At the Great Wall of China

It was on 18 September, 1992.

Like the Hadrian Wall in Britain, the Great Wall of China was constructed for defensive, not offensive, purpose.

18 September is a date remembered every year as the commemorative day of the 'Manchurian Incident' in 1931 when Japanese militarists first openly occupied the territory of China and set up a puppet regime in the three northeastern provinces. The Manchukuo, as the regime was called, was used as the bridgehead or springboard for the later full-scale invasion of the Mainland that began on 7 July, 1937.

These two dates had changed the fates and lives of so many Chinese in my parents' and grandparents' generations.