Entity
Changsha Lushan Martyr Shrine
Changsha, Hunan, China
On the slopes of Mount Yuelu, within the campus of Hunan Normal University, stands the Lushan Martyr Shrine. Built in 1939 under the direction of Commander Liu Jianxu, this palace-style structure honors the soldiers of the Fourth Route Army who died during the 1937 Battle of Shanghai. Among them was Colonel Qin Qingwu, who died in hand-to-hand combat alongside nearly his entire regiment of fourteen hundred men.
The building rests on a rectangular granite platform sixteen meters long and nineteen meters wide. Its post-and-lintel frame supports a hip-and-gable roof covered in yellow glazed tiles. Along the roof ridge, four segmented clay dragons, shaped in the kilns of Tongguan, frame a central glazed treasure vase. Sixteen cold granite pillars, hauled from Dingzi Town, support the surrounding corridors.
Today, two white marble tablets on the southern wall record this dual history of sacrifice and survival. Visitors can touch the coarse granite pillars, read the couplets reflecting the autumn sun, and look up at the original main beam holding the roof aloft. The shrine stands as a physical link to the thousands of Hunanese soldiers who marched to the coast and never returned.