Nie Er Memorial Park

Nie Er Memorial Park occupies a substantial area in central Yuxi and is dedicated to the composer Nie Er, born here in 1912, who wrote what became China's national anthem. The park is a large and well-maintained green space with a central memorial hall, a large bronze statue, and gardens maintained to a civic standard that reflects the local pride in Nie Er's legacy. It functions simultaneously as a public park for Yuxi residents and as a pilgrimage site for Chinese visitors who know the anthem's origin.

The memorial hall contains exhibits about Nie Er's short life — he died at 23 — and the political and cultural context of the 1930s in which he worked. The music itself, which every Chinese schoolchild learns, was composed in a period of intense nationalist feeling as Japan expanded into China. The park also has a concert space that hosts performances, and on national holidays the atmosphere around the park is notably celebratory. For foreign visitors, the combination of elegant park and the unexpected fact that China's national anthem was written by a Yunnanese man barely out of his teens gives the place a particular interest.

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A story
Nie Er composed the March of the Volunteers — which became China's national anthem — in 1935, when he was 23 years old. He died later that year, drowned while swimming in Japan at age 23. The march was written as the theme for a patriotic film and was adopted as the de facto national anthem during the resistance against Japan; it became official in 1978. Yuxi claims him with considerable pride, and the park is a major civic statement about the city's most famous son.