Day 32: Family Weekend Part 2 - Meet More Extended Family
Pudong, Hongkou
When you think you have met the entire family, you really haven’t. There’s always going to be about 12 more people to meet. This morning I convinced my uncle to use the subway to get to his house in Pudong. While I love the Shanghai metro, I think my house in Hongqiao is just so far away from everything that it makes the traveling so much longer and inconvenient. However, I would much rather use the metro than have my family pick me up by car all the time (which they always insist on doing)!
For lunch, we drove to my uncle’s little sister’s house in Tilanqiao. This area used to be the modern-day “Noah’s Ark” accepting 30,000 Jewish refugees fleeing from the Holocaust in Europe. It was called the “Designated Area for Stateless Refugees.” There, about 20,000 Jewish refugees lived with local citizens. The architecture in this area is so interesting because everyone is so close to each other. The dull colored homes and the ancient vibe makes it a great place to take pictures! There is also a Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, which I visited after eating at a Beijing Restaurant nearby (with the entire family!).
Surprisingly, the Jews really assimilated to Chinese culture while here in the 1930s. Some even married Chinese men or women, making half-babies! A lot of them stayed in Shanghai and later moved to the United States. I was tempted to read the book, “A Jewish Girl in Shanghai,” but I felt like the cover just about made me fall over laughing. While at the museum, my aunt told me that it was her first time actually going in. We watched a short documentary about the history of Jews in Shanghai, which had a lot of cool graphic and a “3D” quality to it all. While looking at some pictures of the Jews living in Hongkou, my aunt recognize her house’s door in one of the photos! Apparently, a Jewish man named, Gary, who used to live in Hongkou as a child, came back in 1997 to revisit his home, which is now my uncle’s old home! My aunt really got a kick out of that!
After a sweaty day visiting Hongkou and visiting the other side of the Bund, my aunt wanted to get her hair done. Every Sunday, she goes to the local hair salon to get her hair washed. In China, washing your hair is a popular activity to do. It is also really cheap, so it beats all the energy that you would usually use to get it washed by someone else! While my aunt got her hair washed, I was really fascinated how the lady put shampoo in first and then really massaged my aunt’s head. It was also entertaining to watch my aunt have to lean forward to get her hair rinsed with water, instead of the other way around in the USA. Oh China, I need to try everything! I got my hair washed and blow-dried straight. Conclusion: I like getting my hair washed by others.
