China's First Martyr's Day

Never heard this mentioned anywhere else.
"These incredible aerial photographs show the vast expanse of China’s largest graveyard – The Cemetery for Red Army Martyrs.
They emerged as President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders solemnly presented flower baskets on Tuesday at the People's Heroes Monument in central Beijing to mark Martyr's Day, one of three new holidays created this year in a renewed focus on World War II.
Scores of ordinary people also lined up at Tiananmen Square to lay single flowers at the monument in Tuesday's nationally televised ceremony.



The cemetery of the Red Army in Chuan-Shan revolutionary base, the largest cemetery of the Red Army martyrs in China, constitutes cemeteries, sites of general hospitals of the fourth route armies and Wangping Village. The cemetery area covers 233,333 square meters, with 25,048 Red Army soldiers buried there.




It had its first Martyr's Day memorial service on Tuesday.

The other two holidays created this year, marking the Japanese surrender and the massacre of civilians by Japanese forces in Nanjing, refer specifically to China's fight against Japanese occupiers and were created during a Chinese government campaign to highlight what it has called a renewed militarism by Japan.
Tuesday's holiday has no explicit anti-Japanese theme, however, and refers generally to 'heroes who gave their lives to national independence.'
It falls on the day before China's National Day holiday, a several-day stretch known as the Golden Week when government OFFICES and many businesses are closed."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2776550/China-honours-fallen-Martyrs-Day-ceremonies-including-memorial-service-World-War-Two-victims-country-s-huge-230-000-square-metre-cemetery.html#ixzz3EwYwIWyr

 

Bags not being Japanese!
And a time to remember who their allies were...

 

CAC...I notice our news services are being very co-operative when it comes to reportage of the current protests in Hong Kong.

I've just been watching one journalist making a story out of mainlaind Chinese tourists taking photos of the protesters sitting 'in'. Their commentary on the pictures was that China has officially stopped mainlanders from touring for the largest national holiday on their calender. The journalist seemed to be quite certain that mainlanders are going to get a different message about the protesters than is being given by the Chinese news services themselves. He indicated there was little likelyhood, now, of mainland Chinese not discovering the true nature of what is happening in Hong Kong.

The whole tone of the story seems to have been that these protesters are on borrowed time, and that the government will see their actions as a dangerous development.

On this, i happen to agree with them. These people are in a portion of China that has many privelages over and above the regular Chinese population. For however much they feel that things could be comparibly better, I don't think they realise just how much worse it could be for them. Compared to the greater majority of Chinese, the Hong Kong people live relatively comfortably; it is for this reason that mainlanders like to holiday in the region, because it is very different and open.

Hong Kong is playing with fire, and our news services seem to be tutt tutting on behalf of the Chinese leaders.

Maybe our journalists and media remember who were our allies in WW2 as well, just as you were alluding to.


The media attitude to this is certainly very different to that which I recall from Tianamin Square. It's as if our journalists are so suddenly pro-Chinese leadership. They certainly have gone cold on the whole human rights record of the Chinese, with not a mention of the Falun gong situation for many, many months.

When I was in Brisbane, I saw a Falun gong member handing out leaflets. I read one. In it, they claim that as many as half-a million of their members are being held in dention centres and prisons. They further claim that many of their memebers are also being murdered for body parts to feed the transplantation market of China. A little internet digging does actually coincide with this story. If you want a body part, China is the place to go. They can find Kidneys for transplant in TWO WEEKS, and other body parts are similarly quick to be provided to clientele.

It's a real 'stink' of a story, when you consider that Falun Gong has no armed network, and no serious political rivalry. The movement's only crime is to be not given the official seal of approval, from what I can ascertain.

One wonders why our news services have suddenly gone 'cold' on reportage in China. It's easier to travel there now than it ever has been.

There is serious money changing hands somewhere! One gets the impression, that is.


"Tuesday's holiday has no explicit anti-Japanese theme.."

Gordon, China and Japan are old enemies, who have been to war with each-other multiple times, as you are well aware.

I don't think the Oriental attitude to the war in China is the same as that between, say, the Netherlands and Germany for instance. I do not even consider that the modern Chinese citizen harbours much in the way of lingering hostility toward the Japanese. They may well realise, as we do, that Japan was ruled by militarist generals, who were calling all the shots and rendering the civilian government either totally in line with their policies, (As the Tojo administration undoubtably was), or marginalizing them, (As the Suzuki cabinet was). Either way, the ordinary Japanese not only had no say, but really had no store of bellicosity to draw from and aim at the Chinese.

Asian people, As I have said, have a different attitude to the Pacific War, and to conflicts in general, Sino-Japanese or otherwise.

 

The Chinese have more reason to hate, yes, hate the Japanese than anybody...that's coming from an Australian. I have never heard of greater atrocities than what has been committed by the Japanese towards the Chinese...I suspect that any educated man from china would be well aware of...should also be remembered that it was the Chinese, not the British that brought democracy to Hong Kong...falun gong is an internal matter for the Chinese...a good example of what to keep,our noses out of...fancy the Chinese telling us we can't jail bikies or mix together showing their colours...what would we say to the Chinese if they objected...as I said, internal.

 

Perhaps you are right CAC. The level of hate from the Chinese would depend, however, on how much they have been told, and whether the japanese atrocities were actually just a bunch of events in a whole bunch of others. We don't know for sure exactly what atrocities were commited by Chiang Kai-Shek's troops on their Communist enemies. Nor do we know whether the Communists themselves did the same. They certainly had no compunction about losses during the "Long March". Compared to the number of people that began it, the survival rate for the 'Long March' was very low.

I'm not sure that something like Falun Gong is something to be swept under the carpet as an internal matter. The scale of it is chilling. But again, lack of data draws a curtain over the whole thing. Terrible. If our media were doing their job, we would know more.

 

One could also claim that the various acts of genocide in the last century or so were internal as well. Should they be ignored then?

 

They mostly have been...

 

Great Greek- Can't pretend to be any kind of expert on the Far East (including the Far East of Scotland!). Remember seeing a programme a few years ago where a Japanese who had been a soldier in China during the war did an annual pilgrimage back to the village where he had participated in a massacre in the late '30s. The sense of atonement didn't seem to be a unique viewpoint in modern Japan.