Across China: Chinese man's race to record unknown war heroes' stories

new book and documentary film on China's war survivors were officially released on Friday, capturing the increasingly rare tales from witnesses of WWII.

Sadly, one third of the war survivors featured in the book passed away before the book was published, said Li Genzhi, the author of "Wartime Civilian Workers in Tengchong."

"It is a race against the clock before they are all gone," he said.

The book draws its interviews from Tengchong, a county-level city in southwest China's Yunnan Province, and home to one of the worst battlefields in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression seven decades ago.

The 400,000-word book tells stories of civilians who voluntarily acted as porters to carry rice and supplies along a dangerous mountain path for the Chinese Expeditionary Force in 1944 as they planned to reclaim the China-Myanmar border town occupied by the Japanese invading army during the war.

Affected by continuous rain, it was difficult to deliver food to the Chinese soldiers by air. So nearly 30,000 Tengchong people, most of whom were women, elders and children, had to bring back around 600,000 jin (300,000 kg) rice from Hupa Village on the other side of Gaoligong Mountains, which is at an average altitude of 3,000 meters.

"You would never get lost on this road because piles of corpses would show you the right direction," recalled Zhao Shunguo, 97. He remembers accidentally stepping on the belly of a decayed corpse by accident, resulting in a foot infection.

"I've had problems sleeping my whole life due to intensely itchy feet," Zhao said.

However, if given another chance, he would make the same choice. He believed if he could bring more food to Chinese soldiers, the war might end earlier and his brother, who was fighting on the frontline, might come home earlier. In the end, his brother never returned.

These civilians spent a total of 45 days delivering the rice, 35 days longer than the original plan. Around 4,000 carriers died on the road climbing over Gaoligong Mountains or back home due to hunger, cold and diseases such as malaria, said Li.

Li, a freelance writer and film maker, became interested in Tengchong's war survivors because two of his relatives were among the dead. He said every family in Tengchong has scars caused by the war.

However, few reports or books have focused on civilians there who supported the frontline. In 2008, Li quit his job as a journalist and established his own studio four years later to focus on war history.

Over the past ten years, Li has interviewed 70 survivors who carried food supplies for soldiers when reclaiming Tengchong and the family members of those who died on the road. The book is a collection of oral accounts of 24 people.

"The youngest is 87 years old, while the oldest has surpassed 100. The population of these people dwindles every day. I'm racing against time," he said.

Yang Zhenxiang, 104, died before the book was published. Yang's husband was killed by infectious disease on the Gaoligong Mountains when bringing the food supplies for Chinese soldiers over 70 years ago. The woman refused to believe and has waited for the man until her death.

Li says statistics and descriptions of war don't always catch the attention of youth.

"They need details and real stories to show how war affects each individual, each family and each country."

Next year, he will publish a book about forced laborers who were taken by Japanese troops.

Three people Li has wrote about in his recently published book were invited to attend China's first military parade on Thursday in Beijing to mark the anniversary of the end of WWII and the victory of the war of resistance against Japanese aggression.

"I'm delighted that those unknown war heroes can be known by people seven decades later, and I'll continue to tell the untold stories. It's about love and humanity, not just war," he said. Endi