Lu Huangao is dedicated to Korean War veterans and opens a war museum featuring oral histories he collected. But it’s not his only museum. Qu Zhi reports.

In the freezing winter of 1972, Lu Huangao saw his friend’s emaciated and terminally father dying in their shanty. On the wall he saw a photo of a proud and handsome soldier, and realized that was the same man in his youth.

The man, who died soon thereafter at the age of 50, was a veteran of the Korean War (1950-1953), who returned badly wounded and fell seriously ill.

“Since then I determined that one day, when I have money, I would try my best to help those Chinese soldiers from the Korean War,” Lu tells Shanghai Daily.

Forty-one years later, Lu fulfilled his pledge, caring for veterans, recording their oral histories and building a Korean War museum and memorial hall in the Pudong New Area. The museum will open to the public on August 25.

The 4,000-sqaure-meter museum near the Pudong International Airport took five years to construct. It will feature not only oral histories but also documents, photos, artifacts and memorabilia that Lu has collected around China.

That’s not all.

Lu, who started out as a grocer, is a self-made real estate developer with a passion for geology, history and culture. He has also opened the Shanghai Museum of Geology on the same road with the Korean War Memorial.

And there’s more. On the same land, Lu has built a military museum, a museum about China’s rusticated youth, a museum of earthen lamps, old diplomas and other subjects. All are open to the public.

The idea is to construct an exposition of culture where visitors can find something brand new that prompts reflection on the past, present and future, Lu says.

His first passion is the Korean War and its veterans.

Almost every day for the past year, 60-year-old Lu has visited elderly veterans and interviewed them. Some showed him their medals, letters, diaries and photos; some of those will be in the museum.

Over the years he has made the welfare of veterans a personal campaign and has visited hundreds of old soldiers.

“I have a list of veterans with their birthdays and addresses. I don’t have much to offer but I can send a cake and card on their birthday,” Lu says. “On each card I write, ‘You are the most admirable man in the world.’ They are in indeed. I want to let them know they are not forgotten.”

Half a century ago, around 13,000 young men in Shanghai joined the army to fight for China’s Korean ally. Of them, around 4,000 are still alive, according to Lu.

At Lu’s office near the museums, there are piles of letters, diaries, photos and other items related to the war and Chinese soldiers. He has more than 3,000 medals from that conflict.

He frequently visited the downtown Confucian Temple book market to hunt for historical materials. He immersed himself in the Shanghai Archives and visited the Department of Civil Affairs frequently to see if there were more files on veterans.

“In those departments, materials are so rare that you have to call on a lot of veterans themselves and ask if they have companions not yet identified,” he says.

On February 26 this year, Lu got up at 5am as usual, purchased building materials for the war museum and started visiting veterans. Six were on his list that day.

“They prepared for a long time before my visit and almost everyone was very excited that someone would listen to their story. One elderly blind man held my hand and talked to me for three hours. I didn’t have the heart to interrupt,” Lu recalls.

At around 10pm, as he was on his way to visit the sixth veteran, Lu suffered a stroke and it took emergency medical staff three hours to revive him. He was supposed to remain hospitalized for three months, but he signed himself out 10 days later against doctor’s orders; he signed a form to indemnify the hospital and staff.

“I couldn’t wait even for one more minute,” Lu says. “The elderly soldiers can’t wait. Hua Yunzhang in Zhabei District is already 102 years old, Zhong Yongqi is 90, while Su Wengmin is 82 and can barely walk.”

A wartime photojournalist followed 26 Chinese soldiers during the Korean conflict and donated his diary to Lu. It’s inscribed, “One day we will leave this world. I hope our memories won’t.”

At the marble-façade museum and memorial, Lu plans to erect monuments and inscribe the names of all the surviving veterans he found, as well as the names of the deceased thousands in Shanghai.

Lu is candid about the hard times when he started a grocery business in the 1980s and did part-time jobs. With his savings he leased fields and few vegetables. Business boomed in the 1990s and he bought 1,500 acres in Chuansha, Pudong, for vegetable and aquatic products. He exported to Japan and other markets and started to travel.

One of Lu’s other passions is geology and gemstones, an interest since childhood. In his travels he visits museums, especially museums of geology, natural history and gemstones.

In 1998 he was impressed by the geology museum in Tucson, Arizona, the United States. “I was astonished by the myriad objects, though the place was relatively small,” he says. He decided to build a proper geology museum in China.

In 2004, Shanghai Museum of Geology opened to the public, with the help of the government. The 3,500-square-meter venue showcases more than 10,000 stones, gems and fossils from 50 countries.

Lu taught himself about geology and gemology.

“Like the old pedicab driver who can speak English, my knowledge of geology comes from diligent practice,” says Lu.

He has explored mines around the world, some 4,000 meters above sea level and some with a depth of more than 2,000 meters. He once lost his way for several days in a mine in Yunnan Province before he was rescued. “One more day and I would have died,” he say.

In Indonesia, Lu and a team hunted for fossils in an original forest inhabited by wild animals. Conditions were primitive.

“A lot of professors may have a lot of theoretical knowledge and background, but I have a lot of practical experience that cannot be learned form textbooks,” Lu says.

Address: No. 100, Xinlongzhai, Xinlong Village, Jiangzhen Rd, Pudong

Admission: 80 yuan (for all the eight museums)

Tel: 3393-5567

How to get there: Take Metro Line 2 to Haitiansan Road (one stop before the terminal Pudong International Airport), and another 10-minute taxi will take you there.