Nanjing Massacre Museum

       We went to the Nanjing Massacre Museum and it was so powerful. The Nanjing Massacre is so dear to my heart and it’s been very emotional being in Nanjing and knowing the history of what has happened here and seeing where these atrocities happened. The museum takes up a couple city blocks and consists of outdoor and indoor exhibits.  We did the indoor portion first.

         You start by walking downstairs into this battle scene that goes into this huge room which has the names of the 300,000 known victims up and down the walls. It was so overpowering and somber. I’m glad I wore my waterproof mascara because it was just overwhelmingly sad.

         Then you walk through all of these rooms that have horrifying pictures, stories, and displays of the horrors that happened here. It was such a reverent place and a spiritual environment. The museum has the same effect as the Holocaust museum in D.C., but this experience was so different. It’s just crazy walking through the museum in the city where all of this happened. Passing by other guests whose ancestors had to have survived this. Very moving.

         The museum itself is built over one of the mass graves of the massacre, so in the indoor exhibit as well as the outdoor exhibit they display some of the uncovered skeletons pilled on top of each other and it is pretty scary to look at. All I could do was cry.

         After walking through the indoor portion we headed outside. They have all of these statues depicting the victims of the massacre in all of their despair. They are beautifully done and tragic to look at. There was one courtyard, which has 300,000 rocks to represent all of the known victims, and then there’s this large statue of a mother searching through to find her child.

         At the end of the walk you go through one last mass grave and then there’s a peace garden. It shows how the Chinese have forgiven the Japanese and want to move forward to a peaceful future.