7 - The Legacy of the War

Summary

The war was a chasm for most.

There was one life before and one life afterwards.

Deep beneath the Millennium Monument in Beijing is a vast circular chamber. On the outer wall of the chamber is laid out the orthodox version of Chinese history, carved in golden-yellow stone bas relief. The history starts with mythical culture heroes and passes through all the iconic culture figures. The last figure is Deng Xiaoping, who completes the circle. The wall carries two messages: One shows the historical inevitability of contemporary China, the unbroken march from the distant past to the present. The other shows a continuous culture whose fundamental characteristics do not change.

This is a graphic version, literally cast in stone, of the long-standing trope that China does not change – Eternal China, Unchanging China, Essential China. In this record of history, invasions, wars, and rebellions seldom appear. They are downplayed because they bring disruption and chaos but do not change the basic characteristics of the Chinese world; they are vulgar accretions to a story of culture and civilisation. Under this interpretation, the Resistance War becomes one more of these accretions, terrible but transitory, causing only temporary disruption, not touching the essence of China.

The Marxist interpretation that dominated China in the Mao era was quite different, but it too took a view that saw war as only an incidental part of history.