People from all walks of life gather in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, to attend a ceremony commemorating the 81st anniversary of the September 18 Incident.

On that day in 1931, Japanese troops blew up a section of the railway it controlled near Shenyang and then accused Chinese troops of having caused the explosion as a pretext for war. The incident was followed by Japan's full-scale invasion of China and the 14-year War of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. The invasion spread to half of China's territory and took the lives of more than 35 million Chinese soldiers and civilians.