An Airport, A Shared Memory

Yangtang Airfield in Guilin in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region stands as a lasting monument to the wartime alliance between Chinese and American forces during World War II.

Stories from Guilin, a Chinese city bombed by the Japanese in order to destroy Allied air bases, epitomize sacrifice and solidarity. Many Chinese people lost their lives in the building of the airfield as work was so gruelling without machinery.  

Jeffery Greene, a veteran pilot and chairman of the Sino-American Aviation Heritage Foundation, recounts for CGTN a profound chapter in the shared history of the two nations. In wartime, he says, and while on the brink of starvation, Chinese people would give their children fewer eggs so that rescued American pilots – known as the Flying Tigers, who were generally of a bigger build, could get their calories. 

"If China and the United States, the world's most powerful countries, work together like they did 80 years ago, there's nothing that can't be accomplished," Greene urges.