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Before getting to Shanghai, the only two World Expos I knew about were the New York Worlds Fair and the Great Exhibition in London. That is, until I came to Shanghai and learned about the Shanghai Expo 2010. Unlike the Olympics, many of the sites built for Expo 2010 are still in use today. Most famous of these is the former China Pavilion, now the China Art Museum, although a good chunk of Pudong and many of the Metro lines were developed specifically for Expo 2010. However, some of the other pavilions built for the Expo 2010 are not currently in use and are just rotting away. Expo 2010 seems to have been a positive thing for Shanghai overall. It helped establish Shanghai as a world city and improved a good deal of the infrastructure in the city. I guess the real reason why the Shanghai Expo 2010 helped the city while many of these major world events end up only adding a massive pile of debt to a city is that Shanghai got some use out of the majority of the facilities built for the exhibition. The Shanghai Municipal Government and the Communist Party Committee knew that Shanghai needed more public spaces and more public transit if it was to become a real world city. One of the reasons I like Shanghai more than Beijing is that, because of Expo 2010, the Shanghai public transportation system is simply better than Beijing's. While Expo 2010 might not be as great as the City Government and the Shanghiese describe the Expo as, it did help the city of Shanghai develop.
So I got a request to write a blog post about the Jews of Kaifeng. While I have written about Sino-Judaic stuff before I have avoided the Jews of Kaifeng largely because I didn't feel like I knew much about them and that I have never been to Kaifeng. Since I have brought them up a few times I guess I should say something about the small but important community of ethnically Chinese Jews. I would like to note though that basically everything I know on this topic is from the research and work of Prof. Xu Xin (徐新) of the University of Nanjing (南京大学), he is a far better source for this type of thing than I am and all of his work in the field of Jewish Studies is extremely interesting.
While the vast majority of China's Jews, particularly within the last 100 years, are ethnically foreign (the Chinese tend to lump all whiteish foreigners together) this has not always been the case. In the days of the silk road, Jews, probably for Persia, made their way over to China as merchants and traders. Like the Hui people, the ethnically Chinese Muslims who make my favorite noodles, some Jews decided to stay in China, marrying Chinese women becoming less and less Persian and more and more Chinese. What is interesting about the Jews of Kaifeng though is while they became more and more Chinese they stayed as Jewish as they began for quite a long time. In Prof. Xin's book The Jews of Kaifeng he described the Kaifeng Jewish Community's synagogue with its bilingual Chinese/Hebrew inscriptions asking the one Jewish G-d to bless the Chinese Emperor and explaining how to use the teachings of Confucius to help forfill the 10 Commandments Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai. During the community's golden age in the Sung Dynasty, the Jews of Kaifeng produced several graduates of China's intensive civil service exams and were as pillars of the community. Unfortunately, China's increasing isolation and a series of catastrophes that wrecked the once great city of Kaifeng destroyed the Jewish community there. Fortunately, a good deal of scholarship was done on the community before they disappeared. Some Chinese missionaries believed that the Old Testament was incomplete, because it fails to mention Jesus and the New Testament quotes several Old Testament passages that don't seem to actually be in the Old Testament at all, so were hoping the Kaifeng Jews, being a relatively isolated community for most of their history, would have these lost sections. To their displeasure, they found that the Kaifeng Jews were Jew Jews, using the same Old Testament the Jews of Europe and the Middle East were using even after a long period of isolation from those communities. By the 19th Century, the Kaifeng Jews almost totally forgot their heritage; the knowledge of Hebrew and Torah died with their last Rabbi. Still to this day there is a Teaching Torah Lane in Kaifeng (it was formally called the Lane of the Sinew Removing Religion, another Chinese reference to Jews) marking the site of the community's former synagogue. Some of the Kaifeng Jews never forgot their roots however, remembering that they are different from the majority Han Chinese and, unlike most Chinese, avoided eating pork. The small community of about 100 people is having a mini-renaissance with increased interest in their community from the Jewish world and China's new infatuation with the Jews following the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the People's Republic of China and the State of Israel. Last year, a few Kaifeng Jews even made Aliyah to the State of Israel. While their story might be strange, Am Yisrael Chai Zai Zhongguo. Comrades, as we all know, Karl Marx taught us it is not a matter of if the workers of the world will unite, but when and when better than International Workers Day, or May Day. In actuality, May Day celebrations were about as intense as Columbus Day celebrations, aka most people just got the day off and sat around. Still Comrades, as we also know if there was no Communist Party there would be no New China, so some friends and I decided to pay our respects to the Revolutionaries who came before us. Shortly after lunch we started off to the Memorial Hall of the First Congress of the Communist Party of China located in the French Concession neighborhood of Shanghai. As the name suggests, the French Concession was formally under French control so it was a bit easier for radicals and, in the words of Chen Kai-shek, "bandits," like Mao and the Communist Party, to have meetings there. The building still stands as a museum to the early days of the Party. While getting in was free, security was actually quite intense. I would put it at one level below Tienanmen Square level of security and around the level I saw at most of the Republican National Convention in the US. The museum itself is OK, but, unlike many other Communist sites, had signage in both English and Chinese. What is interesting is that the museum split its focus on all delegates to the First National Congress, not just Chairman Mao. I would say the building was comfortable but simple, the nicest things were the museum elements put in after the Communist takeover of the Mainland and a tea set the delegates apparently used. Now I know what you are all wondering, yes they had a gift shop, and yes I did buy a both Mao Badge and a Hammer and Sickle pin. After that, we walked passed Zhou Enlai's, the former Primer of China, old home but we couldn't go in since it was closed for renovations. We than took the subway to dinner. We went to a world famous Pyongyang Korean Restaurant to respect the founders of the Peoples Revolution there. While the Pyongyang restaurants are know for their interesting dinner shows, they are most famous for being owned by the North Korean (Democratic People's Republic of Korea/DPRK) Government. The waitresses and chefs are all imported from the DPRK; apparently the waitresses are the daughters of major Workers Party members and Government officials as waitress at a Pyongyang is a very desirable job. While the food was all authentic Korean it all has a northern flair to it. Many of the dishes were Pyongyang specific, including my Pyongyang Rice in Soup and the Pyongyang Kimchi we got for the table. Furthermore, they do the mishmash of little appetizer things at the beginning of the meal, apparently to show off the vast bounty of Socialist Korea, which I read was a common way for foreigners to eat when touring North Korea. The South Korean guy sitting next to us said that North Korean food is overall less spicy than South Korean food. The food actually wasn't bad, a bit expensive but not bad; the South Korean guy must have liked it since it was his second time there. What is funny is that the Pyongyang restaurant served Budweiser and Coke-a-Cola, in addition to a wide array of Chinese beverages, including wine and beijiu. To be honest, I was a little bummed out by their drink selection, I heard North Korean beer is actually very good and was hoping they had some. Also who ever pays 300RMB, 50USD, for a bottle of Chinese wine is just dumb. To be fair though, they did serve the good for export Tsingtao, not the domestic stuff Ellen's Bar serves/gives away on Thursdays. The meal was just preparation for the main event, a musical extravaganza put on every night at 7:30 by our many lovely Korean waitresses. The waitresses are truly multi-talented, all could play one or two instruments and sing in Korean and Chinese while servicing the customers in Chinese, Korean, and English. The South Korean guy we met could understand most of the songs, he had a few problems with the last song and told us he couldn't tell if it was in Korean or in Chinese. The restaurant was actually more subdued than you think a North Korean place would be. There were no pictures of Kim Jong-Un, Kim Jong-Il, or Kim Il-Sung anywhere and the waitresses avoided singing any political songs. From what I read, public events in the DPRK begin with a singing of the National Anthem, Aegukka, and the red anthem of the current Supreme Leader, now We Will Follow You Only but formally No Motherland Without You or the Song of Kim Il-Sung. The South Korean guy said all the songs with words were about welcome and friendship, which I guess makes sense in context. Comrades, I can report to that the East is Red, and there is Peace at the End of our Bayonets. While some of the bourgeoisie would like to tell you that respecting our Party Fathers and eating with our Korean Comrades isn't fun, they are wrong as they are with most things. So tonight, we all exist to Serve the People and to Defend the Headquarters of the Revolution! Good night and Long Live Chairman Mao!
Today my Chinese Cinema class took a field trip to the China Art Museum, Shanghai to check out the animated version of Along the River During the Qingming Festival. If you remember back to my first semester at ECNU, I judged a English contest for the Communist Youth League at the China Art Museum. The original Along the River During the Qingming Festival in Beijing, know as China's Mona Lisa, depicts the Song capital of Bianjing, modern Kaifeng, during the Qingming Festival. The animated Along the River During the Qingming Festival was the China Pavilion's big hit during the Expo 2010; when the China Pavilion of Expo 2010 became the China Art Museum, Shanghai, they kept the massive video exhibit in tact. To be honest, the animated Along the River During the Qingming Festival feels like it would be better taught in a Chinese Gaming class rather than a Chinese film class; the work reminds me more of video games like Banished or the civilian campaign in Stronghold 2 than any film. It is a work you can watch for half an hour, though this may be because I tried to find the Jews of Kaifeng in the work (I think I found one). With so much going on and so much motion it is almost impossible to view the whole work quickly. It is a very interesting piece of multimedia art and is worth checking out if you have some extra time in Shanghai.
On my second day in Xiamen, my group of ECNU international students was taken three hours away form Xiamen to visit the home of the Hakka People (客家民族), one of China's 56 ethnic groups. The particular Hakka community we visited, the Fujian Tulou Earthen Buildings site, is one of China's many UNESCO World Heritage Sites. We did have some delays in getting there though; one of the roads was ripped up for construction so it took us about half an hour just to pass that small stretch of street, eventually though we did make it to the site. The Tulou buildings are Earthen buildings built to protect the Hakka people from the roving bandits and wild animals that were common in the mountains of Imperial China. Each Hakka clan would have their own Tulou building that house all the essentials for relatively comfortable living at the time, such as water wells and Buddhist temples. Since most bandits just wanted to get the booty quickly and leave, they were unwilling to besiege the fortified Tulou buildings. The site was interesting I guess, I got a lot of good photos and the Fujian Tulou buildings were defiantly neat but I don't know if it was worth the six hours on the bus there and back to see them. Walking around the site, it was clear that many other people weren't willing to make the drive. While the buildings are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a China National Tourism Authority AAAAA Tourist Site, for China there were hardly any people there. It felt like Zhangjiajie got more tourists in the off season than the Fujian Tulou did in far better weather. If you compare the Fujian Tulou to the number of tourists China's really famous world heritage sites get, like the Forbidden City of Beijing or the Terracotta Army of Xi'an, the Fujian Tulou felt down right abandon. For both lunch and dinner I had Hakka food. The Hakka were traditionally an agrarian people and their salty vegetable biased foods reflect this. I wasn't super into our lunch, I guess we went to a touristy restaurant that knew none of us would ever come back there for the food. Dinner was actually really good, the local Hakka restaurant in Xiamen proper was tasty and seemed thrilled to have such a large group of foreign customers. The food served for both lunch and dinner weren't pretty, I can't picture the Great Qing Emperor digging down on a plate of the tofu we had for lunch or the eggplant we had for dinner. It was all filling though which is what you want after a long day in the field. All in all, I guess I am glad I went if for no other reason than I can say I did.
From and early 6:30AM starting time, my group of about 40 ECNU International students hit the high spead rail to Xiamen, a bit south of Shanghai by Taiwan. After one sixish hour train ride and one book (The Jewz of Kaifeng by Prof. Xu Xi ) we arrived. We really hit the ground running, visiting the campus of Xiamen University with its unique architecture that blends Chinese and Western. The university (along with a near by middle and elementry school) were all founded by a Mr. Cheng Jiagang, a Xiamen local who made a fortune doing something in Singapore, and boy did we hear alot about this guy. He did seem to have a bit of an ego, the middle school only has bathrooms on the first floor because he wants people to exercise more and he named everything after himself, the area does seem quite well off thanks to his help. We then visited his grave, a large piller covered in carvingd of stuff to help teach the young, even in death. It was kind of cool and gave us some great vieas of the sea (something I don't often see in Shanghai disipte the second character in Shanghai [海] meaning sea). We then returned to the hotel to drop our stuff off and find dinner. They took us to a mall type thing and told us to have fun finding food. My friends and I ended up finding a place that sold various forms of chicken, steak, and lobster. I would like to proudly announce that we found General Tsao's Chicken in China, for real. It was actually very different from the American verson, it had bones for instance. I then went back to my room and went to bed, since I was a coffee short of my usual and I was up for a while.
Facebook has always assumed I have odd politics but this recent suggestion is the weirdest yet. If you remember back to my what-was-the-great-empire-of-manchukuo.html post when I mentioned that the Empire of Manchukuo was run by a group called the Concordia Assoication of Manchuria. Do you also remember that I mentioned a bunch of Hong Kongese claimed to be the legitimate government of Manchukuo? Well it turns out those Hong Kongese guys have some competition form the new Concordia Assoication, which apparently has at least 666 supporters at time of posting. I am not sure how or why Facebook has come to think that I would like to, in the words of the Concordia Assoication of Manchuria, "Make Manchuria Great Again." It is strange, since the post I saw was a sponsored post that means someone paid Facebook to show me this post. So, to clear this up to any agents of the Chinese Government or members of the Communist Party of China reading this blog post: I am not now nor have ever been a supporter of the Great Empire of Manchukuo, Concordia Assoication of Manchuria, or "Free Manchuria." I am just interested by puppet states and states with limited recognition, both of which Manchukuo was.
As some of you may or may not know, East China Normal University is one of China's major research universities. Thanks to new technology invented by East China Normal's own School of Science and Engineering I have been given the opportunity to study abroad from my study abroad. I will truly be standing on the cutting edge of both physics and history with this opportunity. Dr. Zong (棕老师) of ECNU's School of Science and Engineering in conjunction with Prof. McFly of the NYU-ECNU Institute of Physics at NYU Shanghai have invented a BYD e5 with a built in flux capacitor that, once it reaches 141.62 km/h or 88mph, can travel backwards or forwards in time. Since the BYD e5 is an electric vehicle, only minor upgrades were needed to get the car to accept the new plutonium electric generator in the trunk. Hopefully, I will be going back to 1885 to do research on Shanghai's International Settlement, now called the Bund. Being an American, I should have few problems blending into the multinational community that was the International Settlement. Unfortunately, I will have to put my blog on hold during my time in the past though, if all goes well, you my dear readers shouldn't notice anything since for you it should feel as if as though I was only gone for a few seconds. If something does go wrong, I will be removed from the timeline so you won't be stressed about my issues at all. That's time travel for you, so it goes. For those of you who are worried, don't be, Dr. Zong and Prof. McFly have assured me that everything will be alright and I will be back safely in this time period before you can even finish reading this post. I have also been talking with Juniata, the College is willing to transfer the credits ECNU is giving me for doing this research project back when I return in September. It will be a bit of extra paperwork though, since I will be on a new study abroad experance. I will update you all soon when I get back to the future.
Note: Have a happy April Fools Day all. In my Chinese Civilization class, we discussed the fall of the first three Chinese dynasties: the Xia, Shang, and Western Zhou. While the actual stories for how the dynasties fell are different, history does seem to echo. King Jie of Xia (桀), King Zhou of Shang (紂王), and King You of Zhou (周幽王) are all depicted as excessively cruel. King Jie of Xia built his favorite concubine a lake of wine and would only drink if he was riding on the back of someone else, King Zhou of Shang one upped him by not only building a lake of wine but by making an island with trees made of sticks of roast meat, while King You of Zhou got away from the wine he did mobilize the Zhou military because his wife thought it was funny. While the Chinese scholars traditionally accept the reports of ancient historians, the Doubting Antiquity School of Chinese thinkers and Western Sinologists have come to question the accuracy of the ancient Chinese historians. While the Doubting Antiquity School would accept that there was likely historical a King Jie, King Zhou, and King You they would question whether they actually did what they were reported as having done. Usurpers who wanted to cement their claim to the throne would need to show that the previous dynasty lost the mandate of heaven by being bad rulers, one way to do that would be to make your court historian write mean things about the previous emperor. Chinese thinkers and sages, like Confucius, would use the stories of old kings to show the current emperors how not to behave, so might have made exaggerated stories of old kings to make a point. While Jie and Zhou might have been alcoholics, You liked to play pranks on his vassals, and all of them might have been ineffective tyrants, later peoples made them look worse to suit their own purposes.
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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