Museum bears harsh testimony to history

History this way passed. The Lugouqiao, adorned with hundreds of lion figurines, near the Wanping Fortress in Beijing's Fengtai district - often referred to as the Marco Polo Bridge - still stands.

It's been renovated, but some of the paving stones that reverberated to the clacking hobnail boots of the Japanese Imperial army are still in place.

We are marking the anniversary of Germany's and Japan's surrender in 1945, but it is legitimate to suggest that the incident that sparked the conflict that became World War II occurred not in Poland in 1939 but in China, near this 11-arched bridge, in 1937.