any local battlefied sites?
Back in the States' now from a recent trip back to South China, on business, I yet pondered again....does China record and preserve it's battlefield sites? Here in the South, we have many such sites going back 150 years. I've taken my children to a few of them. Perhaps they were too small....one of them asked if the cemetary of one of them(Shiloh) had a playground.
Still the records are well preserved, and I find the storytelling of the local attendants fascinating. I'm just wondering if China does the same?
Still the records are well preserved, and I find the storytelling of the local attendants fascinating. I'm just wondering if China does the same?
In the UK battlefields like Marston Moor, Naseby, Hastings, Bosworth, Culloden, Falkirk and so-forth are all well-maintained, except for some modern encroachment in some cases. As well as this, many of the aerodromes from which RAF pilots fought the Battle of Britain, and a few of the warships that were involved in historic battles - most notably HMS Victory and HMS Belfast - are also preserved for visitors.
ReplyDeleteIn China, however, I think that the majority of historic battles were either in places the location of which is now disputed (e.g., The Battle of Red Cliffs), or centered around locations now inside cities (e.g., the Siege of the Legations during the Boxer Rebellion) - I can't think of any where the battlefield is known and preserved. For more modern battles, China was normally ignominiously defeated and thefore no-one wishes to commemorate the battle, or the battle happened in a remote area which is still closed to visitors (e.g., the Indian border), or they commemoration is not politically acceptable (e.g., pretty much any of the major battles of the Civil War), or it happened in North Korea.
Anyway, modern battles normally happen over such an area that it is not really possible to visit them properly. The Normandy landings and Arnhem are an excpetion to this of course.
What you can do in China is visit the so-called "Revolutionary Base Areas", (such as this one in Henan - http://en.hnta.cn/Htmls/Scenic/Scenic_284.shtml ), the "Museum of the War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression" in Beijing, or the "Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution" (also in Beijing). Unfortunately all of these are pretty much propaganda outlets, although at least the Military Museum has some tanks exhibited that are worth looking at.
The best exhibit I have come across is, of course, not in the PRC, but in the ROC - the exhibits on Jinmen and Matsu documenting the shelling of those islands by the PLA.