From the Rivers of Babylon to the Whangpoo

From the Rivers of Babylon to the Whangpoo PDF Author: Maisie J. Meyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Baghdadi Jews came to Shanghai via India and first settled in the foreign enclave in 1845. This study examines the establishment and growth of the community of Baghdadi Jews in the evolving socio- economic context of Shanghai, focusing on the lives of three prominent members of the community and their attempts to preserve their culture in a foreign land. Meyer has lectured widely on the subject. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Voices from Shanghai

Voices from Shanghai PDF Author:
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226181685
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
When Hitler came to power and the German army began to sweep through Europe, almost 20,000 Jewish refugees fled to Shanghai. A remarkable collection of the letters, diary entries, poems, and short stories composed by these refugees in the years after they landed in China, Voices from Shanghai fills a gap in our historical understanding of what happened to so many Jews who were forced to board the first ship bound for anywhere. Once they arrived, the refugees learned to navigate the various languages, belief systems, and ethnic traditions they encountered in an already booming international city, and faced challenges within their own community based on disparities in socioeconomic status, levels of religious observance, urban or rural origin, and philosophical differences. Recovered from archives, private collections, and now-defunct newspapers, these fascinating accounts make their English-languge debut in this volume. A rich new take on Holocaust literature, Voices from Shanghai reveals how refugees attempted to pursue a life of creativity despite the hardships of exile.

The Last Kings of Shanghai

The Last Kings of Shanghai PDF Author: Jonathan Kaufman
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735224439
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
"In vivid detail... examines the little-known history of two extraordinary dynasties."--The Boston Globe "Not just a brilliant, well-researched, and highly readable book about China's past, it also reveals the contingencies and ironic twists of fate in China's modern history."--LA Review of Books An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist The Sassoons and the Kadoories stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than one hundred seventy-five years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; courting Chiang Kai-shek; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power. Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable history of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's deep inequality and to the political turmoil on their doorsteps. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.

Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan

Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan PDF Author: Judith Vitale
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004548769
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
In early modern Japan, upper status groups coveted pills and powders made of exotic foreign ingredients such as mummy and rhinoceros horn. By the early twentieth century, over-the-counter-patent medicines, and, more alarmingly, morphine, had become mass commodities, fueling debates over opiates in Japan’s expanding imperial territories. The fall of the empire and the occupation of Japan by the United States created conditions favorable for heroin use, followed, in time, by glue sniffing and psychedelic mushroom ingestion. By illuminating the neglected history of drugs, this volume highlights both the transnational embeddedness and national peculiarities of the “politics of consumption” in Japan. Contributors are: Anna Andreeva, Oleg Benesch, William G. Clarence-Smith, Hung Bin Hsu, John Jennings, Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, William Marotti, Kōji Ozaki, Jonas Rüegg, Jesús Solís, Christopher W.A. Szpilman, Judith Vitale, and Timothy Yang.

Shanghai Sanctuary

Shanghai Sanctuary PDF Author: Bei Gao
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199840903
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
This book assesses the plight of the European Jewish refugees who fled to Japanese-occupied China during the Second World War. It examines the Nationalist government's policy towards the Jewish refugee issue and the most thorough and subtle analysis of Japanese diplomacy concerning this matter. The story of the wartime "Shanghai Jews" is not merely a side-bar to the history of modern China or modern Japan. It is a story that illuminates how the "Jewish issue" complicated the relationships among China, Japan, Germany, and the United States before and during World War Two. Both the Chinese Nationalist government and the Japanese occupation authorities thought very carefully about the Shanghai Jews and how they could be used to win international financial and political support in their war against one another. Thus, the Holocaust had complicated repercussions that extended far beyond Europe. The diaspora of Jews to East Asia in the era of the Second World War is a rich and complex story that deserves our attention as well. Firmly grounded in archival sources from the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, Britain, and Israel, this book is comparative and transnational in scope and makes an important contribution to the international history of the period.

A Study of Jewish Refugees in China (1933–1945)

A Study of Jewish Refugees in China (1933–1945) PDF Author: Guang Pan
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811394830
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
This book comprehensively discusses the topic of Jews fleeing the Holocaust to China. It is divided into three parts: historical facts; theories; and the Chinese model. The first part addresses the formation, development and end of the Jewish refugee community in China, offering a systematic review of the history of Jewish Diaspora, including historical and recent events bringing European Jews to China; Jewish refugees arriving in China: route, time, number and settlement; the Jewish refugee community in Shanghai; Jewish refugees in other Chinese cities; the "Final Solution" for Jewish refugees in Shanghai and the “Designated Area for Stateless Refugees”; friendship between the Jewish refugees and the local Chinese people; the departure of Jews and the end of the Jewish refugee community in China. The second part provides deeper perspectives on the Jewish refugees in China and the relationship between Jews and the Chinese. The third part explores the Chinese model in the history of Jewish Diaspora, focusing on the Jews fleeing the Holocaust to China and compares the Jewish refugees in China with those in other parts of the world. It also introduces the Chinese model concept and presents the five features of the model.

Wartime Shanghai and the Jewish Refugees from Central Europe

Wartime Shanghai and the Jewish Refugees from Central Europe PDF Author: Irene Eber
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110268183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The study discusses the history of the Jewish refugees within the Shanghai setting and its relationship to the two established Jewish communities, the Sephardi and Russian Jews. Attention is also focused on the cultural life of the refugees who used both German and Yiddish, and on their attempts to cope under Japanese occupation after the outbreak of the Pacific War. Differences of identity existed between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, religious and secular, aside from linguistic and cultural differences. The study aims to understand the exile condition of the refugees and their amazing efforts to create a semblance of cultural life in a strange new world.

The History of the Shanghai Jews

The History of the Shanghai Jews PDF Author: Kevin Ostoyich
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031137612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
This volume provides a historical narrative, historiographical reviews, and scholarly analyses by leading scholars throughout the world on the hitherto understudied topic of Shanghai Jewish refugees. Few among the general public know that during the Second World War, approximately 16,000 to 20,000 Jews fled the Nazis, found unexpected refuge in Shanghai, and established a vibrant community there. Though most of them left Shanghai soon after the conclusion of the war in 1945, years of sojourning among the Chinese and surviving under the Japanese occupation generated unique memories about the Second World War, lasting goodwill between the Chinese and Jews, and contested interpretations of this complex past. The volume makes two major contributions to the studies of Shanghai Jewish refugees. First, it reviews the present state of the historiography on this subject and critically assesses the ways in which the history is being researched and commemorated in China. Second, it compiles scholarship produced by renowned scholars, who aim to rescue the history from isolated perspectives and look into the interaction between Jews, Chinese, and Japanese.

Shanghai Grand

Shanghai Grand PDF Author: Taras Grescoe
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466850671
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
The true story of a British aristocrat, an American flapper, and a Chinese poet trapped in an unlikely love triangle amid the decadence of Jazz Age Shanghai. On the eve of World War II, the foreign-controlled port of Shanghai was the rendezvous for the twentieth century’s most outlandish adventurers, all under the watchful eye of the fabulously wealthy Sir Victor Sassoon. Emily “Mickey” Hahn was a legendary New Yorker journalist whose vivid writing played a crucial role in opening Western eyes to the realities of life in China. At the height of the Depression, Hahn arrives in Shanghai after a disappointing affair with an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter, convinced she would never love again. After checking in to Sassoon’s glamorous Cathay Hotel, Hahn is absorbed into the social swirl of the expats drawn to pre-war China, among them Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Harold Acton, and a colorful gangster named Morris “Two-Gun” Cohen. But when she meets Zau Sinmay, a Chinese poet from an illustrious family, she discovers the real Shanghai through his eyes: the city of rich colonials, triple agents, opium smokers, displaced Chinese peasants, and increasingly desperate White Russian and Jewish refugees—a place her innate curiosity will lead her to explore firsthand. Danger lurks on the horizon, though, as the brutal Japanese occupation destroys the seductive world of pre-war Shanghai, paving the way for Mao Tse-tung’s Communists’ rise to power. Praise for Shanghai Grand “A headlong swoon for old Shanghai. The feeling is easy to catch.” —The New York Times Book Review “Filled with excellent short character sketches and keeps the reader turning the pages to find out what happens next . . . Brings to life a special time and a special place.” —The Wall Street Journal “Grescoe exuberantly captures the glamour and intrigue of a lost world.” —Kirkus Reviews

Shanghai, Past and Present

Shanghai, Past and Present PDF Author: Niv Horesh
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1782841415
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
This book sets out to explain how Shanghai emerged from relative obscurity in 1842 to become one of the world's best-known finance and industry hubs. As China's largest city, Shanghai today plays a central economic role, much as it did in the 1920s. The author provides a concise diachronic survey of the economic history of modern Shanghai, setting out how the city's urban infrastructure, municipal institutions, consumer culture and industry have shaped, and have been shaped by, this economic power house. The work is aimed at a broad readership of all who are interested in Asian history, and tackles a range of themes including: the city's millionaires, then and now; racial tensions and quotidian liaisons between Europeans and Asians before World War II; and the gambling and prostitution industry. The post-war era is portrayed in comparative discussions on Shanghai under Mao Zedong, and during the reform era. These discussions bring the narrative up to date to cover important events such as the designation of the Pudong precinct as the city's new engine of growth in 1991. The city's illustrious pre-war past is compared with its present ambitions to become Asia's leading financial centre. The book employs insights from studies frameworks of new institutional economics as well as from the development trajectory of other world cities by way of better understanding Shanghai's historic distinctness, its relative weaknesses and contemporary strengths.