North China Military Region Martyrs Cemetery

The North China Military Region Martyrs Cemetery lies on Zhongshan West Road in Qiaoxi District, in the city of Shijiazhuang, Hebei province. It was established after the liberation of Shijiazhuang in November 1947, one of the first large cities taken by Communist forces, and it commemorates soldiers, officials and civilians who died in the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War in the North China base areas. The cemetery is best known as the burial place of two foreign medical volunteers. Norman Bethune, a Canadian surgeon who served with the Eighth Route Army and died of blood poisoning in November 1939, was reburied here in 1952, and Dwarkanath Kotnis, an Indian doctor who was part of a medical mission in 1938 and died in 1942, rests nearby. Both men are widely honoured in China, and the cemetery is associated with the Bethune International Peace Hospital tradition in the region. The grounds are laid out in a formal memorial style, with a main axis, a large memorial monument, tombs, statues and landscaped gardens of cypress and pine. Exhibition spaces present the stories of the figures buried there and the history of the base areas. Areas of the site include memorials to the martyrs of the Hebei, Shanxi, Chahar and Suiyuan region. The cemetery is a place of commemoration and patriotic education, and school groups and official delegations frequently visit. Admission is free, and visitors are expected to behave respectfully. A visit generally takes 45 minutes to an hour. Because opening hours are not always clearly published, it is advisable to verify the posted hours on arrival.