Interpretation of Nanjing Massacre

As the ancients said, the sun and the moon grow on books. There are Leng Yue in Qin and Han Dynasties, music and dance in Tang and Song Dynasties, and sad songs in Ming and Qing Dynasties, which show the bleak world and the various life styles. Let reading become a habit, take books as friends, cultivate self-cultivation, and let life have the soul of poetry and books. Let reading become a pursuit, take books as teachers, think intelligently, and make the source of ideas come alive. This article is my reading experience of Nanjing Massacre. Welcome to read it.

Resume of Zhang Chunru

Born on March 28th, 1968, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

1968- 1989 He grew up with his parents who studied physics and microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

1989, received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Illinois.

1990, a reporter for Chicago Tribune, writes important press releases. Engaged.

199 1 received a master's degree in writing from Johns Hopkins university. He married Dr. Brett Douglas, an electrical engineer, and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in July.

1995, a freelance writer, writes articles for Chicago Tribune, new york Times and Associated Press. In winter, I finished the preparatory work for the book Nanjing Massacre: The Forgotten World War II Massacre in the National Archives and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and went to Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou for a six-week in-depth investigation.

1996, the mystery of Qian Xuesen, the father of Chinese missiles, was published.

1July, 1997, went to Nanjing, China to investigate the historical materials of the Nanjing Massacre.

1February 1997, 17 Nanjing Massacre: The Forgotten World War II Massacre was published.

1998, won the annual National Women's Award of the All-China Women's Federation.

1In August, 1999, "Nanjing Massacre: The Forgotten World War II Massacre" was filmed as a TV program and became one of the special topics of the Historical Exploration Channel.

On May 3, 2002, he received an honorary doctorate from college of wooster, Ohio.

In August 2002, my son Christopher Douglas was born.

On April 28th, 2003, The History of Chinese Americans was published.

1oct 9, 2004 165438+ committed suicide with a pistol in a car in Gallos, California.

1968.03.28-2004.438+0438+0.09, 36 years old.

Title: People who look for their names.

Quote:165438+1On October 9th, Ms. Zhang Chunru ended her life at the age of 36. In her short life, she endured great mental pain, but left memories for our whole nation. With this memory, it reminds us that there was such pain in the long river of history. Because of this pain, even if we are scattered all over the world, we can feel each other's blood connection in one breath. She made us forget who we are and where we came from.

Iris Chang, Zhang Chunru. Both sides of the mirror.

IRIS CHANG is an American girl, born on March 28th, 1968, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Her parents moved to the Midwest from Taiwan Province Province in 1960s, and she was an American citizen from the moment she was born. She can speak Chinese fluently, but she can't read and write Chinese. Because for her, English is her mother tongue.

Pure as, the language comes from the Analects of Confucius: I am glad to know it: I started it and I like it; What we get from it is the same purity, the same beauty and the same beauty. ? Spring means harmony and beauty. Chunru, the name of a girl in China, is my relative in China, my sister and compatriot, and a figure that will never be mistaken among thousands of people in the global village.

Iris Chang, Zhang Chunru. who is it?

Where can you get it? Pure as? There are different flavors in this name: The Analects of Confucius is the bitterness of parents' longing for their motherland; The meaning is beautiful, and it is the sweetness of parents' beautiful sustenance; The original intention is harmony, which is the bitterness of parents' fear of not being able to integrate into the American ethnic group. Therefore, IRIS CHANG, who was born in America, can speak Chinese. It is often mentioned in conversation that there was a big city called Nanjing on the other side of the ocean in the distant year 1937. What happened in that city that year? About how her grandfather escaped from the city, about how the Yangtze River water turned red overnight.

There is no evidence that Zhang Chunru and her parents have met the black writer Alex? Have you read this sentence in Harry's family history novel Roots: The most precious thing for a person is to know who he is and where he comes from? However, Zhang Chunru did look for things that happened in Nanjing 1937 in the school library and English history books, and scenes that were repeated by his parents for countless times. But she was disappointed. There is no 1937, no Nanjing, and no Red River. If these things don't really happen, then what all parents say about China is fact or imagination? Thus, China became an illusory concept. Without 1937, there would be no Nanjing and China, only Zhang Chunru. People without roots will lose their names.

So it may be understandable why a girl who graduated from journalism department is so interested in rocket physicists like Qian Xuesen. He even wrote a book, The Mystery of Qian Xuesen, the Father of Chinese Missiles, and dedicated his first book to this man. Qian Xuesen left America. Qian Xuesen was accused in the United States. Espionage? Be sentenced to prison. After returning to China, Qian Xuesen became the father of Chinese missiles. There is an invisible line from the United States to China and from Qian Xuesen to Qian Xuesen. Maybe this line can also connect Zhang Chunru and Zhang Chunru. The English name of the book The Mystery of Qian Xuesen, the Father of Chinese Missiles, is literally translated as Silk.

1994 65438+In February, when IRIS CHANG saw the black photo of the Nanjing Massacre for the first time in her life in Cupertino, a suburb of San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley, California, the silk thread straightened. Zhang Chunru felt very angry, and the intensity of this emotion greatly exceeded that of Zhang Chunru. Nanjing did exist, and the Holocaust did exist, but in all English non-fiction books, in the nearly 60 years after the Holocaust, there was no mention of this history that should not be forgotten.

199765438+February, 60th anniversary of Nanjing Massacre. Two years later, Zhang Chunru visited 14 survivors, consulted thousands of pages of historical documents, and published her English version of Nanjing Massacre: The Forgotten World War II Massacre. As soon as this book came out, it shocked English-speaking countries, ranking first in the American charts for several months in a row and was named the most popular book of the year. In the following years, it was reprinted more than ten times, with a print run of over 500,000 copies. With her own efforts and courage, she faced that terrible history and told the world that the chronicle of human cruelty to compatriots is a long and sad story. If we want to compare such horror stories, then in the history of the world, few atrocities can match the Nanjing Massacre during World War II in intensity and scale.

Zhang Chunru said? Forget that the Holocaust was the second Holocaust. ? American critic George Will is listening to the Japanese right wing? Fiction of Nanjing Massacre? After reading her book, she said: Because of Zhang's book, the second rape in Nanjing ended. ? When the truth of the massacre is hidden, the massacre will always be a massacre. Only when the Holocaust is known to the world can ghosts stay away from hunting and become a historical freeze.

She may not even know how many people in China accidentally picked up the book "Nanjing Massacre: The Forgotten World War II Massacre" and never put it down again. After reading it, they burst into tears. There are too many such stories and people, in America, in France, in Malaysia, on airplanes, in bookstores and on the Internet. There are old overseas Chinese who have emigrated overseas for more than 30 years, and there are fourth-generation Chinese in Nanyang. They can't stop reading, because those words are painful and burning, because they are branded on their roots.

The old overseas Chinese said: As a person who has lived in the United States for 30 years? Old overseas Chinese? I am rich? Why? Don't care about China culture. For example: I feel far away from the history and society of China; Has been naturalized and rooted; Real life is busy, how can we have time to think about such mysterious and abstract things? Besides, the China issue is so complicated, what role can I play as a cultural marginal task? However, on April 17, I was in Berkeley listening to Zhang Chunru talk about what happened to me after the Nanjing Massacre. Why? I had to throw it into the wastepaper basket ... If Zhang Chunru and Rabe were so concerned about China, I grew up in the cultural soil of China as a person who ate China's milk and later immigrated to the United States? Old overseas Chinese? There is really no reason not to care about everything in China.

However, while winding countless compatriots with silk thread, looking back at this darkest and most horrible history in human history, Zhang Chunru is also enduring great mental pain. Who can face his own kind, and when his own kind is brutally ravaged by atrocities, he will not feel torn and his eyes will be torn? In the process of writing the book Nanjing Massacre: The Forgotten World War II Massacre, Zhang Chunru often? Trembling with anger, insomnia, nightmares, weight loss, hair loss? . She has done a responsibility for all of us that she hasn't done in 60 years, so she has suffered for all of us.

After writing the second book, Zhang Chunru turned his attention to the United States 150 years ago. There, there are also a group of silent compatriots. As coolies, a large number of Chinese laborers entered the United States from the middle of the19th century and worked as gold miners and railway laborers. From 65438 to 0865, the number of immigrants in China surged to 50,000, 90% of whom were young men. In the same year, the Central Pacific Railway Company recruited the first batch of 50 workers from China. Seeing that China people can bear hardships, their wages are low and they are obedient, the company began to recruit a large number of people from China, and a total of 654.38 million China workers participated in the railway construction in the United States.

The contribution of China people has made great contributions to the railway construction in the United States. Their fighting spirit and working standards even surpassed those of Irish workers. 1869 In April, a boss who hired laborers from China said that his workers could lay 10 miles of tracks every day. Another boss who hired Irish workers didn't believe it. The former expressed his willingness to gamble with $654.38+$00,000. As a result, China laborers laid more than 65,438+00 miles of railway tracks in 65,438+02 hours and 45 minutes.

After the completion of the railway, Americans worried that China workers would take their jobs, and the United States began to exclude China. 1882 passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to expel Chinese from the United States. 150 years have passed, but these compatriots who have worked hard and made outstanding contributions to the construction of the United States have been forgotten, as if they never existed. Zhang Chunru wrote her third book, History of Chinese Americans, for them and for herself. Zhang Chunru said that when she was 12 years old, a white classmate asked her, which side would you stand on if there was a war between China and the United States? Zhang Chunru said that until now she didn't know how to answer. This incident made her realize that although she was born in the United States, in the social definition of Americans, she is not an American, but an American from China. Therefore, in order to make people realize that Chinese are actually part of Americans and they have made indelible contributions to the development of the United States, she wrote this book.

Through this book, I once again stood on the opposite side of Zhang Chunru. She realized that? The experience of Chinese in America is not a gradual single line. As one of the model ethnic minorities, they have not gradually developed from the persecuted bottom to the top like some ethnic minorities. China people are in a cycle in the United States, and American society has been spinning with tolerance, acceptance, doubt and fear. ? She still stood on both sides of the mirror at the same time, struggling painfully. Zhang Chunru once said that she regarded the book A History of Chinese Americans as? Her personal love letter to America? But how many people can understand this feeling?

Zhang Chunru is going to hit the road again as Iris Zhang. A research tour of her fourth book. This book mainly describes the officers and men of the American tank battalion who fought against the Japanese army in Bataan Peninsula, Philippines during World War II. They were later detained and brutally abused by the Japanese army. During a survey trip, Zhang Chunru collapsed physically and mentally and had to be hospitalized. After being hospitalized, she continued to struggle with depression. From the "Nanjing Massacre" to her recent story about the Japanese mistreatment of captured American soldiers in World War II, it is a cruel and bloody history. These contents are also related to Zhang Chunru's etiology.

The tragedy finally happened. On October 9th, 2004/KLOC-0, Zhang Chunru committed suicide with a pistol in his car in Gallos, California. In the last letter to her family, she said, I hope they will remember Zhang Chunru before she got sick. That? Have you dedicated yourself to life? Zhang Chunru, that? Dedicated to career, writing, family? Zhang Chunru.

Who does she want her family to remember? Is it Zhang Chunru or Zhang Chunru? She lost the name Zhang Chunru, she found it again, and she found two pieces of history for us. But it seems that this is still not the answer she wants, and she is still looking for it in this world. Now there is no Zhang Chunru in the world, and we can't put our sadness and gratitude behind her. Only the wind is blowing from a distance, perhaps only in that distant wind, and her breath, and the steps she is looking for.

Zhang Chunru's son is Christopher Douglas, 2 years old and 3 months old.

Zhang Chunru's Legacy

Three books: The Father of Chinese Missiles-The Mystery of Qian Xuesen, Nanjing Massacre: The Forgotten World War II Massacre, and History of Chinese Americans.

Two friends: John? Rabe was a member of the German Nazi Party. From September 1937 to April 1938, Mr. Rabe was elected as the chairman of Nanjing International Security Zone, responsible for the protection of refugees in the security zone, which was at the time of the Nanjing Massacre. He saved the lives of 250,000 people in China from the Japanese bayonet. As a witness of the Japanese massacre invading China, his diary recorded more than 500 tragedies in detail.

Ms Zhang Chunru wrote a book about? Nanjing Massacre? Library information, Association to commemorate the victims of the Nanjing Massacre? Through her contact with Rabe's granddaughter, Mrs. Reinhardt, she made a transatlantic search, and finally made Rabe's diary, the blood evidence of the massacre, public and rediscovered. And let the people of China find this? Schindler in China? .

Minnie? Vautrin vautrin used to be a priest in China and left a diary. Where 1937? 194 1, accounting for about a quarter of all her diaries, recorded in detail the Nanjing Massacre committed by the Japanese invaders in Jinling Girls' School and the Japanese colonial rule in Nanjing in the following years. She is remembered by Nanjing citizens for protecting Nanjing women from Japanese invaders. These diaries, reports and articles have been sleeping in the special collection room of Yale University for many years. They were discovered by Ms. Zhang Chunru in 1995 and made public.

A courage: After the lecture at Berkeley University, it's time to ask questions. The first questioner was an Asian man who came up angrily and threatened that their group was collecting information to prove that everything written in Zhang Chunru's book was a lie. The atmosphere was quite tense at that time, but Ms. Zhang replied gracefully that she welcomed any new and reliable information, adding: Seeking truth is my interest. ? She once again stressed that she didn't mean to discredit the Japanese, because she was convinced that this was also a problem of human nature, and everyone should be self-vigilant and learn from history.

An Unfinished Dream: Zhang Chunru once said in an interview with reporters? I think early marriage is very helpful to my career, so that I can devote my energy and time that I would have spent on dating and establishing relationships between men and women to writing. ? Zhang Chunru calls her husband her husband? Best friend, economic planner, spiritual counselor, masseur? Although they are different races, they have a lot in common with each other. She hopes to have three children in the future.