Yuhuatai Martyrs Memorial

Yuhuatai Martyrs Memorial (雨花台烈士陵园) commemorates the Communists and progressives executed by the Nationalist government at the south gate of Nanjing between 1927 and 1949. The park is large and formally landscaped, with a memorial hall, a vast stone sculpture, and burial grounds. It occupies the Rain Flower Terrace — the same hill where coloured pebbles have been collected as decorative objects since the Tang dynasty.

The contrast between the holiday visitors hunting for pretty pebbles in the same grounds as a major revolutionary martyrs memorial is distinctly Nanjing. The memorial hall itself is well designed, with photographs and artefacts covering the political repression of the Nationalist period. The park is extensive and the northern section, near the main monument, is more park than memorial.

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A story
The pebbles from Yuhuatai (Rain Flower Terrace) have been collected as decorative objects for over a thousand years. The hill takes its name from a Buddhist legend in which a monk's sermon was so moving that flowers rained from heaven and turned to stone. The coloured pebbles are still sold in shops throughout Nanjing. The same hill was used as an execution ground by the Nationalist government in the 1930s and 1940s for thousands of Communist Party members.