Jingyu Martyrs Cemetery

The Jingyu Martyrs Cemetery commemorates Yang Jingyu and the anti-Japanese resistance fighters who continued guerrilla operations in Manchuria through the 1930s and into the 1940s. Yang Jingyu is one of the most celebrated figures of the resistance — a Communist commander who operated in the forests of Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces under conditions of extreme deprivation.

The cemetery and memorial complex is an active site of Chinese patriotic commemoration — visited by school groups, military personnel, and citizens marking the history of the resistance period. For foreign visitors, the significance is different: this is one of the relatively few places in China where the resistance to Japanese occupation is presented through the specific stories of individual fighters rather than through abstracted heroics. The story of Yang Jingyu's last months in the forest, documented in Japanese military records that have been incorporated into the museum, has a quality that transcends its ideological framing.

things to do sight
A story
Yang Jingyu was the Communist guerrilla commander who led resistance against Japanese occupation in Manchuria through the 1930s. When he was finally killed by Japanese forces in 1940, the Japanese commander allegedly ordered an autopsy because they refused to believe one person had survived so long in the forest in winter — the examination found his stomach contained only tree bark, grass, and cotton from his clothing. There was nothing else left to eat.