80 years later, how the war still matters to Chinese people

BEIJING, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- As a child, Zhang Lianhong grew up on stories filled with the roar of bombs, frantic escapes and desperate attempts to find safety.

Her father often recalled the day Japanese planes soared over Chongqing, then China's wartime capital. He jumped into a boat, crossed a river, and reached the hospital where her mother had just given birth. Together they clutched the newborn, fleeing to a nearby shelter.

Decades later, that family memory, once retold at the dinner table, became the heartbeat of "Phoenix in Fire," an animated film Zhang spent seven years creating. For her, it was a personal quest to answer a lingering question: what does that victory, 80 years ago, mean for us today?

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

"Time itself isn't what distances us," said Zhang, the Chongqing-based filmmaker. "It's the willingness to empathize."

HUGE CASUALTIES, HARD-WON PEACE

On Sept. 18, 1931, Japanese troops attacked Chinese forces in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, marking the beginning of 14 years of invasion. Then they occupied the entire northeast China and set up a puppet state.

In 1937, they attacked Beijing, then called Beiping, triggering the full-scale war. When the city fell, Zhang's parents fled with their entire school to Chongqing in southwest China.

From 1938, Japanese warplanes bombed Chongqing for over six years, killing and wounding over 32,000 people. The extensive destruction left the city entirely in ruins, with crumbling buildings and debris spanning every direction.

"We must remember the calamities that the war of aggression brought upon the people," said Cheng Ming, 90. At eight, he lost his father and grandfather in a bombing. His grandmother, shattered by the loss and their ruined home, soon died, leaving him alone.

During 14 years of war, China suffered 35 million casualties. "Without the imposed war by the Japanese invaders, those lives would have never been lost," Zhang said.

China tied down and fought the bulk of Japan's forces during the World Anti-Fascist War, eliminating more than 1.5 million enemy troops and preventing Japan from allocating more soldiers to the Pacific theater.

When Zhang later discovered "Kukan," an Oscar-winning documentary recording the war in China from 1937 to 1940, she decided to recreate its story through animation, depicting scenes of Japanese planes dropping bombs, fires raging across Chongqing, people fighting the flames, and their unyielding resistance.

This June, her film "Phoenix in Fire" premiered in a cinema in Chongqing.

"Humanity's challenges have not fundamentally changed," she said. "We made this film to turn the stories told by the elderly into a language the young can understand, to honor the lives lost and to remember how hard peace is to come by."

FIRST COMPLETE VICTORY IN NATIONAL LIBERATION

The Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was the Chinese people's longest and largest fight against foreign aggression in modern times since the Opium War of 1840. It came with the greatest sacrifice but ended in the people's first complete victory in national liberation.

"The victory was a great turning point for the Chinese nation, from decline to rejuvenation," said Hu Yongheng, a historian at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

That national turning point was etched into the family memory for Jing Lei, who was born in Yan'an, once the wartime base of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

When she was three, she noticed the gunshot scar on her grandfather's chest, a former soldier of the CPC-led Eighth Route Army. "Grandfather shaped my first impression of the War of Resistance with a simple lesson that backwardness leaves one vulnerable to attack," recalled the 47-year-old writer.

Jing's grandfather joined the parade on Sept. 3, 2015, marking the 70th anniversary of the victory, the first non-National Day parade held in Beijing's Tian'anmen Square, and he passed away a few years later.

In her novel "Our Grandparents," Jing contrasts the wartime generation's hardships with today's comforts, from abundant meals and closets overflowing with clothes to children studying in warmth during winter and coolness in summer.

"Such ordinary happiness is possible only when a country is strong and society stable," she said.

"Commemorating the victory remains meaningful as we face new challenges on the road to realizing the country's modernization," Jing said. "For ordinary people like me, it means staying focused on doing our own work well."

JOINING HUMANITY'S STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE

In the war, the Chinese fought alongside other anti-fascist forces around the world, including the United States, the Soviet Union and many others.

On a hill in Yan'an, meteorological instruments and records from eight decades ago are still preserved, testifying to China-U.S. cooperation during WWII.

In the later years of the war, the United States deployed B-29 bombers in China against Japanese targets. To ensure flight safety, it sought to establish weather stations in the CPC-led base areas. In 1944, a U.S. Army Observation Group, nicknamed the Dixie Mission, arrived in Yan'an and set up a meteorological station.

"The U.S. military brought instruments and instructors," said Yang Fan, a staff member at the Yan'an meteorological observatory. Trained Eighth Route Army students built weather stations in revolutionary bases, providing vital support for U.S. operations.

In Chongqing, to honor Joseph Stilwell, a former U.S. general who helped China's fight against Japanese aggression, the municipal government renovated his former residence and transformed it into a museum.

"There are commonalities between the peoples of the United States and China, especially the desire to live in peace," said John Easterbrook, grandson of Stilwell. "The friendship between the two peoples during WWII should be remembered and used to build understanding today."

Japan surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945, signing the Instrument of Surrender to China and other Allied powers. China celebrated the victory the following day. In 2014, the country legislated to designate Sept. 3 as Victory Day of its War of Resistance.

For years, 74-year-old Yokichi Kobayashi has been documenting the unusual story of his father, once a Japanese soldier captured by the Eighth Route Army. Sent to Yan'an to study, he eventually decided to fight alongside the Chinese soldiers.

"As a Japanese, I ultimately chose to fight alongside the Chinese during the War of Resistance because the CPC helped me realize the injustice of Japan's war of invasion," his father once said.

"Eighty years have passed since the flames of war, but today Japan needs to draw lessons from its past more than ever," said Yokichi. "The self-reflection of a nation is more important than the tolerance of another."

Victory in the war not only changed China's fate but also reshaped the world order.

"Humanity once again stands at a crossroads in history, and commemorating the victory is about clarifying our attitude toward war," said Zhong Feiteng, an international relations expert at the CASS.

"War brings immense destruction to human society. Only by resolving differences through consultation and cooperation, and replacing conflict with peaceful coexistence, can we promote the common development of humankind," he said.  ■

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