It is probably agreed by most of the people who are interested in going abroad to study in China that the big museums are frequented by large crowds of people which make them insipid, while the small folk military museum is tiny but sapid, yesterday, a touring party of 36 members consisting of the historians and the descendants of the Flying Tigers had visited the Sino-US World War II Military Museum.
Foreign students waiting to study Chinese should be informed more details about this folk military museum, this folk military museum was established the July of 2009, its brass plate had been put up by the Kunming culture bureau, it was originally located in the back hills of the Golden Temple, which used to be known as a museum in the hills.
In order to enable more historians travelling to learn Chinese in China to take a look at the collection contents of the folk military museum, it had shifted to the Asia Garden Exhibition Area, which is bordering the New Snail Bay International Trade Mart in the Kunming downtown. The curator of the folk military museum Song Xiangdong was the first one to provide guiding interpretation for the first foreign touring party after its opening. The first question raised by the tourists must arouse the interests of the students when they come to learn Mandarin in China.
“Why they are called Flying Tigers? Since both the body and the head of the plane are painted with the teeth of the sharks. “Asked Shelley, the US doctor of Asian historical studies, the prototype of the warplanes of the Flying Tigers were shark modeling, however, it is not hard to discover when you learn Mandarin in China that the Yunnan common people were unfamiliar with that animal, and had mistaken it to be the tooth of tiger, therefore, it got the name Flying Tigers.
In Song Xiangdong’s folk military museum, hangs an old photo of the air freighters transporting good over the Hump Course, it can be discovered by the scholars when they come to learn to speak Chinese in China that there is a short line of Chinese characters underneath, reading “the most moving and tragic air route in the world”. The curator of the folk military museum had described the route in this way, after the breaking down of the Yunnan-Myanmar road, China and U.S had jointly opened a new path which was the only foreign supplying line. Scholars and friends preparing to learn Chinese language in China must have had heard of the origin of the name of the route.
It was because of the fact that the air planes had to fly over the continuous heaps with altitudes raging from 4,500 to 7, 000 meters in height; therefore, it got the name as the Hump Course. Along this tragic course, it is noteworthy for foreign students waiting to attend free Chinese lessons that the U.S. had lost more than 1, 500 air planes, more than 3,000 excellent pilots, while China had lost 48 airplanes within a total number of 100 in all and168 pilots.
The Hump Course can also be called the valley of aluminums by historians and tourists interested in Chinese culture, since the scattering fragments of the airplanes along the 800 kilometers valley glisters on sunny days amidst the glaciers and snow-capped peaks.
What’s more interesting to be noticed by those thinking of learning Mandarin Chinese that the stone relics are also the manifestations of the hard years, one of the foreign friends in the tour, who comes from the U.S., had been confused by the large quantities of stone wares all over the yard.
According to Song Xiangdong, his most treasured three stone wares were all relevant to the World War, one is the treadmills stone which had been used to construct the Song Ming airport, since it is important to be understand by teachers travelling to study Chinese in China that the 52 airports of the warring period were constructed through manual labor.
The second stone treasure is a stone dumbbell in the form of an old-fashioned stone padlock, which had inscriptions of “Zhen Wu Kang Ri”, and the third treasure in the folk military museum is the stone water-jar, foreigners endeavoring to have a qualified Mandarin program in China must be curious about the cultural connotation of the third treasure.
Well, the stone water jar bears the inscription with “made on 24th year of the Republic of China”, Song pointed out that it was exactly the year of the China’s victory over the anti-Japanese war, it can be seen as a souvenir to commemorate that year.