The Marco Polo Bridge incident
One of the themes of this blog is that there’s a big world out there – we need to know more about other countries and view things through others’ eyes.
Take something as huge and as ‘given’ as the Second World War. Here in Europe, we see the war as commencing in September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. However, for the Chinese, the Second World War effectively started with the Japanese break-out from Manchuria in July 1937.
Here in Britain, 7/7 is immediately recognised as a reference to the terrorist bombings in London on 7 July 2005. However, in China, 7/7 means 7 July 1937 when the Japanese commenced their invasion of the Chinese heartlands. In the West, the event which provoked this ferocious assault is called the Marco Polo Bridge incident. But in China they call it – more accurately – the Luokuochiao Incident.
Today is the 70th anniversary of what was a seminal event in modern Chinese history. You can read about the incident here.