Thanks for joining me for this week’s adventures in Shanghai! I hope this post offers you a window into my life here, in Shanghai.
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Now, on to this week’s adventures!
Life in Shanghai
This week was a normal research week. For those of you in the US (or most of the western world), let that sink in. How many of you worked a full, regular week both this past week and this upcoming week? For me, this has been a somewhat surreal experience. For the first time in my life (this is the first time I haven’t been in school), I worked continuously through the end of December. While it was not weird for me to work on Christmas, it is strange not having this time to rest and recharge. However, we do get January 1st off though.
For those of you who are curious, the Chinese academic calendar is quite different than the traditional semester system in the US. The fall semester is still ongoing. It ends in about two weeks. Then, there is a 5-6 week vacation period for the students, not me, which coincides with Chinese New Year. Thus, the spring semester starts in the spring, in March and ends at the end of June. While I can take a couple weeks off (if I choose to) during the 6 week break, it won’t be a complete break like what happens around the holiday time in the US because I’m involved in international collaborations (DES and DESI), which will be back to there regular telecon and meeting schedule. So, as a postdoc in China, I kind of lose when it comes to having a relaxing winter vacation.
I think that’s enough about my work life. So, to transition, this week, I visited the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center. This is a small gallery located in the heart of downtown Shanghai featuring different propaganda posters that were mostly made between the 1930s and 1970s. There are also some more modern posters as well. I’m including posters that I thought had interesting looking art. So these posters do not reflect my political views or beliefs. The gallery showed posters featuring different political messages, most of which were depicting the rise of Mao and other aspects of Chinese culture during that time period.
Marx, Engles, Lenin, Stalin, & Mao 
Mao comes to power 
The Chinese superiority over the West (small boats in the bottom right) 
Defeating the Gang of Four 
However, but not really surprising, there were also posters that showed strong anti-American sentiments as well as support for the black Power movement in the US.
In stark contrast to the purely political posters, there were also posters that supported universal ideas, such as the importance of education and literacy, the chinese goals of dominating the sciences, and the importance of eating vegetables.
Knowledge is Power 
Astro Boy! 
Einstein! 
Space Travel. 
The Importance of Science. 
While the posters incorporate Chinese characters, the gallery included English titles (and French titles) next to the posters, which allowed me to understand the messages that each poster was trying to convey.
Overall, this was a very interesting museum. Prior to visiting, I hadn’t learned anything about this period of time in China, so I’m glad I got to learn about it via this unique vantage point.
It’s continued to be quite nice here (it was in the mid-upper 50s this weekend), so I went running on both Saturday and Sunday. I did a 5.6 mile run to People’s square on Saturday and a 7.2 mile run to Xujiahui park on Sunday. I’m really enjoying that I can keep running throughout the winter! I definitely plan to keep it up!
Going on these long runs and walking to the Propaganda Art Center also allowed me to see a lot of cool posters, sculptures, street art, and displays.
A cool way to display a photo! 
People dancing 
And yes, for those of you wondering, those are people dancing (there is music) in one of the parks in downtown Shanghai! That happens all the time in different parks.
Food in Shanghai
Due to all the different Channukkah celebrations I attended this week, I didn’t try as many different Chinese dishes. However, I still had an excellent lunch on Saturday! The two dishes I got were 1). braised tofu in a clay pot with different kinds of mushrooms, carrots, baby bok choy, and edamame and 2). vegetarian duck. For those of you unfamiliar, vegetarian duck is made of layers of tofu skins that are then cooked to become crispy on the outside, so it’s just crispy tofu.
Jewish Life in Shanghai
As the title of this entry suggests, I went to a lot of Channukkah celebrations this week! On Tuesday, Moishe House hosted a Channukkah game night, which also featured homemade latkes. I had a lot of fun playing dreidel for some very mediocre gelt. We also played a Channukkah version of the improv game Mafia, where the Mafiosa were replaced by the Assyrians and the Detectives were replaced by the Maccabees, and team Scrabble, which unsurprisingly, I won.
My Channukkah celebrations continued on Friday, when I attended Kehilat Shanghai’s Channukkah Shabbat. It was nice joining together with many of the other Kehilat members to celebrate both Shabbat and Channukkah. I got to catch up with a few different members that I hadn’t seen since Yom Kippur. We had tons of different menorahs as well as delicious sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts) and also falafel (not associated with Channukkah, but still delicious)!
Lastly, to end Channukkah, I joined Kehilat Shanghai once again for their Channukkah party on Sunday night! This celebration was attended by many community members with young children as well as a large contingent of other young professionals in Shanghai. It’s been really interesting meeting so many different people my age and learning about what brought them to Shanghai. It’s a mix of Americans, Israelis, Canadiens, and Europeans (mostly British), many of whom are in Shanghai for either business or teaching. Once again we enjoyed latkes and sufganiyot!
There’s me, in the back row!
While in the grand scheme of Judaism, Channukkah is a relatively unimportant holiday, it was really nice getting to join together with so many different Jewish communities throughout Shanghai to celebrate! I’m really glad that I’ve found these communities as I’ve gotten more settled here.
In addition to those celebrations, I also marked each night of Channukkah by lighting a menorah in my apartment, which you can see in the slideshow above!
I hope you enjoyed experiencing my visit to the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center and my many Channukkah celebrations! This week will be somewhat normal research week, but with New Years Day off. I look forward to sharing my adventures with you next week/next year/next decade . I hope that everyone has a Happy New Year! If you have any questions/comments about life in Shanghai, let me know!
See you in 2020! I’ll get there first. 🙂
In peace,
Jesse
Another interesting week!!!
What was the animal on top of the cool spiral sculpture?
Looked almost like an elephant, and then it had a shark fin?
Also liked the tree relief in the water… lovely.
Your pictures of food look delicious…Have you had any noodle soups? Like a ramen ?
It’s cold and miserable outside today… enjoy your run!!
XoxoPam
Hi Aunt Pam! Thanks! I thought the animal was supposed to be mostly an elephant. I have had some noodle soups. I haven’t had any recently, but if it gets colder, I’ll probably get some again.
Loved the menorah slide show–so simple but beautiful and moving. Hope all is good, Jesse!
Thanks Barbara! I really liked how that came out! 🙂
I really liked seeing all of your Channukkah celebrations. It looks like you had a lot of fun. I was surprised to see Astro Boy in one of the propaganda posters. I would have thought that the disdain for Japan post-WWII might prevent that. Thanks for explaining your semester schedule. I’m sorry that you won’t get much of a break. Enjoy the last few days of 2019!
Thanks Emmet! You’re not wrong about the disdain for Japan. The translation of that poster was faster than Astro Boy!
Hi, Jesse.
Thank you for another wonderful post.
I am sure the idea of working over what is traditionally a holiday break must feel quite different. But how neat that you will experience the New Year first this year!
The posters fascinate me. I am happy to hear of the propaganda in favor of eating vegetables! And what kind of dancing is happening in the street? Like Barbara, I loved the menorah slide show! It is comforting to know that while we are separated by a big distance, we remain close in sharing special holiday rituals like Chanukah candle lighting. Another thing I loved about the menorah slides are the size of the pictures. I wonder if there is a way to make some of the other amazing pictures larger, or if there is a way to make it possible to enlarge them by clicking on them?
It is great that you are running and working hard and taking in time to get to know your new city. I loved seeing all the Chanukah celebrations, too. I will send a picture of my latkes to you, so you can enjoy them virtually.
Your posts really help me to feel more connected to your life in Shanghai . I look forward to next week.
Love, Mom
Thanks Mom! I think that it’s mostly ballroom dancing in the parks. I’m glad that you enjoyed the Menorah slide show as well. I’ll look into making the pictures bigger in my next post.
Hi Jesse!! Nice post! It’s interesting that the end of December is ‘work as usual’. That would be hard to get used to! I guess I have never thought about how nice it is to have a universal break that everyone in US academia takes…
Nice jobs on the runs! It’s been pretty decent weather here too (but not as warm as for you, I think).
As usual, I loved seeing the pictures!!! Happy end of the year 🙂
Thanks Juliette! I hope you’ve been able to keep running as well. I think I’m going to do a half-marathon here in April, so my goal is to keep running throughout the winter! 🙂
Ah, Jesse, you have discovered one of the most important benefits of American Academia–the extended winter break (unless, of course, you teach at Michigan, which resumes classes right after the New Year). But you are not the first in the family who had to work through December. Although in quite different fields, both of your grandfathers only got Christmas Day and New Year’s Day off from work. Bompa often worked on Christmas at the hospital to give his colleagues who celebrated the holiday time with their families. Grandpa Alan would lose his day off with pay if he wasn’t in work the next day. Maybe you should grow more fond of that other famous Marx–Karl–when you think about workers rights.
I love the idea of poeple dancing in the public parks. Where does the music come from? I wonder what it would be like if people came together to dance outside the bandshell in Congress Park?
The food this week looks good. I didn’t realize tofu had skin–and it’s still vegan?!? What do they do with the rest of the tofu. This reminds me of the slightly off color joke about matzah ball soup…
Enjoy your head start celebration on 2020! Hope its a good year for you. And a better year for the world and earth.
Love, Michael
Hi Dad! Thanks for reminding me about Bompa and Grandpa Alan. I hadn’t thought about how my work schedule is more similar to theirs. In terms of people dancing, there are speakers set up, so I haven’t seen any live music. I agree that we’d be better off if people came together to dance and do exercise in public spaces, like Congress Park. Also, I liked your joke about tofu skins! 🙂