Seeds of peace

Fighting against Evil is a tribute on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.[Photo provided to China Daily]

In addition, Zhang went to Vienna to visit the place He rented to grant visas after the original offices were forced to close.

Of the reasons for her interest in war history, Zhang says: "It may be because I come from Northeast China, which was occupied by Japan for 14 years. ... We suffered a lot at the time."

She has researched Army Unit 731, a Japanese military wing that conducted biochemical experiments on living Chinese people in Northeast China.

"Humans can even be much worse than beasts, for animals kill only for a living, not on purpose or even for competition or for fun," she says.

Zhang says, during her interviews in Europe, she was shocked to hear a story about the twisted version of Japan's invasion of China.

"At Heidelberg University, a German student majoring in Japanese asked a Chinese student, 'Who started the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (in Beijing) that marked Japan's overall invasion of China?" Zhang writes in the book.

The Chinese student answered, "of course, it was Japan" but the German student said that according to historical materials, it was China, Zhang says, adding that "it's a shame" that the German student thought in that way.

More than 35 million Chinese people were killed or injured in the years of the war.