Nanjing Datusha Jinianguan (Memorial to the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre)

Description:

• While worth a visit, this memorial museum, commemorating the atrocities suffered by the Chinese during the Japanese invasion of Nanjing in 1937, certainly does a heavy-handed job of explaining history, from the funerary-style orchestral music piped on the grounds to the giant statues of human limbs that greet visitors at the museum's entrance. Located at Jiang Dong Men, itself an execution and mass burial site during the invasion, the museum consists of an outdoor exhibit, a coffin-shaped viewing hall containing some excavated victims' bones, and pictures and artifacts documenting the Japanese onslaught, the massacre, and the aftermath. Photographs of tortures and executions, many taken by Japanese army photographers, are quite gruesome, as are reproductions of the blood-soaked clothing of the victims. The final room documents the reconciliation, however tenuous, between the Chinese and Japanese.

• © Frommer's 2013

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Recommended 2010