Longhua Temple

Longhua Temple in Shanghai carries two histories on one plot of ground: an ancient Buddhist site with a bell rung every New Year's Eve, and the field beside it where, on February 7, 1931, the Nationalist government executed twenty-three prisoners, among them five young writers tied to Lu Xun's circle. The guide follows one of those writers, Rou Shi, and Lu Xun's own account of losing him, alongside the pagoda's much older origins. Listen for how the temple's bells and the martyrs' cemetery came to share a single gate.