Staff Reporter/Shanghai Daily news

A memorial to the War Against Japanese Aggression in Jinshan District has been extended and rebuilt since the end of last year. It will open to the public for free next month to remind people of the important period in Chinese history.
The site is located at 87 Nan'an Road, in the southern section of Jinshan District, and covers an area of 1,500 square meters. From above, the memorial was built to look like a gun pointed at the coast.
The site is home to many structures, including a zisha (purple clay) relief sculpture of the whole war, a bronze sculpture of a family, a large bell, a memorial wall with the names of those killed in the district during war, the mural of a soldier, and 11 other scenes.
The principal section of the memorial is situated in the middle of the site and filled with purple sand sculptures. It is composed of the number "193711," a reference to the date the Japanese Army killed hundreds of Jinshan people in November, 1937. The figures are over one meter tall, and half a meter wide each. There are many rusty iron chains wrapped around the numbers, which represents the villagers who were butchered by the Japanese Army. The granite base enclosed by iron wires was the execution place where hundreds of people were killed and buried.
The zisha mural, behind the zisha sculpture, is 2.4 meters tall and 40 meters in length. It covers nearly 100 square meters and was designed by Xu Xiutang together with his apprentices. The mural depicts 108 soldiers fighting with the Japanese invaders. It shows that the Japanese Army conducted a sneak attack on Jinshan on November 5. Because of a shortage of weapons and soldiers in the district, the Japanese Army controlled the area immediately and killed a large number of people.
A bronze sculpture named "The Miserable Family" was also designed by Xu, and sits to the right of the site. It depicts the tragic experience of an ordinary family. A little girl is shouting and crying, pulling her mother's hand. Her mother, laying down beside her, holds her son, who has been shot to death and cannot hear her crying anymore. Her father was caught by the Japanese Army and the woman did not know whether he was alive or not.
Near the bronze sculpture, there is a black memorial wall. The wall contains 1,015 cobblestones, one to commemorate each of the villagers who were killed during the war. The names of 739 villagers are listed on the stones, but the names of the others are unknown. The cobblestones look like a river of blood.
On both sides of the wall, there are five vivid individual statues, two to the left and three to the right. These statues are also made of zisha. Each statue is a person, and they show how villagers suffered during the war. One shows a man down on his knees, bowing his head. His hands and body are bound. Beside him, there is another man lying with his knees drawn up in pain.
In the left side of the site, the mural of a soldier stands on a lawn. The soldier holds up a grenade in his right hand and a rifle in his left hand, shouting loudly and preparing to fight with the Japanese Army. At that time, over 100,000 Japanese soldiers took part in the war, while there were only 300 Chinese soldiers to defend against the sudden attack. After a hard fight, most of the Chinese soldiers were killed.
The big bell is located in an old temple in the left corner of the site. It is made of bronze and is laid out in imitation of the bell in the Hanshan Temple in Suzhou. For warning the generations and encouraging them to cherish the peace, it is named "the bell for warning" by the makers. The bell weighs 1.5 tons, and the size of every part has a meaning. The bell is 193.7 millimeters in length, a reference to the year Jinshan was occupied. Its widest diameter is 1,015 mm, a tribute to the 1,015 villagers who died during the war.
There are some old trees and bamboo in the site. One of the old trees is black tea tree that is more than 260 years old and was planted during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). The 55 bamboo trees are also very precious and different from other kinds of bamboo.