Most of my trips abroad are for food, shopping & sight-seeing. But my last trip to China served another purpose – to visit the Nanking Massacre site. I couldn’t help but started planning for the expedition after reading “The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II", a bestselling 1997 non-fiction book written by Iris Chang about the 1937–1938 Nanking Massacre.The book intrigued me for a long time. I don’t know why it took me so long before finally picking it up to read. The “story” was stomach-churning, tear-wrenching & thoroughly riveting.
"If the dead from Nanking were to link hands, they would stretch from Nanking to the city of Hangchow, spanning a distance of some two hundred miles. Their blood would weigh twelve hundred tons, and their bodies would fill twenty-five hundred railroad cars. Stacked on top of each other, these bodies would reach the height of a seventy-four-story building." - from the Introduction of The Rape of Nanking.
It was said that Chang succumbed to her battle with depression after the book & finally took her own life in November 2004. Apparently, the Nanking book “had made Iris sad".
My 10-day China trip covered Nanking, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi & Shanghai. I’d mixed feelings as I’d no idea what to expect of Nanking, one of the oldest 7 cities in China. I’d a fantastic guide who'd prepared us mentally before reaching the site cause we’d be seeing skeletal remains of massacre victims etc, he explained. I’ll not be displaying these gruesome pictures here. Read more.......