Peace and the Blood of History: The Song of Iris Chang

Yan Fei

As Princeton's spring breeze blows
The youthful face of the young girl Zhang Chunru
Like the rainbow light in Greek mythology
Her eyes that pierce through history
The sun that pierces through the smog
Illuminate the altered pages of the archive.

The blood mist of Nanjing forms an unsolved question.
Why are the characters collectively losing their way?
The homeland is calling
She's here.
Gather all the eyes that cannot rest in peace.
To fill the pupils with scorching anticipation.
When numbers freeze in textbooks
They burned into the sorrow of Nanjing City.

Thirty thousand souls weep on rusty railway tracks.
Elderly Mrs. Xia Shuqin lifted the hem of her clothing.
Three knife scars like the wounds of the earth
The terror of an eight-year-old girl repeats in my dreams.
The carved window lattices exude the malevolence of 1937.
Bayonets, humiliation, and death

After more than half a century of waiting, the truth awaits its dawn.
"The Forgotten Massacre" Shakes The New York Times Bestseller List
Ink fragrance turns into thunder, waking up the sixty-year slumber of the West
A threatening letter with a bullet was sent from Tokyo.
On the television debate stage,
She stared directly into the ambassador's darting pupils
“If massacres can be tampered with,
Where does human conscience reside?”

Late Night Studio
Assault photos hang on the white wall like razor blades
Ripper Women
Child on the tip of a knife
Such a scene plunges you into despair in the darkness

In the deep autumn of 2004, a star fell into the Pacific Ocean.
A rainbow spans the sky of history.
Mother caresses the unfinished letter in the keepsakes.
Five hundred hands held irises at the funeral.
Tombstone engraving: Triple tiara
Writer, historian, human rights activist
San Jose Park today,
A single person's strength.”

Memorial Hall on the Huai River
The girl petted the bronze statue's warm eye sockets.
“Don't be scared, big sister."
I will remember the bloody sunset of 1937 for you!”

While Japanese textbooks still glorify the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere
When the survivor's wrinkles smooth with time
All the rivers of forgetting surge with your stubbornness.
If the truth sinks, the slaughter will return.

Yes, my writings are inscriptions that never grow cold.
Every line of text flows with a great river of suffering.
As the west wind turns these yellowed testimonies
The plane trees on Yihe Road straightened the spine of a nation.
The bell of Jiming Temple tolls.
Your smile blooms like plum blossoms and cherry blossoms.
Blooming by Xuanwu Lake
Blooming on Zijin Mountain
Blooming on the truth that tears apart lies

September 18, 2025, Toronto Thin Swallow Zhai

Author Introduction: Yan Fei, a contemporary writer and poet, also known as Yan Daxia. Currently residing in Toronto, he serves as the President of the Canadian Chinese Writers Association and the Vice President and Secretary-General of the Canadian Chinese Journalists and Editors Association. He has published over a million characters of literary works, including novels, poems, and essays, in literary magazines such as "Chinese Writers," "People's Literature," and "Horizon." He also published a full-length work in "October." He has served as a book editor, the editor-in-chief of a special economic zone newspaper's supplement, assistant editor-in-chief of Hainan Youth Daily, and deputy editor-in-chief and executive editor of the literary magazine "Coconut City" under the Haikou Federation of Literary and Art Circles. His published works include the Hainan Dream Trilogy, "Hainan Has No Dreams," "Hainan Startles Dreams," and "Hainan Seeks Dreams," the novel "The Tribulation: A Woman's Glory and Shame," the literary non-fiction "Glory and Sin," and the essay collection "Yan Fei's Dreamy Talk," among others. His literary works were immensely popular in the mid-1990s and won provincial and ministerial literary awards. His Hainan Dream Trilogy, represented by "Hainan Has No Dreams," was a national bestseller and became a landmark literary work reflecting the period of development and opening up in Hainan Province at that time. In recent years, he has been writing classical-style poetry, with his representative works "Four Beauties of the Same Class" and "Dawn Glow of the Dream of the Red Chamber" receiving critical acclaim from the literary community.