Nanjing

We thoroughly enjoyed Nanjing despite the late-winter chill. Its art museum is definitely one of the best in China with lovely displays of porcelain, textiles, bronzes, laquerware and more. The textiles were especially nice and the exhibit included a traditional brocade-loom. Quite a contraption! Unfortunately its operators were at lunch so we didn't get to see it in action and photographs were not permitted so I can't show it to you.

We naturally went to see the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum (http://www.nj1937.org/english/default.asp). [picture coming soon] It's design is clearly reminiscent of the design of other Holocaust memorial museums - lots of grey and black stone, sharp edges, candles, etc. The main exhibition hall contains a plethora of photographs from the period of the massacre as well as some artifacts. The photos are copiously annotated with far more text than we could reasonably read. To me, the most fascinating thing about the museum was how different it is from most Holocaust museums I have been to. While it is aesthetically quite similar, the content and tone is very different. Holocaust museums I have visited celebrate the victims and remain remarkably neutral in tone about the Nazis. Not that they paint the Nazis in an attractive light, but they tend to let the facts speak for themselves. Exhibits generally consist of heartbreaking photographs of the victims and artifacts from the camps and/or the ghettos. Not so at the Nanjing Massacre Museum. Although there are a few photographs of the victims, most are of the invaders. Essentially all of the artifacts are Japanese - uniforms, equipment, weapons, rank insignia, etc. Without the text you would be more likely to guess that the museum celebrated the conquest than that it repudiated the destruction. The text leaves no doubt, though. While Holocaust museums tend to avoid the language of hate, this museum refers unabashedly to the "Japanese Forces of Aggression," the "beastly atrocities" committed by the "Japanese militarists," etc.

Moving on to happier topics...the highlight of our stay in Nanjing was the Nanjing opera performance we attended Saturday night. Nanjing opera is wonderful and weird. I don't really have any notion of how to communicate what it is like except to say go see for yourself! It happens that the company we saw has an English translator on staff and provided quite good program notes and titles in English. Even without that, though, I think I would have been riveted. We saw 3 scenes - 2 comic scenes and a tragedy. The tragic scene was so haunting it actually gave me nightmares. I can still hear the otherworldy wailing in my head. Much more frightening than any horror movie!

And with that...back to this world in Beijing...