A testament to courage and resistance

Brutality by Japanese invaders haunts elderly survivor of mass graves who vows to keep memory of atrocity alive, Wang Qian and Zhu Xingxin report in Datong, Shanxi.

Beneath the biting wind sweeping across the coalrich regions of Shanxi province lies a testament to unspeakable brutality. At 92, Qian Kuibao's voice trembles not with age alone, but with the weight of memories. His scarred scalp tells a story that words cannot fully capture — a story of survival from one of Datong's mass graves, where the bodies of tens of thousands of Chinese miners were dumped during the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45).

"I was badly injured, unconscious. The Japanese threw me, still breathing, into the mass grave near the Chenghuang Temple at Silaogou mine," Qian says of his memory back to the winter of 1941.

"It was deep winter. Freezing, near death, I crawled out when they left. I collapsed on the miners' path. That's where Qian Ziming found me." Rescued by a kindhearted miner from Hebei province, Qian Kuibao, once known as Wang Jiuxiang, adopted his savior's surname, bearing witness for those who perished.