Some ten miles from Beijing's city center stands the "Lugou Qiao", also known as the "Marco Polo Bridge", named after the famed traveller, who enthusiastically described this enduring, 11-arched bridge in his famous book, "The Travels". The historic significance of this 820 year old bridge is close to the heart of every Chinese, not only for its beauty of the marble-stone construction dating to the Jin Dynasty of 1189, but also for the bloody battles of 1937 between the Japanese Imperial Army and the Nationalist Chinese Soldiers, leading to the Japanese occupation of Beijing, followed by a full-scale war. The pain and the suffering of the Chinese people in the hands of the Japanese is never to be forgotten, much less forgiven. The conflict and the bloody atrocities remain today as one of the great divides
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