On one of my China trips, I finished my China business in Shenyang, and had the weekend before I continued on to Japan on Monday. Easter weekend as it turned out. Now Easter is not a huge holiday across China, but this one was an especially reflective and spiritual one for me as it turned out. I took a short train ride from Changchun to Shenyang, and I had read ahead about a very special museum located there. It is the home of the 9.18 Museum, a chilling museum which tells such an important story, commemorating September 18, 1935, the day Japanese forces invaded China and subsequently occupied Shenyang and the surrounding peninsula. It displays disturbing photos depicting the carnage of war. The exhibition is cruel, but it tells the critically important history of the early-mid 20th century between Japan and China and how important the peace is. I visited the museum on Saturday and it was a somber learning experience with my Chinese guide. He really did not want to take me there, but I wanted to learn. I now can completely understand why the Chinese are distrustful still of Japanese people.
Shenyang is also the home of the largest Catholic cathedral in China, the Sacred Heart or NanGuan Cathedral. It turned out that it was only two or three blocks from the hotel I had chosen in the heart of the city. Friday was Good Friday, and I walked over to the cathedral to check it out and say a quiet prayer. When I got back to my room, it was just coming up on sunset, and through the incredibly dirty windows, I looked out on the silhouette of three construction cranes that instantly had me thinking of the three crosses, outlined at dusk. Easter Sunday service was the absolute most packed, standing-room only service I have ever experienced, the organ music was great, and I stood out like an albino moose in a herd of reindeer, head and shoulders taller than any other person there, and easily the whitest. They were kind, but that is most certainly not the way to just “blend in” with the local population.
All in all, a tremendously spiritual and introspective Easter weekend. A “moment of Grace” that lasted several days.