Do you remember how old you were when you first learned about the Nanking massacre–what were you taught and how did it affect you?
The first time I learned about the Nanking massacre in school I was very young, around five or six. In China, every student is taught about our history very early. I remember being really shocked, because the teacher showed us lots of black and white pictures in which there were thousands of corpses and skulls. We were told that Japanese troops invaded China and, without any reason, surrounded Nanking–then the capital of China–and conquered the city. Each year or every other year we would receive more education about the massacre, about the killings and rapes, so the first impression grew deeper and deeper.

Coming from that background, how did you approach making a movie about the tragedy?
At first I was just like many other Chinese people, I believed that Japanese people are these brutal sub-human beings. I wanted to make a movie to deliver the “truth” about the massacre, and to make the audience hate Japanese people. But then I did a lot of research, not only about the Nanking massacre but about the history behind it, and I also analyzed other massacres from all over the world. Step by step, I became aware that massacres are pretty common. That awareness pushed me to go to Japan to interview veterans and their families, to collect their diaries and letters, in an attempt to analyze why massacres happen. And I found that these so-called killing machines were actually normal people, husbands and grandfathers, nice guys.