Pawn Man hopes to lower China-U.S. tensions after his online ordeal

An American pawn shop owner who became loved and reviled in equal measure after his amazing discovery of an album of war photographs has been welcomed with open arms on his first trip to China.

Evan Kail is on a two-month trip across China after donating the album to China and shining a light on the Nanjing Massacre of Chinese civilians by invading Japanese troops in 1937.

In November 2022, Evan Kail, aka Pawn Man, was contacted by one of his 200,000 online followers whose late father had left him an extensive photo album containing photographs of street slaughter of Chinese civilians by the Japanese troops. 

He told CGTN: "I looked through the first few pages and the detail on the photos was incredible. They had very little light exposure and were like photos straight out of National Geographic. A few pages into this thing it just turns to slaughter in the streets."

Realizing he might be looking at evidence of war crimes, Kail posted a TikTok video featuring some of the less grisly images. The video mentioned that much of the imagery was too disturbing to be shared online and that Kail was seeking to attract the attention of a museum who might wish to examine it.

Within hours, his video had gone viral in China where viewers thanked him for exposing what appeared to be evidence of the Nanjing Massacre, in which Japanese troops butchered more than 300,000 civilians and prisoners of war. The video racked up over 25 million views in a week.

Yet the fallout from his decision not to publish imagery of the killings caused a frenzied outpouring of online hate against Kail by keyboard warriors accusing him of seeking infamy. This culminated in several threats against him, leading him to wear a bulletproof vest when leaving the house. 

He recalled: "It became this media circus that turned my life upside down. On the first day of the video going viral it was all praise for shedding light on the Nanjing massacre and people calling me a hero. But the next day people started speculating that the whole thing was a hoax and I was using a war crime to get famous."

The effect on Kail's mental health was instant. "It ruined my life for two months. I had to get a lawyer as I was in danger. What made the whole story go into hyperdrive wasn't the story itself. it was the negative slant, at least in America."

It was the response from the Chinese community both in the U.S. and China that proved Kail's salvation. "Chinese people started showing up to my store (SLP Gold and Silver in Minnesota) saying 'thank you for educating the world.' I hadn't realized that not everybody knew about this event, which is called the 'Forgotten Holocaust.'"

Rather than profit from the album, Kail donated it to the Consulate General of the People's Republic of China in Chicago. In response, he received a letter thanking him for the donation and enhancing the "cultural links and friendship between the people of China and the U.S."

He explained: "They gave me a diplomatic gift which I later found out is a really big deal. I've since become very popular in China."

After weathering the online storm, Kail has sought to help "create a bridge of culture between the U.S. and China." This culminated in his two-month trip to China, which he is now halfway through, which began on the second anniversary of the album's discovery.

According to Kail: "I started formulating a plan for what can I do here in China as a private citizen, an ambassador of peace. I have since discovered I'm the most popular American here in modern history, it's just wild. 

"The warmth that I have received from the Chinese people when I showed up at the airport was a media circus. I've been here for a month now and this has been the wildest month of my life." 

Kail is critical of western mainstream media for its treatment of him. "When I donated that photo album there were so many articles from major mainstream media in the West speculating on my intentions, which all ran with this fake narrative. The story actually had a happy, positive conclusion but nobody in the West followed up on that."

His Chinese trip has made a hugely positive impression on Kail and he found himself deeply moved by his trip to Nanjing on Memorial Day. 

He explained: "I thought it was really important to go to the site where the most people were killed, on the banks of the Yangtze River where it's estimated 60,000-plus prisoners of war were systematically murdered and their bodies burned and thrown into mass graves."

Kail also attended Martyrs Hall "for the aerial martyrs" and visited a memorial for American servicemen that lost their lives in the conflict, giving an American salute. He said: "Every world leader should go there simply to understand the geopolitical complexities of the region. (The massacre) should be taught the exact same way that the German holocaust is, and I don't know why it's not."

He's full of praise for what he's seen on his journey across China so far. "I've been told lots of negative things about China that I've come to find were simply not true - everything from pollution in Beijing and things that are restricted. This is not a restrictive country like I thought it was going to be."

Kail has been impressed by the country's infrastructure, specifically its trains, saying that "for the life of me, I cannot figure out why we don't have high speed trains in America like they do here in China."

He advises anyone to travel to China before expressing an opinion about the country and wants to be at the forefront of helping improve strained Sino-U.S. ties. "There needs to be a strategy for communication and cooperation, not for military action, because then we'll just have another holocaust on our hands exactly like we did 87 years ago."

He added: I'm really hoping to get some kind of official title from my country, so that I can further foster peace. I have accidentally walked into quite a moment in history and become a symbol for something that, as far as American-Chinese relations go, never happened before. I'm really hoping that governments want to take advantage of my situation and use it to build a permanent bridge of peace."