Site History
The temple grounds have been used as a site for internment as well as for executions. Public executions were held on the site in the 19th century. In 1927, the Kuomintang carried out a purge of suspected communists in Shanghai. Thousands of victims of this purge were brought to the temple grounds to be executed. They are commemorated today by the Longhua Martyrs Cemetery behind the temple. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese operated their largest civilian internment camp in the area, where American, British, as well as nationals of other allied countries were held under poor conditions.
Read more about this topic: Longhua Temple
Famous quotes containing the words site and/or history:
“I am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)