How Rape of Nanking author Iris Chang is honoured in Chinese museum newly opened in her family’s ancestral home

Chang took her own life in Los Gatos, California, at age 36. Her book is internationally recognised as the most detailed Western account of the 1937 Nanking massacre, in which the Japanese army brutalised thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians during the second Sino-Japanese war.

The memorial hall honouring Chang opened in April in her ancestral home of Huaian, Jiangsu province. Construction took two years, according to her mother, Ying-Ying Chang, a retired microbiology researcher who lives in San Jose, California.

Chang remembers her daughter as a diligent and passionate person who never gave up in her quest for the truth and the pursuit of social justice. “That really inspired me,” the author’s mother says. “And these are the things I hope inspire other people.”

Through the museum, she added, “I hope people will know who Iris was and why we memorialise her and what she did.”

Ying-Ying Chang and her husband, Shau-Jin, a retired physics professor, donated more than 100 pieces for the museum – everything from their daughter’s old books and letters to her clothing.