80 years ago
Some tore the land apart with artillery fire
Some mended the wounds with their lives
Fourteen years of bloody struggle
Tens of millions of nameless figures
Finally pieced together the shattered land
Into a new dawn
Listen
In the melody of “Congratulations”
Lies the bittersweet relief of surviving disaster
In the prelude to “The March of the Volunteers”
Stand countless
“Young buglers” who never lived to see victory
80 years on, suffering has been replaced by happiness
A nation once on the brink of collapse
Reunited and rose from the flames of war
Time does not speak
Yet turns seeds into towering trees
Using all that came “after”
To bear magnificent witness to their existence
Echoing through the ages
The March of the Volunteers
“The March of the Volunteers” is the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China, originally written in 1935 as the theme song for the film *Sons and Daughters in a Time of Storm*. The song was used to inspire resistance against the Japanese invasion during the Second Sino-Japanese War and was officially adopted as the national anthem in 1949.
