{"word_count": 855, "character_count": 5733}
The Memorial to the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre 侵华日军南京大屠杀遇难同胞纪念馆 is located in Nanjing City 南京市, near the Jiangdong Gate 江东门 which had been one of the hot spots of the Nanjing Massacre. On 13 December 1937, the Japanese Army started to commit war crimes in Nanjing that included mass rape and mass executions, what with the book of Iris Chang became to be known as the „Rape of Nanking“. Her contribution to the memory of the massacre is recognized with a statue of her at the entry of the Memorial.In 1985, the Memorial was opened for the first time and consisted of a main exhibition hall and the graveyard grounds. Ten years later, a huge entranceway and several statues were built to extend the site. In 2007 the Memorial expanded again and “a new exhibition, a grand new entranceway, and a peace garden” (Denton 2014: 144) were added. According to Patrizia Violi, the museum in its present form is composed of four main parts, The Square for Assembly 公祭广场, The Exhibiting Area 史料陈列厅, The Site Area and The Peace Park 和平公园.The Square of Assembly includes a big memorial wall (Wall of Calamity) with a big cross and the Peace Bell 和平大钟 which all are dedicated to the alleged 300.000 victims of the massacre.Picture 1: The Cross to remember the Nanjing Massacre VictimsIn front of The Exhibiting Site, mainly consisting of the new exhibition hall that was renovated in 2007, can be found a ten feet high statue, depicting a mother holding the body of her murdered child (Violi 2012: 46). The exhibition hall can be divided into two parts. The first floor deals with Nanjing-Massacre itself, whereas the historiography of the Sino-Japanese Conflict is shown on the second floor.Picture 2: Nanjing Massacre MemorialThe outdoor Site Area consists of many individual memorial sites. Here, the visitor is directly confronted with veritable extent of the massacre, by regarding the Graveyard Square 遗址 with the relicts of a mass grave of 10.000 people 方人坑遗址.Picture 3: Skeletal remainsAnother site is the Mediation Hall 冥思厅 which represents a huge dark box, with some candles and a water basin in it (Denton 2014: 147). A further part of the site is the Memorial Square 祭场. It offers a little temple to pray for the victims.     The whole outdoor site is peppered with statues and sculptures which are confronting the visitor with the tortures of Nanjing's civilian population such as the sculpture “Disaster in the Ancient City” that shows “the half-buried body of a victim” (Denton 2014: 144).Picture 4: The Japanese massacred 300 000 civilians in 6 weeks (from Dec 13, 1937 to Jan, 1938). They still honor the heroes who did it, calling it an "incident."The last part of the Memorial is the Peace Park. It consists of a long water tank that is headed to the thirty feet high Statue of Goddess of Peace 和平女神雕像.Picture 5: The Statue of the Goddess of Peace in the Peace ParkAll outdoor exhibition sites are kept in grey and other bleak colors, so that the visitors get absorbed by the cruel and depressing feelings, the Memorial wants to convey. Insofar, the Memorial to the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre cannot be compared to other memorial sites like the Yuhuatai Martyrs Memorial Park 雨花台烈士陵园 which emphasizes that the killing of martyrs at least contributed to the victory of the CCP and therefore to the modern society that China is today. The Nanjing Massacre Memorial refrains from such “twists” due to the ambition of Qi Kang 齐康 (1931-), who planned the site, to build a memorial that gives the feeling of entering a tomb. (Denton 2014: 114), thereby preferring national humiliation to the pride of so-called national liberation.BibliographyChang, Iris (1997): The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. New York: Basic Books.Denton, Kirk A. (2014): Exhibiting the Past – Historical memory and the Politics of Museum in Postsocialist China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. (Chapter 6: Heroic Resistance and Victims of Atrocity – Negotiating the Memory of Japanese Imperialism) &#160;Fogel, Joshua A. (2000). The Nanjing Massacre in history and historiography. Berkeley: University of California Press.Official Website of the Memorial to the Victims of the Nanjing MassacreSchmidt-Glintzer, Helwig (2008): Kleine Geschichte Chinas. München: C.H.-Beck. VerlagVioli, Patrizia (2012): “Educating for Nationhood: A Semiotic Reading of the Memorial Hall for Victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders”, in: Journal of Educational Media, Memory &#38; Society, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 41-68Website Red Tourism: www.redtourism.com.cn/tris/front/zh_CN/spot_427.htmlYang, Celia (2006). "The Memorial Hall for the Victims of the Nanking Massacre: Rhetoric in the Face of Tragedy" (PDF).&#160;List of PicturesPicture 1: Cross to remember the Nanjing Massacre Victims (author: Marc Andre Matten)Featured Image/Picture 2: Nanjing Massacre Memorial (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Hall_of_the_Victims_in_Nanjing_Massacre_by_Japanese_Invaders#/media/File:Nanjing_massacre_memorial_hall.JPG, author: Alexey Romanov)Picture 3: Skeletal remains (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Hall_of_the_Victims_in_Nanjing_Massacre_by_Japanese_Invaders#/media/File:Danvesha20.jpg, author: The original uploader was Px820 at Japanese Wikipedia.)Picture 4: The Japanese massacred 300 000 civilians in 6 weeks (from Dec 13, 1937 to Jan, 1938). They still honor the heroes who did it, calling it an "incident." (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Hall_of_the_Victims_in_Nanjing_Massacre_by_Japanese_Invaders#/media/File:Nanjing_massacre_bronze_head.jpg, author: Amy Keus from Constanta, Romania)Picture 5: The Statue of the Goddess of Peace in the Peace Park (author: Marc Andre Matten)