Nanjing museum tells civilian stories of unyielding wartime resilience

In Nanjing, Jiangsu province, a four-story museum commemorating the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) stands as a living archive of courage and resilience, preserving more than 6,700 artifacts and over 40,000 books that bear witness to the harrowing realities of the conflict.

Among the treasures are haunting black-and-white photographs from the battlefields, each frame echoing with the silent yet profound narratives of a bygone era.

Wu Xianbin, a Nanjing native, is the curator of the private museum, called the Nanjing Museum of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. In 2006, he personally financed the establishment on a 5,000-square-meter site. What sets the museum apart is its unique perspective, offering a civilian narrative of the war, a rarity among China's nearly 200 commemorative institutions dedicated to the conflict.