Seeds of peace

Author Zhang Yawen (left) visits Qian Xiuling, who saved more than 100 Belgians from the Nazis, in 1999.[Photo provided to China Daily]

She makes a special mention of Verda Majo, originally named Hasegawa Teruko, from Japan, who came to China during the war and pleaded with Japanese soldiers on radio to stop killing and raping Chinese people.

Fighting against Evil is Zhang's latest work in her decadeslong research on World War II.

In 1999 she went to Europe to interview the "Chinese mother of Belgium" Qian Xiu-ling, who was awarded a Hero of the State medal for saving more than 100 Belgians from the Nazis.

Based on history, Zhang wrote the script for the TV series A Chinese Woman at Gestapo Gunpoint, which was aired on CCTV in 2002.

She then wrote a novel with the same name and it was translated into English in 2003. In June, when King Philippe of Belgium visited China, President Xi Jinping gave the book to him as a gift.

'We suffered a lot ...'

While writing Fighting against Evil, Zhang traveled extensively for interviews. In July last year, she spent nearly a month visiting Nanjing, Jiangsu province, and Yiyang, Hunan province, for interviews.

In Nanjing, she visited the site of Jiangnan cement factory, which served as a safe house for more than 30,000 Chinese refugees during the massacre.

In Yiyang she learned about the childhood of He Fengsha, who granted visas to thousands of Jewish people as consul-general of the Kuomintang government in Vienna during the war.

Also last year, Zhang went to Europe to do interviews about German Alexander von Falken-hausen, who even as a Nazi leader tried to save Belgians from mass killings in Belgium; John Rabe, who helped save about 250,000 Chinese during the Nanjing Massacre (also known as the Nanking Massacre); the Dane Bernhard Arp Sindberg, who was one of two foreigners working at the cement factory in Nanjing from 1937 to 1938, and provided shelter to Chinese refugees.