Memorial Hall for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre

When we come to Nanjing, we have to go to the memorial hall of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre, just as we can't forget the time of "December 13, 1937 - January 1938".

When the gray and white architectural tone comes into view, it is magnificent and solemn, which is also the pain that the city can never avoid.

The whole exhibition hall is divided into three parts: location exhibition area, remains display and historical materials display. From historical materials, cultural relics, architecture, sculpture, film and television and other means, whether it is farmhouse or comfort center, there are more than 300000 victims' names "crying wall", bookshelves with various heavy materials, and "12 seconds" when a drop of water falls every 12 seconds. The mass grave reproduces the tragic history of Nanjing Massacre and exposes the bloody atrocities of Japanese militarists.

Memorial Hall for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre

Located at No. 418, Shuiximen street, Jianye District, Nanjing City, the memorial hall of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese invaders is commonly known as jiangdongmen Memorial Hall. It is located at the site of the collective massacre of jiangdongmen and the mass burial ground of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre. It is one of the first batch of national first-class museums, the first batch of national patriotic education demonstration bases, the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units, and the first batch of national anti Japanese War Memorial facilities It is also one of the internationally recognized memorials of the three major World War II tragedies.

Jiangdongmen memorial hall was built to remember the inhumane Nanjing Massacre after the Japanese invaders occupied Nanjing, the capital of China. It is an empirical and site type special history Memorial Hall for the Chinese people to inherit the national disaster. It is also the only special history exhibition hall about the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese invaders in China and the host of the National Memorial Day.

As of 2015, the memorial covers an area of more than 120000 square meters, with a construction area of 115000 square meters, an exhibition area of nearly 18000 square meters, and a collection of more than 200000 historical relics. In 2014, it received more than 8.034 million visitors. From August 15, 1985, when it was completed and opened to the public, the total number of visitors was 60.7279 million. There were more than 3 million overseas visitors from more than 90 countries and regions, including the United States, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom, ranking second only to the Palace Museum in the world.

On December 1, 2015, the exhibition hall of the former site of Nanjing Liji Lane comfort center, a branch of the memorial hall for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre of Japanese invaders, was officially opened to the public. This is the largest and best preserved former site of the comfort center in Asia, and the only comfort center building identified by the living comfort women.

In September 2016, the memorial hall of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese invaders was selected into the list of "the first batch of Chinese 20th century architectural heritage".

Historical evolution

In 1982, the history textbook revised and approved by the Japanese Ministry of education changed the description of "invading China" to "entering". Japan's act of beautifying its aggressive history in the textbook incident aroused the indignation of the Chinese people.

At the end of 1983, with the approval of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Jiangsu Provincial People's government, the Nanjing Municipal People's government began to prepare for the construction of the memorial hall and set up a leading group for compiling history, building the museum and erecting monuments of the Nanjing Massacre, headed by the then mayor of Nanjing, Zhang Yaohua.

On February 3, 1985, Deng xiaoping visited Nanjing and inscribed the name of the memorial hall of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese invaders. Deng Xiaoping's arrival greatly promoted the construction of the memorial hall. The project started on February 20 (the first day of the first month). It was completed and opened on August 15 of that year, the 40th anniversary of the victory of China's Anti Japanese war. At the same time, Nanjing also set up monuments at 17 Holocaust sites.

On August 15, 1985, the Nanjing People's government built and opened the memorial hall for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese invaders. The site of the memorial hall is the jiangdongmen collective Massacre Site and the mass burial ground of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese invaders, so it is also called jiangdongmen Memorial Hall.

In 1995, the second phase construction of the memorial hall for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese aggressors began.

On December 12, 1997, the second phase of the project was completed.

On December 12, 2002, the "footprints of historical witnesses" copperplate road was completed and opened.

On March 1, 2004, the memorial hall of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese aggressors took the lead in opening to the public free of charge, receiving 1.14 million visitors that year. In the next two years, it received 2.2 million visitors in 2005 and more than 1.3 million visitors in the first half of 2006.

On December 13, 2005, the memorial hall was expanded on the basis of the original hall, and the second phase of the expansion project was officially laid.

Since June 26, 2006, the museum has been closed for expansion.

On December 13, 2007, the reopened Memorial Hall continued to implement the free opening policy.

In May 2015, the former site of Liji Lane comfort center began to be repaired, and it will be opened as a branch of the memorial hall after completion.

On December 1, 2015, the exhibition hall of the former site of Liji Lane comfort center, a branch of the memorial hall for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre of Japanese invaders, was officially opened to the public.

On December 7, 2015, the third phase of the memorial hall for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre of Japanese aggressors officially opened to the public.

On December 13, 2019, a donation ceremony was held at the memorial hall of the victims of the Nanjing Massacre. Shao Ziping, Chen Xianzhong and Jiang Guozhen, three presidents of the New York compatriots Association for commemorating the Nanjing Massacre, donated the "37 minute" version of the "one inch disk" of the American pastor John Maggie. Experts have proved that the "37 minutes" version of Maggie image has irreplaceable historical data, cultural relics and evidence value.

Construction scale

Overall layout

The memorial hall is divided into four functional areas: exhibition area, memorial area, peace park area and collection exchange area.

（1） Exhibition and assembly area: it is divided into historical materials exhibition hall and assembly square. Historical materials display, basic display and special display. There are theme sculptures on the assembly square, such as cry of wronged souls, monument, wall of disaster and Peace Bell. On December 13 every year, people gather here to sacrifice the victims, ring the Peace Bell and issue a declaration of peace.

（2） Site Memorial area: the area includes large-scale combined sculpture of "disaster of the ancient city", "footprints of historical witnesses" copperplate Road, "Snowstorm" poem stele wall, stone wall and Deng Xiaoping's handwritten Museum name, cemetery square, relief "disaster", "massacre", "memorial", "mother's call" sculpture, "mass grave" site display and memorial square, meditation hall, etc.

（3） Peace park area: with the theme of peace, the area is an important place for people from all over the world to have peaceful exchanges. Including the wall of victory, peace park, white marble sculpture "peace", zijincao garden, Japanese friends tree planting forest, etc.

（4） Collection exchange area: this area is a comprehensive functional area integrating collection, exchange and office. Its main facilities include academic lecture hall, library, special collection library, etc.

Phase I Project

The first phase of the memorial covers an area of 30000 square meters and a building area of 5000 square meters. Designed by Qi Kang, School of architecture, Southeast University, the memorial, with the theme of "life and death" and "pain and hate", has been built into a historical materials exhibition hall, a film screening hall, a bone exhibition room and a collection library. It has been rated as one of the "top ten excellent architectural designs of the 1980s in China".

The building is made of gray marble, magnificent and solemn. It is a special history exhibition hall with comprehensive techniques of historical materials, cultural relics, architecture, sculpture, film and television to comprehensively display the great tragedy of "Nanjing Massacre".

On the left side of the main gate of the museum is engraved the name of "memorial hall for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese invaders" written by Deng Xiaoping. The exhibition is divided into three parts: square display, remains display and historical materials display. The square display is composed of three exterior display places: Memorial square, memorial square and cemetery square. Among them, the memorial square is made up of a cross in shape, a monument engraved with the time of Nanjing Massacre, an abstract sculpture of "300000 fallen people", a large-scale combined sculpture of "disaster of the ancient city" and a dove of peace. The memorial square has a memorial stone wall engraved with the museum's name, lush pines and cypresses, and a stone wall engraved with "300000 victims" in Chinese, British and Japanese characters.

In the cemetery square, there are three groups of large-scale gray stone relief carvings on cobblestones, dead trees and the broken walls along the courtyard, as well as 17 small-scale steles on both sides of the roads inside the courtyard, which partly record the main sites and historical facts of the Nanjing Massacre. This is a miniature and centralized display of the memorial of the victims set up by the collective massacres throughout the city. There are also large-scale stone carvings, such as mother's statue, list wall of victims, atonement tablet, green tree and grass Ping and many other landscapes constitute the tragic scene of the Memorial Cemetery with the theme of life and death, sadness and indignation.

Among the remains are the coffin shaped remains exhibition room, which displays some of the victims' remains excavated from the "mass grave" in jiangdongmen, where the memorial is located, when the museum was built in 1985. After April 1998, 208 remains of the victims (in the topsoil) were excavated from the "mass grave" in jiangdongmen, where the museum is located

Chinese PinYin : Qin Hua Ri Jun1 Nan Jing Da Tu Sha Yu Nan Tong Bao Ji Nian Guan