Volunteerism 1

Recently I’ve been feeling as if I live many days per day, because I'm leading so many simultaneous lives. The Museum activities are going incredibly well; it's interesting and challenging and motivating. It gives me a lot to think about. A few days ago (I'm trying to remember how many exactly, I think three…but it seems much longer) was the Hongkou government district volunteer celebration ceremony. There were about forty volunteers, all ages, covered in blue ponchos. That's another thing that happened this week – it became winter overnight. The weather dropped ten degrees (Celsius) and turned from mildly sunny to freezing rain at some point between Tuesday and Wednesday. 

So there we all stood in our blue ponchos. Hongkou district parks, libraries, elderly homes and museum volunteers, waiting in rows to go onstage and recite the Volunteers' Oath, listening to speeches by Party leaders and distinguished guests. I was getting simultaneous translation, thinking for the umpteenth time that even though I probably can't even begin to understand how much I'm not understanding because  I don’t speak Chinese, you can learn a lot through translation too (my consolation price really). Suddenly, my translator, another volunteer, says "you know, you're the star at this event". I looked around at all the Chinese faces around me – regular people, just like me – and I was filled once again with an awesome sense of being grateful that I've been put in such a unique position – to work for the Chinese government, to represent a great organization and even, to an extent, the Jewish people. It's really incredible.

After he said that, I got a little nervous about what I might have to do. It's funny how things can have such a different meaning. I think what he meant was that it's an honor for them to allow me to be a volunteer at the Museum (the Museum being the only institution with a foreign volunteer). It turned out I only had to follow the ranks – get on the stage with my row, and recite the pledge along with everyone else (it had been provided for me in English ahead of time…in fact, I helped translate it).

The Museum was chosen to host the event in part because of the amazing courtyard that it has (the synagogue was used as the prep room), but also because it runs an excellent volunteer program. Most of its volunteers are students, but there are also older volunteers who sell tickets or hold down the fort during lunch.  I’m not entirely sure what the volunteer culture is like here. It’s something I’m very curious about.

The volunteers at the museum certainly have a lot to gain from volunteering here. They practice English and meet foreign people. I think for some it’s also leisure time: they get to interact with peers who are in different fields than theirs. But the commitment would make the glamour wear off after a while. They have to give one full work day a week. That’s a lot for a student.

I’m starting to suspect that volunteering has a lot to do with other ideas I’ve heard of helping improve Chinese society, as well as one’s district, city and country. I think Chinese people are very family-oriented, and they help their own first, but there is also a sense that you have a duty to improve the society you and your family are from. I still don’t know what the motivation behind this sense of duty is, or if volunteerism is a part of this at all.

The reason why this is important is because it feeds into the way Chinese people can and will understand the Jewish world, which has community at its core, especially the part of the Jewish world relevant to the history here. Community is a circle in which individuals benefit from the collectivity and vice versa. I remember the Rosh Hashanah speech the Rabbi gave; it was all strengthening the community through individual abilities. If Chinese people understand and live according to similar principles (with the desire to give, or volunteer, simply because one wants to), then perhaps the gap of understanding can be bridged more easily. 

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)

September 26, 2011

Shanghai feels incredibly familiar, yet is like no other city I’ve ever been in.  I haven’t really seen much of yet, but so far it’s a pretty awesome city. After a weekend here, I’m moving around by myself on the subway and taxis. Granted, being really foreign in a city full of foreign people who have gone through the same thing, really helps. People have printed cards with their address written in Chinese, which you hand to the driver and then lean back comfortably in the cab. Subways are very well-marked, and are in both English and Chinese, and by far easier to navigate than the New York City subway. It feels like Shanghai must have been a very difficult place to arrive to (the way most of China probably still is), so much so that people who did it now make it super easy. I remember trying to do that for guests in Bombay, which is still, I’m realizing, a difficult place to arrive to, and in Bombay people speak English. I know exactly two words in Mandarin (or any other Chinese dialect, for that matter): Ni hao (hello), and xie xie (thank you). My ability to do things is honestly very, extremely limited; but I can see that it is absolutely possible to exist comfortably in this city with perhaps only a slightly larger vocabulary. I want to be conversational at least, and can’t wait to start learning.

At first smell, Shanghai smells like pollution and Chinese herbs. The pollution part is simply that – pollution. At first I tried to place it, but it’s not car-exhaust like in Mexico City, and it’s not sewage-body-odor like in Bombay. It’s not even that gross smelling. It just smells dirty. The Chinese herbs part I can’t quite place, but it’s what the water tasted like also (the taste is starting to fade now, I think I’m getting used to it), and people sometimes smell like that. I’m making it a minor goal to identify that smell within the year (fish-oil, perhaps?).

I’ve been intuitively comparing Shanghai a lot to other places (like I just did above with the smell), and I finally stopped to think about it yesterday. I think that with comparing comes the process of recognition and integration of a detail, a situation, or a behavior. If it’s done in a healthy way, comparing can lead to isolating the ways in which the current experience is unique, through recognizing the collection of factors that make it so. And then it becomes easier to make a place your own.

My frame of reference is so broad at this point that I sometimes get surprised at the analogies I make. They seem so random even to me – and I know the whole story of me. It’s funny what I’ve integrated from each place I’ve lived in, and how the experience I was having mattered so much. I think the place I least compare, in general, is Vermont, in part because it’s so unique, but also because the experience I had there – college – was very singular in my life. (Certain aspects of Israel, however, do remind me of Vermont a lot. Case in point of a weird analogy that makes total sense to me.)The point is that there’s always something; the world, after all, is mostly the same, and so are people as they exist in it. What I love, and would love dedicating my life to, is noticing the little-big things that make each place unique, because each place truly is its own. That is why place, and therefore distance, culture, history, identity, community, nationality, etc., still matter.  It’s also why, in spite of the realm of the Internet, reality, in all its shades of light and dark, is still so overwhelmingly important.

I remember talking about how I should try not to compare Shanghai with Bombay. It seems funny now, given that my first inclination would not be to compare it to Bombay at all. I’m realizing that, out of all the places I’ve lived in (including VT), India really is the most different, the only one in its category. Perhaps after I go to Africa it won’t be so lonely anymore. Shanghai, however, might also be unique in its category, because it is such a wonderfully modern, hip city, with a lot of spunk, terrible driving (still not as bad as Bombay, and worse than Mexico City, but also less heavy in terms of traffic) and an incredible amount of cultural (and culinary!) diversity, both Chinese and international.

However, perhaps the thing that makes it really unique is that it is a city in Mainland China that is home to thousands of permanent westerners. This is a very new thought I’ve started developing, and there’s much to explore in this direction (especially as I haven’t yet been to Hong Kong, another international city, though not in Mainland China). But I’m excited about exploring what this new kind of identity is all about, how it affects its surroundings, and what relevance it might have to my work.