Books and TV series are being released at a rapid pace in China to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and China's victory in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45).
China Intercontinental Press has published a series of photo albums with essays in Chinese and English featuring the lives of American volunteers who joined the Hump Air Transport or Colonel Chennault's Flying Tigers and of the Jews who shared hardship with the Chinese.
The lives of the one million common Japanese who lived through the war in China and their repatriation and of the Japanese war criminals who served their time in Fushun War Criminals Management Centre in Northeast China's Liaoning Province are portrayed in two separate albums.
The English version of "Under the Same Army Flat Recollections of Veterans of World War II" has also been printed by China Intercontinental Press. The narrators were all Chinese veterans who fought alongside the Americans and British in the Burma-India Theatre.
Meanwhile, Oriental Press has brought out a series of novels by Soviet writers, including "They Fought for Their Country" by Mikhail Sholokhov, "The Unbowed" by Boris Gorbatov, "He Was Named a Man from Legend" by Ivan Leonov, and "The Living and the Dead" by Konstantin Simonov.
For some of these Russian war novels, this is their first printing in China.
Readers have welcomed this war fiction, as well as many other translated works published previously by Zhejiang Literature Publishing House and the People's Liberation Army Publishing House, among others.
War fiction written by local authors has also mushroomed since last year. Some of the most impressive works are "Sweet-scented Osmanthus (Bayue Guihua Biandi Kai)," "Wolf Poison (Langdu)," "Bloodshed at the Estuary of the Yangtze River (Diexue Changjiang Kou)" and "Boy Scout (Shenyong Shaonianlian)."
For those not fond of reading, TV dramas offer an alternative source of history.
"The Proof of Memory (Jiyi de Zhengming)," a 29-episode TV series produced by China Central Television, was a hit after it was broadcast in late 2004 and early 2005.
The series, starring actors and actresses from China, Japan and South Korea, focused on the misery of thousands of Chinese laborers and prisoners of war who were forced to build military bases for the Japanese army more than 60 years ago.
According to its director Yang Yang, it took six years to finish the series.
"'The Proof of Memory' has transcended politics and conflict. It reflects the past from a human perspective. That is why it's better than so many other World War II TV series," said Li Zhun, who leads a special group supervising the production of TV plays with "revolutionary history" themes.
Jin Tao, director of "Pukou 1945," chose the Memorial Hall of the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre as the venue for a ceremony marking the beginning of the production's shooting.
According to Jin, more than 60 Chinese TV dramas dealing with the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression will be shown this year.
(China Daily July 7, 2005)
