When you learn Chinese in Yunnan or study Mandarin in Kunming next year, we recommend a place in Kunming that you can visit during your spare time when you study in China.
Anti-Japanese War Memorial of West Yunnan is one of the 10 significant construction projects of symbolic cultural facilities of Yunnan Province and belongs to the extension project. On 4th, August, the feasibility study report was passed and the building address was selected at the southeast of the important heritage site under state protection——Tengchong National Martyr Cemeteries. The 22.02-mu Anti-Japanese War Memorial of West Yunnan has been brought into the planning scope to be built together with the 15-mu municipal administration public green land adjacent to the National Matyr Cemeteries. The overall floorage of the project will be 9700 ㎡ and will use the reinforced concrete portal frame construction. It will has one floor underground and two floors over ground, 11exhibition halls in total, a 3000 ㎡ open parking lot with 100 carports for small cars and 50 carports for buses. The project budgetary estimates at RMB 0.16 billion and is expected to be officially launched in September next year.
A directory which includes 130,000 names of the expeditionary army has been collected in 5 years. The construction project was been early planned by Tengchong County Party Committee and County Government. They have been doing the preparing work all the time. In early 2005, the Publicity Department of County Party Committee had given the announcement to collect the soldiers’ names of the Anti-Japanese Expeditionary Army and Allied Army at home and abroad and to search for the related information and manuscripts. In August, 2007, they gave the announcement of collection again and got the broad response and supports from home and abroad as well as a lot of precious first-hand information. During this period, staffs of information collection group also went to Kunming, Chengdu, Chongqing, Nanjing and each autonomous prefecture, city and county of West Yunnan to look up documents and copy information. They even got the information supports from the US, Japan and the relevant departments of Taiwan.
So this is a good opportunity for you to learn Chinese history or study in China. In the 5 years, a directory which includes 130,000 names of the expeditionary army has been collected. So far, after investigation and research in many fields and selecting the repeated persons, about 100,000 soldiers’ identities have been affirmed. And at the same time, the directory information provided by all kinds of channels is coming. The collection of cultural relics is going on simultaneously.
Tengchong is a city close to Kunming, if you learn Chinese in Kunming, you can spend one week to go there for travel. You can enjoy the hot spring and visit Anti-Japanese War Memorial. At the moment, Tengchong government has formulated and completed the collection plan of the Anti-Japanese War cultural relics of West Yunnan. They checked the list of the cultural relics and made registrations and records of basic information of these cultural relics. 276 memorial cultural relics were listed. Tengchong also verified and investigated the cultural relics that collected by the local folk collectors of the Anti-Japanese War cultural relics of West Yunnan Mr. DUAN Shengkui. Mr. Duan stored up about 20000 cultural relics, among which the number of cultural relics that exhibited in Heshun Anti-Japanese War in Yunnan and Burma Museum is more than 7000. Tengchong government is negotiating the cooperation issue with him now. They have started investigation on the distribution of the cultural relics in folk in Tengchong County and added manpower to visit the related units, masses and individual collectors; collected and cleared up the clues of cultural relics in Burma, the US and the UK; increased the scope of propaganda in order to collect cultural relics with the help of social power; released The Announcement On Collecting Cultural Relics For Anti-Japanese War Memorial Of West Yunnan on media to get active supports off collecting cultural relics from all circles in society.
Old soldiers of the Expeditionary Army said, “The history doesn’t forget us.”
When hearing the news that the soldiers’ names of the Expeditionary Army will be carved into “the memorial wall for the Expeditionary Army”, the old soldier HUANG Shaofu who has been 83 years old said, “we have waited for a half century. This is very significant for our old soldiers of Anti-Japanese Armies. The history doesn’t forget us.” Mr. Huang joined in the Expeditionary Army to fight Japanese in India and Burma. Once he lives the past over again, Mr. Huang will feel very proud. The old soldier TU Ming said, “we hope that our names can be carved into the memorial wall, only to leave some historical marks in history