Cultural Immersion

I love Chinese culture.

Until this past weekend, I really wasn’t sure. I knew I didn’t dislike it – I seldom feel frustrated (though granted, it’s only been a couple of months) – but I also hadn’t felt the connection I felt with India. But recently there were a series of events that made me learn a lot at once. And I really enjoyed it.

I like the way meals work. Round table, many dishes, chopsticks and a little bowl. I like the food, and enjoy learning about different dishes. I’m discovering I’m very squeamish about animals. Part of it is the Indian influence, but also from a spiritual Jewish position.

I went on a retreat with all the museum tour guides and staff this weekend. Lunch included eel (apparently good for women’s skin), frog and wild chicken (which I mention only because I thought it was funny that it’s considered different from regular chicken). I ate vegetarian, and everything was really good. When people say “I don’t like Chinese food”, I’m not really sure what that means. There are so many options, flavors and textures, it’s really hard to dislike every single thing at any given meal. I always have at least four or five dishes that I absolutely love.

I also like the way Chinese people have fun. I was introduces to karaoke last week. I went with a group of mixed Shanghainese and Westerners, and loved it. There really is something to it: a closed room, just your friends, everyone hanging out singing together, with food and drinks. It’s just pure fun.

At the retreat, in the freezing hotel lobby (you could see your breath), there was a constant group at the karaoke station, but people also played cards and mahjong. Some people just hung out and talked. What was unique about it was that all ages were present and having fun together. Not only that, we had people from all sectors and levels of society – the cleaning ladies and guards were also invited and present at the retreat, and they were there with the other volunteers, most of whom are English-speaking university students. 

I am forcefully reminded of my “Intro to Political Science” course, in which we learned that in Communism, freedom is limited but equality is magnified (as opposed to Fascism, which limits both, and Democracy, which attempts to magnify both). Until I came to China, and had not yet lived in a non-democratic country, I had never truly understood how positive the amplification of equality can be. There is obviously inequality in Chinese society, like in every other country. But I’m referring to cultural perceptions of equality. People’s place in a society. The possibility to interact with higher or lower positions. And so on. Perhaps that’s what communism has become: a culture, a way of thinking about society, and not an actual organization of reality, politics, or people.

Drinking culture is also really interesting. First of all, there seems to be no taboo about it. It’s out in the open, though not everyone does it. At the retreat, the drinking started at dinner. The hosts of the event go around every table first, thanking people, toasting with each individual person, and so on. Then other groups go around, thanking the hosts and toasting again. Usually not everyone drinks, especially the girls. You can do the toast with tea, juice or even water. Whatever – the point is to toast each other. The older people had bajio, Chinese liquor. It smells terrible. The younger generation was drinking red wine, and the few people I saw drink bajio had a visible bad reaction to it. It’s funny how much one can understand without language. It’s almost more deep and pure, though naturally slower and limited. But I’m certainly sharpening my non-verbal cue awareness.

There also seem to be no taboo on talking about one’s personal life. We literally went around the circle of girls one by one (in a crowded dinner hall) and expressed our romantic situation in detail. It ranged from single to monogamous relationship to polygamous lifestyle. Money is also discussed quite openly, as is certain personal desires and habits. I know there are taboos, but haven’t actually discovered them yet. That’s one of the difficulties of no language – it’s much easier to find out what people are talking about, than the subtleties of what they don’t discuss openly.

This was the first time I interacted closely with a big group of Chinese people (as the only foreigner, too). I gave a lecture on the diversity of the Jewish people, and on how to give better tours to Westerners. I found their questions genuine, and profound. I am beginning to understand why it’s so difficult for them to really grasp the depth and breadth of the Jewish world. Concepts like community, religious life-cycle events, faith, and helping non-family fellow Jews really elude them. And it makes sense, given their lack of religion-based organization and lack of spirituality. They also live in a very tightly organized society, (Poli Sci 101 again, learning about high-degree of government involvement), so informal things are really an unknown phenomenon. Everything has a place, and not in a wishy-washy, karmic sense like in India. Every aspect of life is regimented, it’s merely a piece in the larger puzzle that is society. Even the retreat – it was organized by the government! But they are really interested in learning about other ways of existing (community is a tough one, though, especially because to a large extent, it’s voluntary).

Which leaves me wondering. There is a huge discrepancy between my own largely positive experiences with Chinese people, and what other expats have expressed to me. Many expats don’t like Chinese people, or Chinese culture. It’s quite astounding how many people live in Shanghai and really have no desire to get to know or immerse themselves in the culture. And even more astounding is the fact that those that have to interact, don’t like the culture. It almost feels like they feel constantly personally affronted by it.

It makes sense if you think about the groups most foreigners interact with: service people, on one hand, and businessmen (or employees) on the other. Nobody, in any culture, is at their human best when acting within these positions. It is precisely those people who are not in business, who are free to interact with Chinese people in a different context, that are really integrated and happy here (they also all speak Chinese, incidentally).

However, I also think that Chinese culture (not unlike Indian cultures) requires a higher suspension of one’s own ways of being and thinking than many other cultures. I don’t mean not being who you are; it just requires opening your mind more to other ways of being and thinking without judging them. That is the key, perhaps. Many foreigners judge the Chinese for being narrow-minded, uncreative and dirty (to list three examples). Those three things are certainly true if seen from a Western perspective. But analyzing behavior from a neutral standing point (in which there are fewer rights and wrongs, and almost no comparison beyond moral issues), or from the point of view of the culture itself (what do Chinese people think about a specific behavior that Chinese people have?), the results are different.

 Chinese people know that some habits of some Chinese people are dirty, and they don’t condone them. Another example is how much the Museum tour guides attempted to open their mind to understand what I was saying. Because I am fully aware that the success of my presentation depended on my abilities and research as well as on their openness not only to listen, but to understand my way of thinking, which is quite different from their own. The fact that they did this is indicative that they can do it, and led to the success of our interactions.

Much to think about.

Jews in Asia – a What-if?

I wonder sometimes what Asians would feel towards Jews if Jews had lived in these countries in significant numbers and for significant periods of time. We say that China is one of the only countries in which anti-Semitism doesn’t exist, but that’s not strictly fair or true. China didn’t have the opportunity to develop anti-Semitism, because there were simply never enough strict Jews here.

 India, however, is a good example of a country with long-time Jews and no anti-Semitism (the recent attacks are neither India-based nor aimed against Indian Jews). What would it be like in China? Would Jews – as a consequence of being a minority – be scapegoated, hated, ostracized in the same way? Or would it be as it is in India – different, because of an altogether different combination of factors that led to altogether different results? As opposed to Western or Middle Eastern countries where Jews lived, flourished and were persecuted, in India there is no single predominant religion. Hinduism (simplified) is best defined as a collection of similar-but-different beliefs, traditions, languages and culture. Each mix is unique, but the spiritual-traditional aspect is central to Indian identity. Everyone believes in something or other, and that something is always a little bit different from everyone else’s. So no one cared or noticed if one group of people was praying to an unseen god, or not working on the seventh day of the week, or had strange dietary habits. Every group had its own quirks.

So I wonder if in the East Asian countries it would have been the same (same), but different. What would Judaism have looked like here in big numbers? The picture is not the same as in the West, but it’s also not like in India.

Perhaps people are right when they say that Chinese and Jewish cultures are similar. I think they refer to the work ethic, the importance of family, and the value placed on learning. To me it seems that although it’s true that these are common traits, the cultural consequences of them are so different that it outweighs the fact that the original values are the same. The “way of being” is too different. This might be in part because of the other, multi-facetted influences Judaism has had, as well as the development of Chinese history and the effects it has had on culture and people (most recently communism, which Chinese people do not fail to notice was originally conceived by a Jew…too ironic to my point? I wonder).

Perhaps if the two cultures had mixed – truly mixed, in that way that only history can achieve – they would have benefitted from and nourished each other. It certainly seems like that’s what happened during the time when the Jewish refugees were here and coexisted with Chinese people.

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There is now so much renewed interest for the continued collaboration between the two cultures, with all its complexities and challenges. I’m realizing now, as I finish this post, how utterly privileged I am to be thrown right into the heart of it all.  I AM this experiment, right alongside my Chinese co-workers. It’s kind of fun. 

Some historical roots of “an interconnected world”

I was staring up at the synagogue today, this hundred-year old building in the middle of Shanghai, and it suddenly hit me how small, transient and wide-spread the Jewish experience has been, and for so long. I tend to think of the time before commercial airplanes as slow, and somewhat lazy or relaxed, when it took forever for anything to get very far, especially information and people. Things like the morse code or telegrams had to exist because otherwise nothing would get done. And travelling from Europe to the edge of the Pacific, on either side, seems to have been a trip too long to bother with. Which is probably why only soldiers and rich people did it.

Within this frame I suddenly thought of what it must have been like to be a Jewish refugee here in Shanghai during World War II. Because those are the only other people who would make that trip – people with no other choice.

Let’s picture it. You’re in your teens, arriving with your parents, or maybe in your twenties, arriving by yourself. You have to go through Japan, via Panama, or via the trans-Siberian railroad. Imagine the weeks (the months!) on trains or boats or both! Imagine the discomfort, the motion-sickness, the hard beds. Kids playing games to pass the time. Reading and re-reading the few available books, maybe sharing them with each other. Knowing with certainty that undertaking such a trip – with all its difficulties – is better than the horrors you left behind. Maybe that’s what kept people sane.  

In Japan you stay for a few days, a week, with another thousand refugees, because it’s just one more country that can’t – wont’ – take you in. It’s just part of the trip out of death-ridden Europe. Salvation, of course, but too temporary to be a sustainable solution. Maybe there’s a camp there. Bunk-beds, open showers, too little food and too many people, dirt, lice.

Then, finally, Shanghai. The only city in the world where you don’t need a visa, where you are welcome. Another crowded boat, children and parents on the deck, and you standing there alone with your meager belongings wrapped up in a bundle, lying at your feet. You gaze out and see the spectacular outline of this strange city, this city that you hope will be a free and safe, if temporary, home. High European buildings line the riverfront, hiding the truly local Chinese lifestyle that sprawls behind.

You disembark, cross a bridge over a big creek, and arrive at your new neighborhood.

The people are nice there, warm, friendly. They help with the children, with the food. They are your neighbors. Not refugees, but owning perhaps exactly the same amount of stuff. You learn to communicate with each other. You learn from them. Maybe even make friends. When else in history – how else – would once-affluent European Jews get to share their daily lives with lower-class Chinese? Even today, with all the traveling and mixing, this is a hard thing to achieve.

Then one day, the neighborhood closes in on itself, enveloping everyone in it. The Japanese, to appease the Gestapo, create the first and only Jewish ghetto in Shanghai. The uniqueness of this ghetto is evident. Jews and Chinese coexisted as semi-prisoners, both suffering under the hardness of the Japanese rule.

Life becomes less comfortable. Working is hard, as is going to school, because you need special permit to leave the ghetto. Nonetheless, Jewish books, magazines and newspapers are published. People celebrate the holidays. Shops, bakeries, pharmacies, cafes open and flourish. Children are born. People get married. Maybe you are one of them.

And then, just like that, a decade passes. Suddenly it’s 1950, and almost no one is left. The Japanese are gone. Communism is coming, and business becomes impossible. People found their surviving family members, moved to America, Australia, Israel.  So you pack you bags, now perhaps significantly bigger, get on a boat, and go to reunite with the few distant cousins left to you.  

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Subsequently, the refugees thought very fondly of their time in Shanghai. It seems that the significance of it lies not merely on the fact that they were saved from a horrendous death, but also in that they were truly welcomed by the local population, and were allowed to flourish. Even the Japanese had nothing against the Jews, and were much more severe on their Chinese neighbors.

 A beam of light in an otherwise horrendous decade. 

The Museum (September 27, 2011, part 2)

As I walked into the dark-red brick compound, S pointed to the security guards – older Chinese men in light-blue uniforms. She introduced me and I asked her to tell them that even though I don’t speak Chinese now, I am going to learn and work hard so I can talk to them. One of them, the head guard who’d been there for a long time, greeted me in Hebrew. “Naim meod lehacir otakh”, he said, in the strongest shanghainese accent you can imagine. It took me a second to realize it was Hebrew, but then I laughed and answered, “naim meod”. He then wished me a shana tova (because it’s Rosh Hashana, he clarified). I appreciate moments like that. It reminds me that I’m not jaded enough to stop enjoying how inter-connected the world is. And it’s one of those strange connections that seem to skip a few beats. This man doesn’t speak English, but is comfortable sustaining a basic conversation in Hebrew.

The synagogue were the Museum is housed is modest and beautiful. My first, personal reaction was that here is a little tiny part of the huge puzzle that was the Holocaust that I knew nothing about. It adds a deeper layer to the phrase “world war”. There’s always something new to learn, and it’s always great when the new thing is as life-changing as this detail in history was. About thirty-thousand people were saved because Shanghai opened its doors to them. And here I am, coming back to this city to represent an organization that was here 70 years ago, helping the refugees. It’s like holding a little piece of history in my hand. It’s an honor of the sort that until now I have not been privy to. I'm beginning to understand that a big part of my experience in Shanghai will have something to do with this connection that both JDC and the Jewish people in general have with this amazing city. 

The building was taken over by trader Jews in 1927, when they began using it as a synagogue. I wonder what brought them here to this neighborhood. Even now, after much of Shanghai has modernized, it remains stuck in its former humble glory. The lane houses are old and packed, street vendors line the corners, and the side streets are full of little fabric and household items shops, repairmen, laundry services and babies. It’s wonderful.

Behind the synagogue is a beautiful courtyard, surrounded by these little lane houses. Two small buildings erected in the courtyard portray the history of the Jewish refugees through pictures and videos. The synagogue has four floors: the first, main synagogue floor, the second balcony floor (where the women used to pray), which now has a conference table and computers for research, the third floor which is now an art gallery, and a little tiny attic, where the office is. I love it up there. We have a good view of the street from the balcony, the ceiling is low, and everything is wood and cozy. It’s a nice place to come to.

(I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize for the lack of order in the posts; I really wanted to share these three posts that I wrote almost two months ago when I arrived in Shanghai. From now on they will correspond to the dates!              - 10/11/2011)

A Glimpse of street-Shanghai (September 27, 2011)

Today I had another great day full of “firsts”. I love these days – there’s a whole thread of them throughout my life. Highlights of these very formative days include the first time I went to the Mercaz Yeladim in the Kibbutz in Israel when I was eight and spoke at most ten words of Hebrew (including the word for the color green, I remember, which was – surprisingly – not that helpful that first day); the first day of school in El Mirabal in Madrid (it permanently cured me of culture shock), the first time I went to a liberal egalitarian Rosh Hashana service in Middlebury, the first time I went to the JCC in Bombay, the first time I went to the office in Mexico and now, the first time I went to the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum.

Of course these days had a whole stream of “firsts” surrounding them, which only made that one moment even more special. In Shanghai, these firsts are really fun because everything is so easy. Though I had taken the subway already during the weekend (when I was so nicely invited to Cirque du Soleil by my incredible host family here), today was the first time I took the subway alone. Granted, I had very specific directions for the first ride, and I after that I learned enough to figure it out on my own (that’s how easy it is). I also met two of the Chabad couples and went to the Shanghai Jewish Center for the first time. It is a very nice community center, and truly has the spirit of one, with people coming and going all day long; kids and parents (it’s attached to the pre-school) and smells of food wafting from the kitchen.

Then I went to the French Concession to walk around my potentially future neighborhood. I got some good first impressions of the streets and how incredibly calm and safe the center of Shanghai seems (to be fair, it wasn’t rush hour). Finally, I got into the subway and went to the Museum stop, to meet one of the girls from there (“S”). I got there very early, so I walked out of the stop and into the alley, which was full of old couches, on which a couple of motorcycle-taxi drivers where lounging. There were a few food-vendors and their carts. It was perhaps my first encounter with street-Shanghai. I love street-anything (as is very clearly exemplified by the long posts below on my first impressions of street-Bombay. Hopefully my China blog will lead a longer, better life than my India one).

I waited. And waited. And then, around the time when I figured out that something was wrong, S called and said she couldn’t find me. By then, the motorcycle guys had noticed that I was there, and the food ladies had smiled at me in their shy way. So a basic, elementary form of connection had been established. The bike guys had tried talking to me, and I made it clear that I have no idea what they’re saying. Another first – never have I been this foreign before, both in terms of language and looks. It’s interesting. I think this is why I haven’t learned more than two words of Chinese (since I knew I was coming here, that is): to have this moment. Now that it’s over, as fun as it was, I need to learn the language, because I want to talk to these people who I will see twice a day, on my commute. One of the women was selling some yummy-smelling egg thing that I will only buy when I can ask for it in Chinese. (After that I might get it every day).

What happened then was that I gave the phone to the woman roasting chestnuts. She looked surprised, but then answered the phone with a hearty “wei?”. And I guess S explained to her because she showed up two minutes later. We hugged – a long wait and a struggle to reach each other merits a hug – and started walking towards the Museum.