The fight against the COVID-19 pandemic will make history, and the recent past has already been turned into an exhibition, which opened at the Shanghai History Museum yesterday.

Having collected from residents about 400 objects which represent the collective memory of the battle earlier this year, the museum put together an exhibition with a portion of the donations.

Posters and illustrations, protective suits, reward certificates and medals, as well as diaries and family letters are a witness to the trying times which brought out the best of the city’s community spirit.

Yang Yin is one of the donors to the exhibit and was invited to take part on the first day.

Yang, who was traveling in India when the epidemic broke out in China, purchased over 3,000 masks from India for his fellow residents in Shanghai. Two masks from India are presented at the exhibition.

“My friends and I carried the huge bags of masks on our head walking through the empty airport in Shanghai,” he recalled. “We asked around if people needed masks and helped them.”

Han Yufei, of Hongkou District, has certificates of his blood donation and volunteer services displayed at the exhibition. He donated 400 milliliters of blood on March 4.

“At that time, many residents were afraid to go out to donate blood because the epidemic was still raging,” he said. “My colleagues and I, as members of the district’s youth union, stood up to take the initiative.”

At the exhibition, visitors can also see the famous image in which a doctor from Zhongshan Hospital who assisted in Wuhan showed a patient a brilliant sunset over the city. In poster form, the image has been autographed by the doctor and his colleagues.

The exhibition is located on the second and third floor of the west building of the museum on Nanjing Road W. It will last until December 20, and entrance is free.

The third floor display continues with a brief exhibition of memories of Shanghai with some of the 1,600 objects the museum collected from the public since 2018.

Highlights among the exhibits are an advertisement of a foreign company from late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), furniture of a rich local family from the same period and a Park Hotel menu from 1936.