WUHAN, July 27 (Xinhua) — As China prepares to mark the eightieth anniversary of its victory within the War of Resistance towards Japanese Aggression on Sept. 3, a distant city in central China’s Hubei Province is quietly staging a robust act of remembrance.
In Dawu County, as soon as a key anti-Japanese base tucked away within the mountains, ultimate preparations are underway for an exhibition honoring the New Fourth Army’s Fifth Division — a Communist Party of China-led power that was based mostly there in the course of the War of Resistance towards Japanese Aggression (1931-1945). The artifacts to characteristic within the exhibition, greater than a dozen in complete, have been donated by descendants of wartime troopers.
Among them is a pair of uncommon black-and-white images taken in Dawu in early 1940 by American journalist Agnes Smedley.
Smedley arrived in China in late 1928 and spent over a decade residing and reporting within the nation, documenting each the brutality of Japanese aggression and the resilience of the Chinese resistance.
In early 1940, she traveled deep into the Dawu Mountain area, then a stronghold of the New Fourth Army’s Henan-Hubei Detachment — which was a guerrilla power working simply 100 km from Japanese-occupied Wuhan and the predecessor of the Fifth Division.
Eighty-five years later, the youngsters of late veteran Wu Daoying traveled from Beijing to Dawu, bringing Smedley’s images that includes their mom to the very place the place she as soon as fought. They donated the photographs to the county archive.
According to Wu’s son, Song Shenguang, the movie Smedley shot had not been developed on the time resulting from wartime circumstances. It wasn’t till the Nineteen Eighties that his mom noticed the pictures for the primary time.
Song informed Xinhua that his mom had cherished the story behind one explicit group portrait till she died in 2023.
The picture captures the smiling faces of kids and troopers. The youngsters have been a part of a troupe that accompanied the military — too younger to battle in battle however important in boosting morale with songs and messages. One of them was Wu, not but 12 at the moment.
But what stands out most is a boy on the middle of the picture, his head bowed. His identify was Sheng Guohua. Once a road beggar, Sheng had pleaded to affix the military and was assigned as Smedley’s orderly throughout her go to.
Based on Wu’s recount, after watching a efficiency by the troupe, Smedley had requested the youngsters to pose for a photograph and invited Sheng to affix.
Sheng was shy, Song recalled his mom saying. “He might feel nervous about being in the picture and lowered his head just as the shutter clicked.”
Despite barely showing in a photograph, Sheng left an enduring impression on Smedley. Smedley’s 1943 guide “Battle Hymn of China,” which paperwork her firsthand experiences in the course of the early years of China’s resistance conflict, consists of an article titled “My Chinese Son,” which highlights her temporary but touching bond with Sheng in the course of the three-month go to to the bottom.
In the guide, Smedley described Sheng, then 10 or 11 years previous, as possessing “that curious wisdom of China’s children.” She wrote: “‘When I grow up, I want to join the cavalry and fight the Japanese,’ Kuo-hwa said to me more than once.” When she ready to depart Dawu, she supplied to undertake him and take him overseas to be educated. However, Sheng declined. “All men must remain at the front,” he mentioned. “You can adopt me after the final victory.”
That day by no means got here for Sheng as he was later killed in battle — one in every of many younger lives misplaced within the rugged terrain in central China, the place over 13,000 troopers of the Fifth Division have been both killed or wounded in the course of the battles.
“Every time my mother looked at that photo, she cried,” mentioned Song. “Not just for Sheng, but for all the friends who never made it home.”
Sheng’s story, preserved by means of Smedley’s writing and handed down by Wu, will quickly attain a wider viewers through the upcoming exhibition on the New Fourth Army’s Fifth Division Memorial, positioned close to the previous headquarters of the division in Dawu.
The memorial and the historic website have emerged as a distinguished middle for patriotic schooling over the previous years, drawing greater than 300,000 guests yearly by means of its immersive revolutionary-themed research applications.
“These quiet, personal memories, like Sheng’s bowed head, add depth to the grand narrative of resistance,” mentioned Fu Bo, who oversees Dawu’s revolutionary heritage websites. “They help today’s youth understand that victory was not just about battles, but about choices, courage and sacrifice.”
Now 70, Song is a member of the Beijing Society for the New Fourth Army. Raised on tales from his mom’s era and impressed by works like Smedley’s, he’s dedicated to remodeling his household legacy right into a shared public reminiscence — one which highlights how the Chinese folks, together with others around the globe who stood for peace and justice, got here collectively to win the conflict of nationwide liberation.
“Some memories shouldn’t be kept in a photo album,” he mentioned. “They belong to all people and not just as reminders of the past, but as truths that still shape who we are.”