I would like shift my focus away from the stock market, and dedicate this special day to Nanjing and Chinese people all over the world. Nanjing is the sister city of Saint Louis.
Many Chinese people (e.g., my friend Wang Jianshuo) know the Nanjing Masasccre happened 70 years ago. Couple days ago I heard a story on NPR which talked about some Japanese and Chinese people got together at Nanjing Normal university theater to commerate. Note the place was an international sanctary which saved lots of Chinese refuge at that time.
And many American people know that the US warships were bombed by Japan in Pearl Harbor.
But for me until this morning did I know that a US navy ship USS Panay was hit by Japan on Dec 1937, in the Yangze River outside of Nanjing. They were doing some rescue for American at the time. The interesting part (for me) in this NPR story is a sailor got 1,200 USD from Japanese goverment and an apology from the emperor. Note at the time $800 can buy a new car.
My point is not how much money paid by the Japanese goverment to the US victims, but I felt so unfair because more than 300,000 Chinese lives have been killed in Nanjing during 2 weeks, and now Japanese text books do not even mention this. I believe most Chinese don’t actually care how much economy aid (mostly loans) they have been given to China in last 30 years, but rather an apology and make it sure similar atrocities don’t happen again. I think one thing we can do is be strong individually, and be strong as a nation or country.
