Shanghai’s Jewish Area 1 Billion USD Redevelopment

Shanghaiist has brought to my attention that the Jewish area of Shanghai is soon to be renovated and revived back to its old days during the 40s when it served as a lively community for Jewish refugees of WWII.

Here’s a little about the "Jewish Ghetto" from Wikipedia :

The Shanghai ghetto was an area of approximately one square mile in the Hongkou District of Japanese-occupied Shanghai, where about 20,000 Jewish refugees lived during World War II, having fled from Nazi Germany, Austria, Poland and Lithuania.

The refugees were settled in the poorest and most crowded area of the city. Local Jewish families and American Jewish charities aided them with shelter, food and clothing. The Japanese authorities increasingly stepped up restrictions, but the ghetto was not walled and the local Chinese residents, whose living conditions were often as bad, did not leave.

[...]

The authorities were unprepared for massive immigration and the arriving refugees faced harsh conditions in the impoverished Hongkou District: 10 per room, near-starvation, disastrous sanitation and scant employment.

The Baghdadis and later the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) provided some assistance with the housing and food problems. Faced with language barrier, extreme poverty, rampant diseases and isolation, the refugees were able to make the transition from being supported by welfare agencies to establishing a functioning community. Jewish cultural life flourished: schools were established, newspapers were published, theaters produced plays, sports teams participated in training and competitions and even cabarets thrived.

[...]

(from a different Wikipedia title) Late in the War, Nazi representatives pressured the Japanese army to devise a plan to exterminate Shanghai’s Jewish population, and this pressure eventually became known to the Jewish community’s leadership. However, the War ended before the Japanese could succumb. Nevertheless, conditions in the Designated Area were abysmal, particularly during the summer months.

With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the fall of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, almost all the Shanghai ghetto Jews left. By 1957, only 100 remained, and today only a few may still live there.

A few newspapers report about the plans for the Jewish area –

China Daily with "Shanghai revives Jewish architecture"

After nearly five decades ignoring its Jewish legacy, Shanghai is waking up to this unique part of the city’s history and looking at preserving aspects of the Tilanqiao area, which has been listed as one of the 12 key historical zones in the city.

"To return the old Jewish neighbourhood culture back to Tilanqiao, an urgent task is to get rid of widespread temporary cabins illegally put up by locals. It has already ruined the original look of the community and obscured those nice historical buildings," said Wang Weiqiang, a professor with Tongji University, at a hearing held by Hongkou District People’s Congress on Monday.

"The famous Ohel Moishe Synagogue, one of the only two surviving synagogues in Shanghai, built in 1927 by a Russian Jew, has already been crowded with illegal constructions around, making an unharmonious scene in the area."

He said the renovation of Tilanqiao should introduce some high-end businesses to the area. The current rash of low-standard eateries and food stands not only affects the street scene but also ruins the look of existing old buildings.

"The renovation should be focused on the protection of historical sites rather than on exploiting its commercial potential," Wang Fengqing, a local pensioner, said at the hearing.

Jewish houses, synagogues, parks and cafes still stand in Tilanqiao, but most have either been converted to other uses or fallen into ruin.

"Although the city in 2002 put forward regulations on the protection of historical architectural zones, there is still no specific protection commission or team," Wang said.

Hua Jian, a researcher from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, suggested some of the old architecture in the area could be vacated to attract artists or writers to the area. "It would help in providing some cultural atmosphere which is important for such historical zones," he said.

Globeinvestor with "Canadians redevelop Jewish area in Shanghai"

It began with a tourist visit to a Shanghai synagogue. Five years later, a Canadian artist and his partners are on the verge of a $1-billion (U.S.) project to preserve and develop the historic Jewish district of Old Shanghai.

The site is one of the most coveted in China’s biggest city, close to the famed colonial Bund and a planned cruise ship terminal, and potentially lucrative for retail and tourism revenue. The story of how it fell into the hands of an inexperienced team from Toronto has surprised even the developers. [...]

The project had its roots in 2001, when Mr. Leventhal took an ordinary tourist trip to China. One day in Shanghai, he got into a taxi with the address of the Ohel Moishe synagogue scrawled onto a piece of paper. At the historic synagogue, he met an elderly Chinese man who related his personal memories of the 25,000 Jews who had found shelter in the neighbourhood in the 1930s and 1940s.

The stories captured his emotions, and Mr. Leventhal decided to organize a collection of paintings and sculptures by Canadian artists as a gift to Shanghai. He wasn’t sure how the donation would be received, but he was surprised to find, on a visit a few months later, that the city had built a special hall behind the synagogue to display the artworks.

At a banquet in honour of the event, Shanghai officials asked if Mr. Leventhal’s group would be interested in helping preserve Jewish culture in the city. They suggested another site, but Mr. Leventhal argued that the best site was around the synagogue, in the district where most of the Jews had lived. At the time, the neighbourhood was slated to be razed for a massive high-rise development. [...]

Their plan includes the redevelopment of 300,000 square metres of floor space in a seven-block neighbourhood around the synagogue, preserving and restoring all the historic buildings, restoring a former Yiddish theatre, adding a Jewish museum and a hotel and office complex, demolishing the postwar buildings, developing restaurants and shops along with residential space, and building a walkway through the entire project so that tourists can stroll through it.

“It’s going to be a true restoration — brick by brick and stain by stain,” Mr. Haviland said. “This district is a national treasure. Your eyes sparkle when you see how you can bring it back to how it was. It’s project heaven.” [...]

Mr. Haviland estimates that the consortium will have to spend around $400-million to relocate and compensate the 15,000 residents, some of whom have lived for decades in the former Jewish neighbourhood. Average relocation costs in major Chinese cities have soared by 30 to 50 per cent in the past five years, he says. [...]

Not all of the Chinese residents are happy with the project. “I don’t want to move, I don’t want to move,” an elderly man named Mr. Fu muttered repeatedly as he heard people discussing the project on his street.

But most seem willing to move to modern buildings if they are compensated fairly. Most are now living in squalor. Up to 10 families are crowded into each house, with steep rickety staircases and a shortage of running water.

“This project is good news,” said Ku Ningshing, an 80-year-old retired teacher who lives in a tiny third-floor apartment. “We live in difficult conditions now. It’s very small and crowded.”

Even today, tours of the Jewish area are available through the "Shanghai Jewish tours", and those seeking more information can look at "Ghosts of Shanghai" website –

A vibrant Jewish community appeared on the banks of the Huangpu River in old Shanghai, for a brief flash in history. Now scholars and former refugees of this amazing enclave are trying to make sense of it all.

… explore the history of Jews in China (Wikipedia) –

Jews and Judaism in China have had a long and often enigmatic history. Jewish settlers are documented in China as early as the 7th or 8th century CE, but may have arrived during the mid Han Dynasty. Relatively isolated communities developed through the Tang and Song Dynasties (7-12th cent. CE) all the way through the Qing Dynasty (19th cent.), most notably in the Kaifeng Jews. ("Chinese Jews" is often used in a restricted sense to refer to these communities.) By the time of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, few if any native Chinese Jews were known to have maintained the practice of their religion and culture. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, some international Jewish groups have helped Chinese Jews rediscover their heritage.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish immigrants from around the world arrived with Western commercial and quasi-colonialist influences, particularly in the commercial centers of Shanghai and Hong Kong. Tens of thousands of Jewish refugees escaping from the 1917 Russian Revolution and the Holocaust in Europe were to find sanctuary in China in successive decades.

… and watch the Shanghai Ghetto documentary film.