Shanghai/Hongkou

Hongkou is on the northeast side of Shanghai. The district is most known for Hongkou Stadium, Shanghai University's campus and Lu Xun Park.

Jewish Heritage
There have been Jews in China for a long time. The first synagogue was built in Kaifeng in 1163 and there had certainly been a small community of Jews (Silk Road traders) settled there for at least a few hundred years before that.

As Shanghai grew after it opened to foreign trade in the 1840s, Jewish traders arrived; by the early 20th century, Shanghai had a substantial Jewish population and many of them lived in Hongkou. More Jews, and quite a few White Russians, arrived fleeing Russia, before or shortly after the 1917 revolution. Then when the Japanese took Manchuria in 1931, many people from the fairly large Jewish community in Harbin fled south. Also, as life in Germany became untenable for Jews in the 1930s, many more Jewish refugees came to Shanghai.

After the Japanese took the city in 1937, a ghetto was created in Hongkou. The sign in the photo commemorates that period.

After the end of the Second World War came a Chinese Civil War, ending with the Communist victory in 1949. Most of the Jews left Shanghai in this period, mainly going to either Hong Kong or Israel, but some remained.

Get in
The district is served by metro lines, , and. Line 4 has a roughly circular route around downtown Shanghai; from Hongkou it goes west to Shanghai Railway Station in Zhabei or east and south to central Pudong. Going north from Hongkou, lines 3 and 8 both extend into the northern suburbs. Going south, line 3 runs next to line 4 around the western edge of downtown, then veers off to end at Shanghai South Railway Station. Line 8 goes right to the center of town at People's Park then across the river into the southwestern part of Pudong, and it ends in Pujiang, a part of Minhang that is east of the Huangpu river.

Buy

 * 1933 Shanghai, listed under, has many artists' studios and some galleries with various works available for purchase.