Nanjing Massacre Museum

The days are running out for when we have free time to see Nanjing and the weather is getting temperamental, so Matt and I took advantage of our penultimate Sunday and went on a  happy trip to the Nanjing Massacre Museum. The museum of Death, as we’ve affectionately named it. 

Some sculptures exhibited outside the museum, each based on real people from photos the Japanese took during the time.

It documents a major tragedy that happened in China’s history that I and no one I know has ever heard of! 300,000 Chinese people were violently murdered by invading Japanese soldiers. 

It was a pretty somber place to say the least! It was interesting though, when we went into the grounds of the museum we were wondering why we felt so sad so soon. The site is cleverly designed with grey stone walls, straight sharp edges and melancholy music to give an overall atmosphere of depression. 

The route of the museum takes us through the main exhibition with many photos taken by Japanese photographers, army artifacts, stories of survivors and memorials to people who were martyrs and foreigners who helped the locals. 

After this cheery exhibit we walked out across the ‘mass grave of 10,000’ where thousands of bodies are buried below a pebble court.

 Then into a small hall to see uncovered bones of killed Chinese people, openly displayed for everyone to see. Obviously, the general mood created by the museum is very depressing, so to lift everyone’s spirits again, there is a peace garden, with the message of, although all these terrible things happened, let’s learn from history and strive for peace in the future. A nice sentiment to leave with…from the Death Museum.

Peace out!