A student-made short documentary "Iris Chang & Her Writing of THE RAPE OF NANKING” was launched recently on Chinese video portal Bilibili, making Qin Jiachen, one of the producers, relieved and fulfilled.

A student in Beijing Foreign Studies University and a Nanjing native, Qin says the documentary is an attempt to use new media to let more people, especially those in English-speaking countries, understand Iris Chang’s life.

Born in 1968, Iris Chang is a Chinese American writer and historian. She is known for publishing The Rape of Nanking：the Forgotten Holocaust of World War II in 1997, telling the the historical truth of the Nanjing Massacre to Western world.

The nearly 13-minute short film produced by Qin’s team shows considerable first-hand audiovisual and textual materials collected from multiple museums. Iris Chang’s life and her motivation and process of writing The Rape of Nanking are narrated in English.

From left to right: Lu Shangquan, Wang Yechi, Qin Jiachen, Tang Junyan

Before making the short film, the team, which includes three Nanjing natives, took nearly a year to make in-depth research and collect the material about Iris Chang. To obtain first-hand historical materials, team members visited several museums about the history of Nanjing Massacre in Nanjing and Hua’an. They also interviewed famous scholars, including Wang Weixing who accompanied Iris Chang on the field survey in Nanjing in 1995. The members also read a lot of documents in English about Iris Chang to grasp profound understanding of her life and the history of the Nanjing Massacre.

Once the short documentary is launched on the Internet, their team received lots of the comments and encouragement from netizens, bringing them a sense of pride. Throughout the whole process, Qin and his team members have developed a growing sense of mission. Like Qin Jiachen, more Chinese youths are ready to telling the world about China in a creative way and also with great sense of responsibility.

Contact us at english@jschina.com.cn