This article is from WeChat official account: hard core Book Club (ID: hardcorereadingclub) , author: Liu Boyu, editor: Cheng Chi, title picture from: Visual China
The recent movie “Yao Hundred” has been released. Many people are impressed by Shanghai’s desperate struggle against Japan on the one hand and the singing and dancing of the concession on the other.
This is not fiction, this is the magical reality of Shanghai at that time. But behind this picture, the old Shanghai has a more complicated texture.
What was life like in old Shanghai?
How did different people live in Shanghai during the Songhu Battle?
What will happen to a Jew who wanders to Shanghai?
What is the internal ecology of the “colonies” and “concessions”?
Did the “Concession” really stay out of the situation during the War of Resistance?
The translator of “The Memory of a Jew in Shanghai”, teacher Liu Youyu from Nanjing University, was a guest at the hardcore reading club to share the memoirs of the Jewish Lillian Willens, and at the same time help us clear the fog of history from another Angle, looking back at the old life in Shanghai.
The protagonists of the story are Lilian and Liu Youyu. Picture/speaker provided
My name is Liu Youyu, and I am a teacher of modern history. I translated the book “A Jew’s Shanghai Memory”. Today I want to share with you the story behind this book.
The first time I heard of such a book, it was probably in the winter of 2009 and 2010. At that time I was a PhD student in East Asian History at the University of Iowa.
In that winter, when there was heavy snowfall, I saw a notice saying that an old lady was going to our city to give a speech. The topic of the speech was her experience in Shanghai.
The first thought I had at the time was curiosity–This old lady is a Jew and a Caucasian, so what is the relationship between her and Shanghai?
Because I am writing a doctoral dissertation, the process is very difficult and painful, so I missed the first opportunity without the mood and time to attend the lecture.
But I planted a seed in my heart, planted this question mark. When the doctoral dissertation is finished, about the end of 2011 or early 2012, I decided to solve this question mark.
“A Jew’s Shanghai Memory” English version.
The name of this book is very interesting. It’s called Stateless in Shanghai. Stateless means “stateless”.
I am even more curious, what kind of person will become a person without nationality? She is not considered an American, British, or French, or a citizen of any country, so what is it all about? Why did she appear in Shanghai?
So I went to the library in Iowa City and found this book to read. As a result, I couldn’t bear to put it down when I read it, and I quickly read the book from start to finish.
After reading it, my first thought was that I must translate it into Chinese so that more Chinese people can read this book.
Why should Chinese people read this book? It’s because I learned for the first time after reading this book that Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s was like this, and the concession in Shanghai was like this, and the foreigners living in the concession were like this. of.
Chinese version of “A Jew’s Shanghai Memory”, written by Lilian Willens, translated by Liu Shaoyu, Life·Reading·Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore / 2018 -1
It was the first time that I learned such detailed and rich details from this book. I am studying history, but among all the history books I have read before, especially academic works, few are so vivid and interesting.
In the past, our memories of history are very general, or conceptualized. Whenever we mention the Shanghai concession, we feel that this is evidence of imperialist aggression against China. The foreigners in the concession are the empire. Activists, colonialists.
But what kind of people are they? What is their life like? These are very vague.
In the process of reading, various scenes of old Shanghai at the time will come to mind. These scenes of old Shanghai are not stiff black and white photos, but frame by frame, moving, colorful, and full of life, which are exactly the same as our usual daily lives today.
Like a movie, scenes flashed in my mind. I want to convey this feeling to Chinese readers.
1. Drifting to Shanghai
The author of this book is Lillian Willens. Our first question is, LillianWhy is Lin Willens a stateless Jew? How did she appear in Shanghai? Let’s first tell you about her life experience.
Why was Lilian born in Shanghai? The reason is simple, because her parents are in Shanghai. The next question is, why did her parents appear in Shanghai? They are not Chinese, they are all from Ukraine, they are all Jews.
This is related to the history of Europe, especially the history of the Jews. We all know that the German Nazis persecuted Jews during World War II. In fact, Jews were discriminated against and persecuted in many places in Europe, and it was the same in Russia.
Jews are excluded in rural Russia. Figure/Wikipedia
In the Stalin era, the tradition of discriminating against Jews has not changed much. In Ukraine, these Jews and Judaism are still oppressed, so many Ukrainian Jews finally chose to flee.
They crossed Siberia by train from Ukraine, first to Vladivostok, then from Vladivostok to Harbin, and then south from Harbin. Many people stayed in Harbin, so Harbin has a very rich influence of Russian culture. Many people later went south from Harbin to Shanghai.
Far East Railway Line. Figure/Wikipedia
That’s how Lilian’s parents arrived in Shanghai. They didn’t know each other before they arrived in Shanghai. They met and fell in love in Shanghai, then got married and became family. Lilian was born in this family. She was born in 1927. She has a sister who is a few years older than her, she is the second child.
Lilian has a close connection with China’s political situation and China’s turbulent social history since she was born. In her life experience for the next 20 years, she constantly witnessed the major historical events that took place in Shanghai, and she became a witness to history.
Lilian’s parents have no nationality, so their children are also stateless. Then why does it become stateless?
Lilian’s parents. Picture/speaker provided
That was because her parents fled Ukraine. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union at that time. The Soviet Union was a different regime from Tsarist Russia, so when they fled Ukraine, they gave up their nationality.
So they are neither citizens of the Soviet Union nor Russian citizens. Because Russia no longer exists, they become stateless citizens. They are white and Jewish, but they are stateless people.
Later, her father lied that he was Romanian, so for a long time, when Lilian was a child, she thought that her ancestral home was Romanian, but later found out that it was not. Her father invented a nationality. There are memories behind this that make her feel very painful.
2. Shanghai childhood of a stateless girl
Lilian was born in Shanghai. Shanghai in 1927 was an extremely complicated place. This place is not only the frontier of the struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, but also has a very complicated ecology.
Every city has its ecology and culture, In the 1920s, Shanghai was first the largest city in East Asia. It was located on the Huangpu River. It has gradually become an international metropolis comparable to New York and London.
There are citizens of various countries, people of various nationalities, even stateless people, all living in this city, forming a different subcultural circle. In this memoir, there is a wonderful narrative in which Lilian tells about the complicated ecology of Shanghai.
From a child’s point of view, this complexity is of course reflected in her family and the people around her since childhood.
For example, her mother can speak Jewish and Russian. Her father was very smart. He not only spoke Russian, but later also learned English and German. So her father later worked for an insurance company in Canada. He was paid very well and had a good business.
In the war years, when the war broke out, the more people bought insurance, so his business was very good, and he was constantly promoted. The family made more money, and the house moved several times, the more he moved Big.
So from an economic point of view, the life of Lilian’s family in Shanghai is very superior, and conditions are getting better; but from a political point of view, their family is stateless and lives in Shanghai Foreigners.
From a young age in her family, the Chinese babysitter brought these foreign children-to raise them and take care of their daily lives.
This was common in Shanghai at the time. These foreigners living in Shanghai have very good financial conditions, and of course they can afford to hire these Chinese nanny, servants, and cooks, because the prices of these Chinese servants are very cheap for them.
In Lilian’s memory, there is a person who has had a great influence on her, that is, a Chinese nanny who grew up with their three sisters, and she is called grandma in Shanghai.
Many of these grannies in Shanghai are from the countryside, especially from Zhejiang. The grandmother of Lilian’s family has been with them for many years and came to work in Shanghai from the countryside of Ningbo, Zhejiang.
In Lilian’s memory, this grandma is very close to them. For example, if this grandma goes to the market to buy vegetables, Lilian likes to go with her to the market, because this is like a short adventure for little Lilian.
In her book, she specifically mentioned the experience of going to the vegetable market with her grandmother to buy vegetables, which was very interesting.
When she arrived at the food market, Lilian saw another Shanghai that was completely different from the environment in which she lived. Shanghai in the food market is Shanghai dominated by Chinese.
Some people may find it strange that Shanghai is of course the Shanghai of the Chinese, so how can it be said that there is a Shanghai of the Chinese? Is there another Shanghai that is not Chinese?
In fact, there were indeed two Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s. One is Chinese Shanghai, the other is non-Chinese Shanghai.
The non-Chinese Shanghai certainly refers to the concession. There are two concessions in Shanghai, one is a public concession and the other is a French concession. Lilian’s family mainly lives in the French Concession. She grew up in the French Concession.
A map of the concession in old Shanghai. Figure/Wikipedia
Foreigners living in the concessions come from various countries, including Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Italy… and all countries. But these foreigners living in concessions rarely interact with Chinese.
Usually, the people who interact most often are the grandmothers, cooks, and servants in the family, but they rarely interact with ordinary Chinese. They will not learn Chinese.
Many foreigners come to China today, and they all have to learn Chinese; but in those days, few foreigners living in Shanghai learn Chinese, and few encourage their children to learn Chinese.
Lilian and her grandmother. Picture/speaker provided
Why? Because it is not necessary. For them, Chinese people rarely come into contact with them in their daily lives. The Chinese people they come into contact with are all Chinese who can speak English, and they are all wealthy, identities, and status.
Even those grandma, those domestic servants, they will learn some English. Of course, this kind of English is not authentic, it uses Chinese grammar and Chinese pronunciation, so there is a special noun called Yangjing English .
Lilian has never studied Chinese specifically since she was a child, and she rarely sees other Chinese people except her grandmother and the chef at home. But when she went to the food market with my grandmother, she would see Chinese people all around her.
In particular, many Chinese children will look down on her when they see this little foreigner who looks different from them, and will scold these foreign children as “foreign slums”. Lilian would turn around and scold them. Lilian is not very old, but her personality is very similar to boys. She often fights with boys.
She especially likes to eat flatbread fried dough sticks when she goes to the market, and she still remembers flatbread fried dough sticks when she is old. Granny also spoiled her very much. She bought whatever she wanted to eat. The money was paid by her.
Because her father is a Jew, he is very strict with him. Many things are not allowed in the house. Only when she gets to the food market, can Lilian be able to indulge and eat the food that her grandma bought her.
She said that her favorite moment when she was a child was her birthday. As soon as it’s birthday, these families and classmates from many other families will sit together and hold a grand party.
Because the children in each family are brought up by a Chinese nanny grannie, so every birthday party is full of people. Everyone is surrounded by foreign children, all of whom are Chinese grannies. With.
The grannies in the concession and their foreign children. Picture/speaker provided
In Lilian’s impression, her favorite thing, except for birthday parties, is to go to the movies.
She said that there were many movie theaters in Shanghai at that time, and some movie theaters are still there today. Moreover, the facilities of these movie theaters are very good and are of world-class standards-the food, clothing, housing and transportation in the Shanghai concession at that time were in sync with the West, New York, London, and Paris.
Shanghai’s Da Guangming Cinema was established in 1928 and has been in business today. Figure/Wikipedia
Even if Chinese people go to the movies, it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand a foreign language. Every seat in this cinema is equipped with earphones. When you put on the earphones, there will be simultaneous translation.
Lilian likes to go to the movies most, she recalled how many movies she watched at that time. When she was young, her favorite movie was comedy. There was a very famous child star named Shirley Temple, and Lilian was very impressed with her.
3. Girls’ Generation in the French Concession
She grew up in such a relatively superior and carefree environment. By 1937, when she was ten years old, a full-scale war broke out between China and Japan, the War of Resistance against Japan began, and Shanghai ushered in a historic moment and a turning year.
She just started school then. She went to a German school in the beginning, but she didn’t like Germany and hated learning German. Later, her father transferred her to a French school.
For a long time later, Lilian felt that she was French. She regards French as her mother tongue, she uses FrenchChinese culture is proud and very proud. Especially during the Second World War, she certainly stood on the side of France and hated the Germans very much.
This is why she later studied French literature, and went on to get her PhD, studying Voltaire. This is inseparable from her experience of studying in a French school since childhood.
The French school Lilian attended. Picture/speaker provided
It was in such a wonderful building that Lilian started to attend elementary school and middle school. In 1937, she was ten years old, and at the end of the war of resistance was 18 years old. She spent her entire youth and girlhood in this French school.
In this book, she spent a lot of space to recall her school life. What makes me very interesting is that in the French school in the French Concession, during the Anti-Japanese War in the 1930s, the experience and daily life of these foreign children in the school seemed to me not strange, and did not feel alienated. The more I read, the more intimacy I felt, and it brought back many childhood memories.
This is the wonder of history. When we read a history book, if the history book is full of big concepts, full of abstract discourse, full of conceptual, label-style discourse, then you will have a sense of separation, you will feel This thing is too far away from my life.
However, when you read a book full of historical details, especially when the memories of these vivid and living historical figures restore the scenes of their past lives, you will feel very substituted.
You will find that whether it was 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years, 200 years ago, you will have many places that resonate with historical figures.
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Lilian as a child. Picture/speaker provided
Especially in some emotional resonances. Your clothes, food, and objects are of course different. For example, when you didn’t have a mobile phone, this was of course different. But as a student, the feeling of love and hate toward school, the feeling of not wanting to go to class, and the feeling of hating homework are exactly the same.
For example, Lilian said that her partial subjects are very serious. Her best is language classes. Her English is very good, French is very good, and her history is good, but her math is very poor.
She recalled that when she was in class, the teacher asked them to speak, what should I do? These little friends are very good at helping each other, thinking of ways to cheat during the exam, such as writing a small note of the answer, and then sticking it on the back of the front row of students or on the chair, and you can stare when answering questions Look, you can cheat.
Moreover, at this stage, especially when they were in their teens, these girls are all in love, and they have a strong interest in this love and the relationship between the opposite sex.
She said that some of them girls often go to the school library to read books. But instead of reading extracurricular tutoring books, or reading books related to class, they like to read novels.
In particular, she mentioned a book called “Mrs. Chatterley’s Lover”. I don’t know if you have heard of this book. For a long time, this book was banned and the author was from the United Kingdom. Lawrence, turned out to be a banned book.
“Mrs. Chatterley’s Lover” was once classified as a banned book because of its bold description.
Why is this book banned? Because it describes pornography, it contains a lot of so-called erotic descriptions in large sections. Lilian and her classmates became keenly interested in this book when they were young and ignorant.
They have a knack for going to the library to read this book. They don’t read it page by page. They just jump around and flip through it, picking the passages they are most interested in.
This book is very popular, so after every time they read it, they secretly stuff it into a corner, a place where no one else can find it, and then read it next time, the next day.
She grew up day by day in such an atmosphere and became a big girl.
Lilian and her boyfriend when they grow up. Picture/speaker provided
4. Daily life under the flames of war
The first time Lilian experienced the war was in 1937, when she was ten years old, she witnessed the disaster brought about by the war for the first time on the balcony on the second floor of her house.
The French Concession was to the south of Shanghai. Looking north from a distance, she saw the Zhabei District, which was not part of the concession but was inhabited by Chinese people, and the War of Resistance was first started there. Japanese artillery shells landed in Zhabei District, blew up many houses in Zhabei District, and displaced many Chinese.
Lilian was on the balcony of her house and saw the thick smoke billowing from the north—she witnessed the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War with her own eyes.
She said that she had a deep memory. After the Japanese bombing of Zhabei, her father once took her to Zhabei. They wanted to see for themselves what it was like after the war.
She saw the devastation everywhere, there were ruins everywhere, no one could be seen, everyone fled to the concession. After the war broke out, many Chinese fled to the concession with their valuables, because the concession was relatively safe.
Shanghai Sixing Warehouse, the site of the Battle of Shanghai. Figure/Wikipedia
Lilian saw a bicycle among the ruined walls. She liked bicycles very much. She rode a bicycle every day to school, so she wanted to take it home.
But her father said, no, you can’t take this bicycle. It must belong to a certain person. Although this person does not know whether it is dead or alive or where it is, it is still someone else’s thing. You cannot take it. Lilian still remembers her father’s words.
Since Shanghai was occupied by Japan at the end of 1937, the two concessions were relatively safe, especially the French Concession.
Because France was occupied by Germany, France established a pro-German puppet regime-the Petain regime. The French Petain government is on the same front as Germany and Japan, so the French Concession is safe.
Caricature of the French Petain government. Figure/Wikipedia
To 194After the outbreak of the Pacific War at the end of 1st, the public concession became insecure, because the United States and Britain became enemies of Japan at this time.
The Japanese army blatantly drove into the public concession and began to arrest citizens of enemy countries such as Americans, British, Canadians, and Australians.
Citizens of these enemy countries in Shanghai, no matter how high your status is, including you are the CEO of a large company, or whatever, as long as they are citizens of the enemy country, the Japanese will arrest them and concentrate on Locked in a concentration camp in Hongkou District.
Some classmates of Lilian followed their parents and were arrested into concentration camps in Hongkou District. Their homes were also ransacked. They became prisoners of war and then refugees. They were locked up by the Japanese and could not enter and leave at will.
However, the perspective of children is always different from that of adults. Lilian keeps in touch with her classmates by sending letters. Her classmates wrote to Lilian from the concentration camp, telling her what their daily lives were like.
Of course, life in a concentration camp has no freedom, and there is often not enough food.
But from the perspective of children, or from the perspective of these girls, they may be more concerned about not having enough food or not having enough food, but-like spending a lot of them in these communications The length of the talk-which boy I like, I found a boy in England so handsome, I really like him.
In the concentration camps, adults may sigh every day, thinking of the bleak future and worrying about the safety of their lives.
But teenage children, they are still most concerned about their ignorant love, who has a good relationship with whom, who likes whom, how to pursue each other, today he told me a word, today he is more Take a look at me… These will leave them deep memories, and then write them in the diary, write in the letter, and tell their girlfriends. Everyone, go to the latest version of “Annie’s Diary”, which also has such content.