Q&A: Hong Zheng, author of Nanjing Never Cries, discusses massacre

Prof. Hong Zheng teaches particle physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and wrote Nanjing Never Cries, a novel about the Nanjing Massacre, also called the Rape of Nanking, during which Japanese troops entering the city and killed 300,000 Chinese in 1937. Zheng was born in China just before the Japanese invasion.

Toronto ALPHA (Association for Learning and Preserving the History of the Second World War in Asia) has so far raised $4 million for an Asia-Pacific Peace Museum planned on Lawrence Avenue in Scarborough with an endowment for research on the massacre and other wartime atrocities. On Wednesday, Dec. 13, the massacre’s 80th anniversary, Zheng was scheduled to speak at a benefit concert hosted by ALPHA at Scarborough’s Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto. His remarks were edited for length.

(1) How can a museum like ALPHA proposes in Scarborough help the world learn about the Nanjing Massacre?

ZHENG: Knowledge is power. I understand ALPHA Education is trying very hard to present all the facts accurately. Such an impartial stand will build trust in people and reach people more easily. You have to be honest. History has to be preserved in its entirety.

(2) Why do you think Japan has never acknowledged the extent of the massacre?

ZHENG: Germany acknowledged (its wartime atrocities) and Japan didn’t. I think the United States has a lot to do with it. With the Cold War, the U.S. wanted an alliance with Japan against the Soviet Union. It caused people to neglect what happened during the war. I think we should get the facts straight.

(3) How significant is the Ontario government’s decision this year to commemorate the Nanjing Massacre every year on Dec. 13?

ZHENG: Most significant. I admire the Canadian people, especially the Ontario people, for having done that. (Ontario’s legislature is) the first one in the world outside of China that’s succeeded in marking the Nanjing Massacre. It takes a lot of courage to do that. It’s a really shining example of what the world should do.

(4) You researched the massacre for many years, and spoke to people who survived it in Nanjing. Why did you write a novel instead of a history?

For me, writing a novel is the best way to reach people. People will see the inner world of the Nanjing people living under the massacre. Stalin said the death of a million people is a statistic, the death of one person is a tragedy. It’s not a bloody story. It’s a story of love, it’s a novel of feeling.

(5) You’re a physicist and mathematician. Will the world ever see a formula allowing humanity to predict the level of violence that occurred in Nanjing and places like Rwanda in 1994?

ZHENG: Not in the foreseeable future. It would take a lot of effort. There’s a statement in the book similar to the answer to your question. (It says,) all of us have the seed of a demon and that of a saint inside us. We can grow into either one.