I’d never been to the Jewish Museum of Refugees and so, as the number of weekends left has dwindled to three, I thought I’d cycle over there. It was Sunday and hot hot hot. I plastered on loads of sunblock and topped myself off with a bush hat and set off on my old Chinese bicycle.
The route took me to Jing’an temple and then along Sichuan Lu where there are some seriously beautiful colonial buildings. Then it’s over Suzhou Creek and roughly follow the river north.
Apart from forays to 1933 abbatoir, I hadn’t really explored Hongkou much, it’s just a bit too far to do easily on a bike. It took a great deal of time to get to the Jewish Museum on my old bicycle but I plodded on, it didn’t complain too much and eventually we pulled up outside and paid our 45rmb entrance fee.
The synagogue was small and the dark interior was illuminated by the midday sun shing through the stained glass windows high up on the walls. I recognised what was surely an image of Ferusalem in the images but the rest were a mystery to me.
The third floor of the synagogue was completely dedicated to the memory of Anne Frank. I hadn’t expected this. I had expected it to be all about the Jews of Shanghai. Maybe the Anne Frank story is not so well known in China and maybe they need a bit of background to the plight of the jews in WW2.
Other buildings in the complex housed vidoes about the holocaust (in Chinese) and photos of the life of the Jews in Shanghai. Leaving the museum, I hopped on my bike and decided to go for a ride up ZhouShan Lu, the centre of Shanghai Jewish life. Now of course, there’s no sign of its past glories and you would not think the road had any historical significance.
I stopped by a lane where there was a magnificent vine giving shade to the men who sat at the entrance. They gestured for me to stop and sit down and so I did. We chatted for a while until I had reached the end of my vocabulary. I found several pretyt lanes around this area and they were so narrow and so full of washing and plants that I felt like I should breath in a bit.
I took their advice about where to find xiaolongbao for my lunch and refreshed, I cycled to the river where I got a ferry across to Pudong. You would not think Pudong and Hongkou belonged in the same country, let alone the same city, divided only by the HuangPu River. The contrast is extreme, both old and new Shanghai separated by a 2rmb ferry ride.