Sailing to Nanjing is like falling into a dream. In my memory, I have been to Nanjing a lot of times, and I must have visited Shanghai more often. But I can't remember how far Jiang Yuan was from Nanjing. Sometimes it's close, sometimes it's far away. I was afraid of motion sickness, so as soon as I got in the car, I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, and I always arrived in a daze, as if arriving in Nanjing did not rely on the Mercedes-Benz of the vehicle, but sleep and dreams.

We were walking through the bottom of the lake, through a tunnel, from Jiangyuan to the destination of our trip. The invisible surface of the lake overhead may be as sparkling as the Gorge Lake three days ago. The moment Mr. Huang's car descended into the tunnel, I felt that we were diving into a calm mirror.

Teacher Huang took four boys, in addition to four girls in Teacher Zhou's car, Yue Yin and her sister were there. I sat in the front row because it was the highest and took up the most space. In the back row are Miller and Yan Xi, as well as classmates who played the Little Prince at the theater festival. When we met him in the parking lot today, Miller and I called him "Little Prince" from afar. Yan Xi wanted to tell me his name, but he said that he liked to be called that, so he simply didn't say it. He was a man of little talk, but very knowledgeable. We talked to Yan Xi about the Gorge Lake Playground and the previous ball game, and he listened quietly. When we talked about Yan Xi's hat-trick of assists in the last game, the little prince told us that the term "hat-trick" originated in Alice in Wonderland, then became a cricket term, and finally referred to the feat of scoring three goals in a single game in football.

The player who scored a hat-trick can take the match ball as a souvenir, Yan Xi, have you taken it? He asked. Yan Xi shook his head, saying that he had three assists instead of three goals, and that the Mayor's Cup match ball was provided by the school, and the physical education teacher probably wouldn't allow him to take the school's public property. Usually the competition is not good, but what about the finals? The little prince continued. Isn't the final at the Jiangyuan Olympic Sports Center, the ball must also be provided by the organizer, and maybe it will be presented as a souvenir to the players wearing hats. The final is too far away, we have just reached the quarterfinals, Yan Xi said, not to mention that it is rare to score three goals in a single game in the group stage, and the person who can score a hat trick on the final stage is probably a god descending from heaven and possessed by the king of the ball. We laughed, and our faces were blown red in the empty parking lot. Not long after, the headlights of a car flashed, and Mr. Huang arrived. In normal times, we would still laugh and talk about these topics with Mr. Huang. But we're all a lot more serious today. The teacher walked up to him, greeted him politely, and then obediently got into the car.

On Tuesday, it stands to reason that after lunch, we should go back to our lunch break and recharge our energy for afternoon classes. But all four of us took a leave of absence, and the school chose us to go to Nanjing to participate in a peace rally. Today is December 13th. Nanjing must be very close to Jiangyuan, so close that we children know what this day means from a young age. I don't know why the school chose us, but I think everyone is very willing to participate in this event. We were both a little surprised when Miller told me in the dorm room last night that he had been selected, but we knew how serious and important it was. Perhaps the school wants students from other places to have a deeper understanding of the history of the province; It may also be Mr. Huang's recommendation, because he wrote about his feelings about visiting the memorial hall in his National Day homework, and that essay became a model essay. And I, who used to be a tour guide for Miller, may have been a little bit of a light because of this. [1]

Mr. Huang, my grandparents are both from Nanjing. Yan Xi said. They definitely wanted me to go.

Well. The teacher, who was behind the wheel, nodded. This is good.

The car drove continuously in a long tunnel. The water of the lake must have flowed over our heads, like a long history. I couldn't hear the sound. The silence in the car made us sleepy. A little more, the time of the afternoon nap on weekdays. The misty lights and shadows of the tunnel flickered in front of the drooping eyelids. We seem to have become passers-by hiding in light and shadow, sailing into the depths of memory through the continuous passage of time. I smelled a bitter smell, maybe a mixture of gasoline and bile, the smell of motion sickness when I was a kid. But I was dozing off, and sleep was safe, and it kept me away from vertigo and discomfort, like sinking to the bottom of a lake, in the darkness where there were no waves or throbbing.

The earth is afflicted. This sentence jumped out of my head. I woke up from the dream, listened to Mr. Huang's "arrived", opened the car door, and walked into the cold wind of December. The earth is suffering, just as the north is sad, yesterday's speech under the national flag was a poetry recitation by class 14 students, and I still remember that "the north is sad" is the beginning of a long poem. Seeing the slanted statue and the solemn memorial under the heavy clouds again, I was cold, and I felt the gray condensing while losing my temperature, and I couldn't help but lean towards Miller. In fact, everyone is shortening the distance between each other, and no one is talking. We were like four elementary school students, next to each other, like a group of little rabbits snuggling up in the cold wind to keep warm, and followed Mr. Huang to the lecture hall of the memorial hall every step of the way.

The lights were bright and the heating was turned on well. In the back row of the lecture hall, we found a seat belonging to No. 1 Middle School. After they sat down one by one, the teacher didn't say anything, and we didn't say a word, as if we only confirmed each other's existence by looking at each other's eyes. There was no sound in the large lecture hall except for the footsteps of walking and the rubbing of down jackets, and this silence and silence were like green vines climbing and growing in the invisible place. It would be nice to have a little green, like the green that flashed in front of me when I saw the light again a few days ago, it was precious, in the cold and dry time. I saw Yan Xi put his arms on the armrests of the seat, and the little prince's arms were naturally and lazily folded on top of him. We are all waiting.

"Teacher, why didn't Xuexue come?" Mi Le suddenly opened his mouth, and everyone also looked at Teacher Huang. He didn't answer right away, and lowered his head thoughtfully.

"Teacher, I mean, the last time we mourned the victims of the plane crash, we learned to have a black veil wrapped around our hands. I think he is very kind, and I think he would like to come to today's peace rally as well. Miller continued. Teacher Huang still didn't answer, reached out and patted Miller's hairy little head, and smiled kindly.

Learn, what a weird person. Always do things that make me scratch my head.,Sometimes I can't help but be attracted to him.。 If Mu Zheng hadn't told us, I would never have guessed that he was Teacher Huang's child. Even though both of them give a sense of uninhibited ease, a teacher is a teacher after all. Xuexue seems to be always full of energy, with infinite passion and fighting spirit, but he always says "damn", with an expression that doesn't care about many things. It's not that I hate him, it's just a mantra for him: I really don't like to talk about "death" at every turn.

Death is not something to be mentioned casually, I was educated by the elders at the table for the New Year. Maybe it's too heavy on its own. The death of one person is a tragedy, and the death of hundreds of thousands of people is the suffering and pain of the nation. But...... Is Xuexue a person who does not respect life? No, by no means. We all saw the fingers raised to the sky that day and the black veils that fluttered. I believe that in today's big class, in the silent mourning that stood up collectively, Xuexue bowed his head and thought about his connection with the suffering that had happened on this land for a short time.

Could it be so? The more a person pays attention to one thing, the more he will pretend to be indifferent in front of others. Am I a bit of that? Actually, I care a lot about strings. I cared a lot when he was still there, and I cared more and more when he wasn't there. But in the days when he was still there, I didn't treat him very well, and I always deliberately got angry with him and bullied him, maybe I was using this way to express my concern for him? It's stupid. I should have been nicer to him.

But why does Xuexue care so much about whether he dies or not? He is obviously healthy and healthy, and his family is doing well......

Maybe it's just that I'm too far away from his life. I don't know what's going on. What if you do? Who of us doesn't know about the Nanjing Massacre? But why did the Japanese massacre? How did they slaughter? What did Nanjing, the capital, go through in hell many years ago? What is the name of our compatriots who were killed? How do you live? There are so many things that we kids don't understand. It is for this reason that we are here today, to look seriously and meticulously at the people who walked up to the podium, and to listen to their words that pierce through the smoke and dust of history. We cannot forget this history, just as we cannot forget our own memories. If I forget the strings, I'm an older brother without a conscience. In the same way, if we forget the past and only treat it as a dispensable pebble for a long time, and kick it away when we see it, it will be unconscionable. That's all life, human life. It's gone and will never come back.

But can we truly engage and reconstruct history? I heard the speaker talk about a scholar who had studied the Nanjing Massacre and had written a remarkable book.

But she committed suicide. Everyone is now remembering her and remembering her, but she is no longer in this world. [2]

Why is this happening? I would like to ask Mr. Huang. Maybe he can answer me. It seems to me that he understands a lot. But I was silent, he was silent, everyone was silent. It's polite. I understand that you can't chime in or whisper when someone is talking, but I really want to know.

Did she really get in touch with that period of history and see that kind of darkness, tyranny, cruelty, that kind of sin that people can't bear? It's like a person who is around a fire, he can only put his hands around the fire and roast, and he can't really put his hands into the fire, otherwise his hands will be burned. Or is it a prospector who walks slowly into the depths of the lake, and the deeper he goes, the more he learns about the water quality of the lake, but eventually he is swallowed up by the icy water? I don't know.

Four elderly people took the stage. Trembling and towering, their faces looked like old trees from afar. The staff helped them bring chairs, but instead of sitting down immediately, they invariably gave a military salute to the crowd. Their hands trembled, their arms reluctantly raised, like a dry branch, and the salutation was not so straight, but they worked very hard, and the heavy years must have injected lead into their bodies, but they had not yet forgotten who they were. It must be a soldier, a soldier who participated in the War of Resistance Against Japan. [3]

I subconsciously looked at the people around me, my three companions, and Mr. Huang, all of whom were like children, ready to listen to the old man talk about the past slowly and attentively. The Japanese army was very well equipped, with planes, tanks and naval guns, and the endless bombardment caused a sea of fire on the positions. The old man said. We had nothing but digging trenches, hiding inside, and waiting for the enemy to get close in hand-to-hand combat. Sleeping in the trenches at night, no one dares to close their eyes, no one can close their eyes.

I was a sophomore in high school. Another old man said. When he said the name of his school, we didn't react, and the school we had never heard of seemed to have nothing to do with it. Teacher Huang turned his head and gently told us that it was the predecessor of our school. We couldn't help but look at each other. This old man on the stage with a hoarse voice and a woodcut face is our alumnus, or rather our senior. We have a little bit of a weak relationship with him, a relationship that has not been broken after more than 70 years. In the dark bombardment, our school was razed to the ground, leaving only two lonely pillars standing in the smoke and flames of war.

It's amazing to think about how big our campus is today. Especially the new campus on the outskirts of the city, which is so big that we always complain that it is too remote and deserted, and it is empty. It's so neat and beautiful, with everything you need from the teaching building, the laboratory building, and the stadium, that we can't imagine that it once had only two pillars left.

Not only our school, but we are far from the only one that has been devastated by the war. "The enemy can destroy it, and I can restore it." The old man spoke of what a headmaster had said. Our predecessors, who were born in Nanjing, soon joined the military academy and then went to defend Changsha. There were more than 50 classmates in a company, and 37 of them died in a battle. [4]

"We're only in the early 40s of a class." Yan Xi muttered in a very soft voice. His partner rubbed his shoulder. That's right, there are more than 40 people in one class. If one day we need to go to war, to defend the country, after a battle, will there be only a few people left? I stole a glance at Millet and saw that he was looking at me too. So I passed my arm over, and he grabbed my forearm so hard that it hurt a little and poured a sense of reality into my brain. We are all alive, in this bright hall.

If there were only a few people left, would I have survived? Will Miller survive? I don't know. I'm not going to be so lucky. It's like 40 people with their eyes closed, and I can't draw those tickets. But if I can't smoke it, I'll die. And the old man who told the story, he decided to leave the campus and go to the battlefield on his own, and he also decided to put himself in a battle where sacrifices far more than he survived. He survived, but many more of his classmates left for good seventy years ago.

Maybe the moment you stand on the battlefield with a gun in your hand, you will be a hero. War is far from what we see in movies or games, and the deterrence it gives us is so far and too weak that we seem to forget its cruelty. However, this is not the case in every country in the world, and how many children of our age have already touched a gun at my age? I don't know. It's not an age to touch a gun or think about sacrificing, but sometimes it can't be helped. For a moment, I imagined me seventy years ago, of dying in some unknown alley, or on a piece of charred soil. Maybe a boy like me died like this 70 years ago. I don't know, I just want to say to Miller, you can pinch me harder, so that I can tell me that I live now, in a time when I don't need to die suddenly.

But someone died suddenly.

"I'm sorry ......" The interview seemed to be over, and the four old men stood up in unison and bowed to everyone present, "We didn't hold Nanjing. I looked blankly at them and finished speaking, like a reed grass blown by the wind, and I didn't know whether to applaud or say something. I don't understand. In a daze, he covered his mouth with his palm and pulled down his face. I didn't look around my buddies and didn't know what the expressions on their faces were. Ever since I was a child, I was a contagious person. If someone sheds tears, I'll follow suit.

"There's no need to apologize." Yan Xi's companion said softly, and only a few people around us could hear it, "It's not their fault. They are heroes. "What he said made me feel even more uncomfortable. That's what I thought, too.

Whose fault is it? I thought about this question and walked out of the memorial with everyone in the sinking twilight. The old people who have been to the battlefield think they are responsible for the tragedy that happened in this city, but even if we are no longer sensible children, we know that they have done their best. Why do they have to apologize? Maybe it's also my own decision, still regretting and feeling guilty about the past, even after 70 years, this feeling can't be completely dissipated. Presumably, some traumas are with people for a lifetime, just like the brutal Holocaust is a history that no one can forget. In the face of this dark past, how pale and powerless it is to casually exhort "Come out" and "Don't think too much", as powerless as stepping on patches of yellow and shriveled fallen leaves in autumn, and no one will feel that those fallen leaves have life.

Man always walks in his own memory and in the larger history, as long as he still has a conscience and remembers things, how can he pretend that nothing has happened and nothing has been seen? Perhaps the moment our seniors left the campus and put on their military uniforms, they decided to make some changes because they saw a lot of things. Our country is big, it can fight for a long time, and even if it is devastated, it is still alive, and it does not want to surrender or die. Just like our campus, it has only two pillars left, but it's still alive and still standing in the scorched earth.

As long as you live, there is hope, and you can change. But what if you die? If you die, you don't have a chance.

The sculpture of the black slug points diagonally towards the sky, as if suspended in the cold wind. We tightened tighter, and Miller rested his head against my coat. When it's too cold, we need a little warmth for each other. I believe that we are alive and will continue to live.

[1] December 13 is the National Memorial Day for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre, which commemorates the more than 300,000 compatriots who died in the Nanjing Massacre in the form of a national memorial.

The Battle of Nanjing, also known as the Battle of Nanjing, was a battle fought by the Chinese army to defend the capital Nanjing against the Japanese invading army after the defeat at the Battle of Songhu. On December 1, the 26th year of the Republic of China (1937), the Japanese army base camp issued the "Mainland Order No. 8", ordering the Central China Front and the Navy to coordinate and divide the troops into three routes to capture Nanjing. Chiang Kai-shek appointed Tang Shengzhi as the commander of the garrison in the capital and deployed the defense of Nanjing. Due to the huge disparity in the strength of the enemy and us, the city gates of Nanjing were successively captured by the Japanese army, and the defenders resisted one after another, making countless sacrifices. On the 12th, Tang Shengzhi was ordered by Chiang Kai-shek to give the order for the defenders to retreat. Due to the disorderly retreat of the defenders, most of them were stranded in the city, and were massacred by the Japanese army and suffered heavy losses. On December 13, Nanjing fell, and the Japanese army began the horrific Nanjing Massacre.

Nanjing Massacre refers to the defeat of the Republic of China in the Battle of Nanjing during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in China from 1931 to 1945, and after the fall of the capital Nanjing on December 13, 1937 (academic circles believe that it began on December 5), under the command of the main culprit King Hatohiko of Asakamiya, the commander of the Central China Dispatch Army, Matsui Ishine, and the commander of the 6th Division, the Japanese army invaded China to carry out organized, planned, and premeditated massacres and rape in Nanjing and nearby areas for 6 weeks. Arson, looting and other bloody atrocities. In the Nanjing Massacre, a large number of civilians and prisoners of war were killed by the Japanese army, countless families were torn apart, and the number of victims of the Nanjing Massacre exceeded 300,000. The Nanjing Massacre was a flagrant violation of international treaties and basic human morality by the Japanese army invading China, and was one of the most prominent and representative examples of the numerous atrocities committed by the Japanese army during the war of aggression against China. During the Nanjing Massacre, the New York Times, the Central Daily, Xinhua Daily, and other Chinese and foreign media all made a large number of revelations about the Nanjing Massacre. After the war, the Chinese Nationalist Government conducted an extensive investigation into the Nanjing Massacre. Among them, the Nanjing Military Tribunal for the Trial of War Criminals found that there were 28 cases of collective massacres by the Japanese army, with more than 190,000 people slaughtered; There were 858 cases of scattered massacres, with more than 150,000 deaths, and a total death toll of more than 300,000.

[2] Iris Chang (1968-2004) was a Chinese-American female writer and historian originally from Huai'an, Jiangsu. Chunru Zhang was born in New Jersey to a second-generation Chinese-American. She is good at using novel and unique methods to describe the life of Chinese people in China and the United States, revealing the little-known Chinese history and important historical materials of Chinese history in the United States, such as "The Biography of Qian Xuesen" and "Chinese in America". The Nanjing Massacre, published in 1997, described the rape, abuse, and murder of a large number of Chinese civilians by the Japanese army in Nanjing, and was listed as recommended reading by the New York Times and called one of the best books of the year by book reviews. After the publication of the book, seminars related to the Nanjing Massacre were held at Harvard, Stanford and other universities in the United States, and the Nanjing Massacre was widely reported by the American news media. Kirby, chair of Harvard's history department, called it "the first book in English to fully study the Nanjing Massacre." Zhang Chunru collected a wealth of materials in Chinese, Japanese, German, and English, as well as unpublished diaries, notes, letters, and government reports, and even consulted the transcripts of the Tokyo war criminal trials and contacted Japanese World War II veterans through letters. During the writing of the book "Nanjing Massacre", Zhang Chunru often trembled with anger, suffered from sleepless nightmares, lost weight, and lost her hair. She is faced with a cruel and bloody history that shows the evil nature of human nature, and the Nanjing Massacre is an encyclopedia of torture, all of which she has to face concretely and narrate. After the book was completed, she had to face ****** retaliation and harassment. She kept receiving threatening letters and phone calls, which made her constantly change her phone number and afraid to give out information about her husband and children, and she once told friends that she had been living in fear all these years and that it was also linked to her depression.

[3] For the prototype of the four old men, see the report "Sorry, we didn't hold Nanjing back then" in Modern Express on December 13, 2013.

[4] Quoted in Luo Jialun. Luo Jialun (1897-1969), whose name is Zhixi, pen name Yi, was born in Jiangshu Village, Qianqing Town, Keqiao, Shaoxing, Zhejiang, and was born in Jinxian, Jiangxi. He was the student leader and namer of the May Fourth Movement, and a well-known educator, thinker, and social activist in modern China. During the May Fourth Movement, he personally drafted the only printed leaflet, the "Declaration of the BJ Academic Circles", which put forward the slogan of "fighting for national rights abroad, eliminating national thieves internally". Later, he became the president of Chung-Ang University.