My last stay before Beijing was in Shenyang, home to some of the most important sites from the so-called “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression” (1931-1945). I’ll go through the places I visited in their chronological order.
The September 18th Historical Museum memorialises the date in 1931 when Japanese forces launched a false flag operation in Manchuria as a pretext for invasion. As this event is generally recognised as occasioning the war with Japan, the museum naturally moved beyond it to discuss the conflict more broadly. Three themes were focussed on: the brutality of the Japanese occupation, the supineness of the international community and the Communist Party’s critical role in liberating China. The first two are uncontroversial, though the second is fairly ironic given China’s current flouting of international law. The third, however, is highly dubious. In reality, the Communists played a fairly minor role throughout the war, with Nationalist forces bearing the brunt of Japan’s wrath. This was evidenced by their trouncing in the subsequent civil war against the Communists, who, by contrast, emerged from the Second World War relatively unscathed. Such a flagrant rewriting of history is unsurprising, though no less disheartening when one thinks of the millions of Nationalist soldiers whose sacrifices receive scant recognition in China’s official narrative of the war. Echoing my experience in Dandong, I saw throngs of official tour groups, this time comprising military personnel rather than Communist Party members. It’ll be interesting to see how the audiences compare in Beijing.
The rolling cage was a favoured Japanese torture instrument
Shenyang is also home to the best preserved Japanese POW camp in China. Unfortunately, I spent most of my time here on the phone to Alipay (yet again) trying to unblock my only means of making digital payments. The museum was quite small but informative. It was particularly touching to see photos of former American POWs returning to the camp in 2008. I wonder whether such initiatives would still be encouraged under the current pall of Sino-American antipathy.
Rounding off the war sites, I visited the former site of the military tribunal for the trial of Japanese war criminals. The museum was also fairly modest, owing to the fact that only relatively minor war criminals were tried here. The trial took place in 1956, by which time all of the war’s key architects had been sentenced in Tokyo and the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see how this event connected with other places I’d visited, including displays on the trial of lower-level Unit 731 participants and Puyi’s testimony against Manchukuo officials.
Last but certainly not least was the enormous Mao statue (I believe the tallest in the world) that proudly occupies the middle of Zhongshan Square in downtown Shenyang. This will be a tough one to beat.
With some extra time to play with before my train to Beijing, I headed to nearby Fushun to visit the Lei Feng Memorial Hall.
Lei Feng is one of the Communist Party’s most fêted figures. China celebrates an annual day in his honour on the 5th of March and officials have proposed that the government submit an application for him to be given UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status.
Who was Lei Feng you ask? Supposedly, he was a model patriot soldier tragically killed in an accident at the age of 21 in 1962. Yet the historical consensus outside of China is that he was a total fabrication. That the memorial hall was renovated as recently as 2015 underscores the enduring potency of his myth. Visitors are exhorted to “Learn from Lei Feng” by reading musings from his 200,000-word diary (pretty impressive for an adolescent with only a basic level of education) and poetry, both of which tirelessly wax lyrical about Mao and the Communist Party. I was genuinely impressed that they managed to stretch this fiction across 4,000 square metres. At the end, you’re invited to test your knowledge on one of the quiz machines, with a Lei Feng Reading Pavilion close by should any of his memorable aphorisms elude you. The memorial is testament to the continued subordination of truth to ideology in China. I was encouraged to see some students messing around in one of the exhibition halls, though the majority attentively reading the displays suggests that far too many are in danger of taking this drivel seriously.
Postscript: In case anyone’s wondering what to buy me for Christmas, there’s a Lei Feng video game in which you dutifully complete menial tasks, such as (I kid you not) sewing socks, to level up. The prize: Chairman Mao’s Collected Writings of course. No wonder they all do their homework in China!