He Jun’s collection, courtesy of The Daily Sunshine

A man exhibited his collection of over 300 medals of valour on a street in Shenzhen’s Longgang District on Sept. 18, the 82nd anniversary of the Mukden Incident, the pretext for Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, The Daily Sunshine reports.

He Jun, 58, has been collecting the medals for over 30 years and has about twice as many as were on display that day. He urged passers-by to never forget national humiliation and always reach for peace.

Some would call it cognitive dissonance to claim to advocate peace while dragging up the country’s past victimisation. During the anti-Japan protests that swept the nation during the territorial dispute over the Diaoyu Islands last year, an op-ed was published in Shenzhen Daily comparing the protestors to red guards and pointing out that the two nations’ economies were heavily intertwined.

On Sept. 17 last year, this author went to drink in a Japanese restaurant in Shenzhen’s Nanshan District and saw that all Japanese restaurants on the street had to keep their lights out and cover up the Japanese characters above the door with black bags to avoid creating political tension.

This year’s anniversary was marked by a state-run memorial museum calling on Tokyo to offer compensation and an apology to relatives of those forced into manual labour during World War II, according to Agence France Presse. Various Chinese cities have also been known to sound air raid sirens to mark the anniversary on Sept. 18.