[Watch] Malaysian Grandfather From Alor Setar Fought In WWII China, Granddaughter Found Out 80 Years Later

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In mid-September, Teoh Hui Ching, a Malaysian-Chinese woman travelling in Kunming, Yunnan province, was walking along Xinwen South Road when she noticed photographs on a public display wall.

One of them was her maternal grandfather.

The wall is the Nanyang Volunteers History and Culture Wall, a public commemoration of overseas Chinese workers who supported China’s resistance against Japanese forces during World War II.

Kuang Jin Yuan, born in 1914 in Alor Setar, Malaysia, is among those honoured — his portrait shows a young man in what appears to be the uniform of the Kuomintang, the Nationalist party that led China’s wartime government and its resistance against Japan, his peaked cap and steady gaze frozen in a photograph that found its way onto a wall in Kunming, recognised at a glance, in a city he served, by a granddaughter who never knew his story.