Victory Day in the War of Resistance

There are no heroes or geniuses here, only ordinary people trying to live in peace who are swept into a deadly struggle and lose their lives.

In 2025, veteran of the War of Resistance Chen Yongning gave an interview to a reporter. He began with the day the war was won, then spoke of his brief romance with a Japanese nurse, which ended abruptly before it had a chance to develop.

Chen Yongning’s account then turned to the eighty years after the war ended. During those years, he reunited with former comrades and the families of those who had died in battle, and personally experienced every upheaval China has undergone over the past eighty years. As his story gradually unfolded, the reporter came to realize that Chen Yongning had been part of countless stories familiar to every Chinese person. His life was, in truth, an ordinary epic of the Chinese people defending and building their homeland.