Cemetery connects lost soldiers with the present

The seekers

For thousands of families across China, the cemetery in Shenyang — established in 1951 and spanning 210,000 square meters — is the only tangible link to relatives lost in a war seven decades ago.

At its heart rises a 23.5-meter granite monument bearing the inscription "The heroic souls of the martyrs of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea shall live forever" in the calligraphy of Dong Biwu, one of the founders of the Communist Party of China and a famed Marxist.

Behind the monument rest 123 CPV martyrs, including special-class heroes Yang Gensi and Huang Jiguang, and first-class heroes Qiu Shaoyun, Sun Zhanyuan and Yang Liandi.

In front of the cemetery is a memorial square completed on Oct 29, 2014. Its unclosed circular form symbolizes return and reunion.

An underground crypt beneath the square holds the remains of CPV martyrs repatriated annually from the Republic of Korea. Over 1,000 soldiers have been brought home through these handovers.

Since 2014, following a handover agreement between China and the ROK, 13 consecutive repatriations have brought a total of 1,023 soldiers home. On the day of the 13th repatriation in April this year, a solemn burial ceremony was held at the square.

For many families, the wall of names is the only place they can finally pay tribute to their loved ones.

Xia Fang, deputy head of the cemetery's social education department, has spent 20 years watching visitors walk the length of the wall, fingers trailing across the carved characters.

One story stays with her. In 2025, a man called Fang Hanbing had traveled over 1,700 km from Macheng, Hubei province, to find his father's name on the wall. He brought a pouch of soil from his hometown and a stack of fire-baked flatbread — his father's favorite. When his fingers traced the characters "Fang Jinyao", a word he had never been able to speak escaped his lips: "Dad". He had been three months old when his father left for the front.

"I was standing right there," Xia recalled. "After 70 years, when he finally called out 'Dad', the emotion just broke through."

Another staff member, Wang Chunjie, remembers a woman named Wang Xianxia, who spent 58 years searching for her father. When she finally arrived at his grave, she knelt and bowed 58 times — one for each year of searching.

"She said, 'I've been looking for you my whole life'," Wang Chunjie recalled. "She was in her sixties by then."