanjing and the Nanjing Massacre Museum

Nanjing is a three-hour trip on a high-speed train from Shanghai. With such an important city so rich in history and culture, I took my parents for a three-day, two-night visit when they were here.

Nanjing was China's "other" capital during the 20th century (and previous to that as well). While Beijing means "north capital," Nanjing means "south capital." It is similar to Philadelphia in that they served as their countries' capitals during revolutionary periods of their countries' histories. Nanjing today is a modern city with a population of over 6 million residents.

The first two emporers of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) ruled from Nanjing before moving the capital up to Beijing. Beijing remained the capital of China until Nanjing again became the capital of China in 1911 after the fall of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).


Nanjing remained the capital until the Communists defeated the Nationalists in 1949, resulting in their fleeing to Taiwan and the subsequent founding by the Communists of the People's Republic of China with its capital in Beijing and the founding of the Republic of China by the Nationalists in Taiwan.


As the capital of China during World War II, Nanjing was the focus of the Japanese invasion. It is also the site of tremendous war crimes and atrocities committed by the Japanese against the Chinese during a six-week period in 1937-1938 in which over 340,000 Chinese civilians were murdered and 60,000 Chinese women were raped. The event is called the Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing.

China has invested heavily in infrastructure in the last 10 years. The train stations are modern and bullet trains service all major cities. Here we are waiting in a terminal at the train station in Shanghai
We stayed at the Holiday Inn in Nanjing. Holiday Inn means a lot different than it does back in the States... they are very nice here. The hotel anchored a very nice shopping mall where we enjoyed some of our meals...

One of the things that first got our attention about Nanjing is all of the trees along the streets. The shade on the trees really made it pleasant to walk around. I'm not sure what kind of trees they use, but they all split in half about 8 feet up, giving "two trees for one." It would be interesting to know if that occurs naturally of if that's helped along...

The first place we went to was the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. Dr. Sun Yat-sen is regarded as the Father of Modern China, recognized as such even today by both the Communists and the Nationalists. In fact, there are only two portraits in Tiananmen Square, one of Mao Zedong and the other is of Sun Yatsen.

At the age of 13, Sun Yatsen left China to join his brother who had emigrated to Hawaii. He lived with his brother for five years, learned English, converted to Christianity and graduated from high school before moving back to China. Eventually he moved and attended medical school at the University of Hong Kong, so Sun Yat-sen and I will soon be fellow alumni of that prestigious university!

Sun Yat-sen credited much of his revolutionary thought to figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Adam Smith, and Alexander Hamilton. Unfortunately he suddenly fell ill in 1926 and at the age of 58 he died of liver cancer. One can only imagine how different China could have been had he lived longer.

The mausoleum is built on the side of Purple Mountain. This sign states that there are 392 steps on 10 terraces until reaching the mausoleum.

Here are Mom and Dad at the base...

After 70 stairs or so, then you get to this part. Mom and Dad let me go up the rest of the way by myself!

Seriously, who needs exercise equipment?

Leaving the mausoleum, there were several small shops. Do you see what caught my eye here as we passed?

Look at that neon-blue hat with the yellow "USAF." I wonder what my fellow Air Force Airmen would say about that hat!

Then we were off to a section of Nanjing's city wall. Amazingly the city wall is fully intact, dating back to the 1300's.

If you're thinking that there is some resemblance to the Great Wall of China, you're right! This wall was built by the first two Ming Dynasty Emporers before they moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing. The wall turned out to be a "practice" wall. When the capital moved to Beijing, they built upon and expanded the Great Wall and finished it off with similar styling.

Short history of Nanjing's city wall...

A picture of the ancient city wall with the Cock Crowing Temple behind it on the left and in the distance on the right is a skyscraper that when completed will become the world's fifth tallest building. I love the mix of historical architecture, dull Communist apartment buildings, and ultra-modern skyscrapers.

Every brick used in the construction of the wall was imprinted with the company, location, date, and supervisor's name who oversaw the production of the brick. The Empire required a lifetime guarantee on the bricks!

An overview of how Nanjing was originally built. On the right is the Emporer's residence, similar to Forbidden City in Beijing but on a much smaller scale. Again, the dynasty took its lessons with them when they moved the capital. Unfortunately Nanjing's Forbidden City was leveled after the capital left Nanjing.

The next morning we went to the Nanjing Massacre Museum. This place requires at least three hours to appreciate the significance of what happened in Nanjing. Here's a picture of the outside, note the people in the lower left corner...

Each one of these statues is from a journal recording or photograph taken that are explained in the museum. Here are some of the captions underneath the statues...

I would have like to have asked these visitors what they were thinking by climbing next to these statues to smile with holding their two fingers up to take pictures. They really must not have understood the significance of what this museum is memorializing.

The number 300,000 is a reference to the people who were killed by the Japanese.

However, everything that was written states that 340,000 Chinese were massacred by the Japanese in six weeks from December 1937 - January 1938.

Pictures were not allowed inside the museum. I wish I could have captured some of the displays. One of them described the Nanjing Massacre as the "Forgotten Holocaust or World War II."

As the Japanese moved towards Nanjing from Shanghai, the government fled the city and temporarily established the capital in Chongqing.

Inexplicably, however, they not only did not order the evacuation of the city, but rather locked the city gates trapping the residents inside. The quote associated with this was that "It is better to be broken as jade than whole as glass." That's easy for somebody to say while he himself is evacuating to another city.

For more information on the topic, check out the movie "Nanking" based on Iris Chang's book "The Rape of Nanking."
Another interesting story from this period is the book and recently released movie "John Rabe" which documents how John Rabe, a German businessman living in Nanjing at the time was able to protect Chinese civilians from the Japanese soldiers under the Nazi flag, a Japanese ally during the war.

Our hotel was close to Zhonghua Men, the largest of the city gates to pass through the wall on the south side of the city.

You can only imagine what it would have been like to see this place back in the day.

At night...
Mom and Dad at the first of what is actually four gates of the gate.

Then we walked over to the Confucius Temple which is also a fun pedestrian area.

The temple...

As you can see, Confucianism has adopted some Buddhist rituals and has developed a religious sense.

There was a bell that you could ring three times for RMB 10 ($1.40). So Mom did it once and I did it twice...

Good times...

Then we went to KFC for dinner. KFC's outnumber McDonald's in China by over 2:1. I just had to take a picture of this cute couple. It is wildly popular for couples to wear matching shirts when they're out and about. Isn't that just so sweet?

The Concucian Temple square...

That was the evening. We got up the next morning and were on our way back home to Shanghai.