War - Hua! What is It Good For? (absolutely nothing)

Written Wednesday, July 11, 2006

I’ve got a confession to make – I skipped church on Sunday to hike a stretch of the Great Wall; except it rained and we went to the Chinese War Museum instead. So really, I skipped church to visit a Communist War Shrine. The trip was very interesting, and I got a revealing look at history through the eyes of the Chinese government. Upon entry, I was immediately confronted with a thirty foot statue of chairman Mao, to whom this museum is dedicated (see picture, my friend Seth is waving in the background.)

There is a very large section dedicated to the founding of the communist party and its consolidation of power during the War of Japanese Aggression (WW II) and through the 1950’s. There is a reference to “Chinese gaining an advantage because of changing circumstances of war” (which I think was Hiroshima and Nagasaki, minor details) but otherwise there is no mention of the USA’s role in the war. All WW II struggles are painted as Chinese vs. Japanese. To be fair, Japanese Leadership also saw the Chinese as enemy #1 and just viewed the USA as a pesky third party until the American navy sunk all of Japan’s carrier groups and began to level Tokyo with firebombs.

Anyway, according to the placards, Mao inspired the peasants to rise up and overthrow the Japanese oppressors by single-handedly winning a succession of brilliant campaigns against superior numbers and technology, etc. After driving the Japanese out of China, then Mao must suppress the leftist Nationalist rebels lead by Chiang Kai Shek and backed by the US (about time they gave us some credit!) Chiang was initially successful, but because of Mao’s brilliant leadership and victorious campaigns, etc. etc. the will of the people prevailed and the rebels were eventually driven from the mainland and, for the first time in hundreds of years, China (except Taiwan and Tibet) was united under Mao and Communism around 1950. To the victors go the writing of history.

The rest of its history spanned thousands of years of Chinese civilization back to the beginning of humanity. I'd tell you about it if I could keep my dynasties straight, but there are just so many of them and they all sound the same. Here are some terracotta warriors (below.)


There was lots of cool sculptures and paintings, too. This one was particularly terrifying (below.)
Oh, one last thing - war is kid-friendly! I saw lots and lots of students at the museum, presumably on field-trips. I would have liked to have one of those when I was younger.