Life in Quarantine: Week 11 and Passover in Shanghai

Welcome to Astronomer in Shanghai! Thank you for following along with my life and experiences in Shanghai! As much of the world remains on lockdown due to the covid-19 pandemic, I want this blog will serve as a message of hope that eventually things will get better. As I’ve documented here, life during this pandemic is hard; however, eventually things will improve. Here in China, life is beginning to return to normal as my last few entries highlight. I will note that the timeline will not be the same everywhere. However, we are all in this together. If everyone cooperates with social distance guidelines things will improve.

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Life in Shanghai

Even as the situation continues to improve here in Shanghai, it’s hard for me to fully relax because I remain very concerned about the spread of the covid-19 pandemic around the world, particularly in the US and Europe. So, I want to begin this post by checking in with all of you. I hope and pray that all of you, your families, and your friends, remain safe and healthy. How are you holding up? Have you been able to find a routine so that while working from, you’re still able to be productive?

For those of you that celebrated, I hope that you either enjoyed your Zoom Passover Seders or Zoom Easter celebrations. I’m sure there were a lot of you who found the absence of close in person activities particularly difficult this week. However, I hope that you used these holidays as an excuse to continue to connect with your family, friends, and colleagues virtually, and still were able to find them to be meaningful.

As the situation in Shanghai continues to improve, I’ve thought a lot about whether I should still refer to these posts as Life in Quarantine. I remain healthy, happy and safe. So, while life has not returned to normal, it isn’t the forced stay-at-home practices that many of you are thankfully required to partake in. The most restrictive times appear to have passed in Shanghai. While we still have temperature checks, personal QR codes, and are generally wearing masks, many of the more restrictive policies have been lifted. I’m now more easily able to visit friends, go to restaurants, and visit parks. However, the two biggest hurdles are schools, which still remain closed and enclosed public spaces, like museums and theaters. So, I’ve decided that until SJTU (where I work) reopens, I’ll keep referring to these posts as Life in Quarantine.

On a positive note, Shanghai announced that on April 27th, all secondary schools and Universities can either reopen or determine the date they will reopen! I was very excited to hear this, since I hadn’t received any update in quite a while. My boss/mentor, Prof. Ying Zu, believes that SJTU will reopen either the first or second week of May, giving students time to make plans to return from other provinces in China as well as accounting for the International Labor Day holiday (May 1st). As I noted many posts ago, my commute is about 75 minutes on the subway each way, which honestly is not something I would prefer to do daily under these circumstances. Thankfully, Ying (who also has an hour plus commute) completely agrees with me, so when the university reopens, I will only be going in 1-2 times per week (until life really returns to normal). I think that this will work out very well for me, since I’ve found a good rhythm of working from home.

Beyond the school announcement, life appears to be continuing on its upwards trajectory here in Shanghai. However, I will note that there still is concern about a second wave of cases. There are currently 162 active cases in Shanghai. However, all are imported cases where Chinese nationals were returning to Shanghai (and screened at the airport). In total, the recovery rate is up to 72%. Moreover, for China as a whole, the reported recovery rate is at 93.4%. As I mentioned last week, China only recently began reporting the number of asymptomatic cases, so this recovery rate may not be accurate. However, what is accurate is that if people act responsibly and follow social distancing guidelines (probably for at least another month), then signs of improvement will likely follow. On another positive note, Wuhan has reopened, and many of the previously isolated citizens are able to leave their homes again. While this policy was severe, I truly believe that the best way to help flatten the curve is to continue to wash your hands and to practice social distancing.

In addition to the news that SJTU should be reopening in a few weeks, this was a very productive research week for me! I finally was able to access all of my data stored on my Ph.D. advisor, Prof. Chris Miller’s computer. So I was able to finish all of the research and analysis for my first DES paper! I’m thrilled to have reached the stage where Chris, my collaborator Yuanyuan, and I can just go back and forth tweaking the arguments and strengthening the paper. Hopefully we’ll be submitting this paper for DES internal review soon! 🙂 Additionally, I was able to start making more progress on my Luminosity function analysis and look forward to focusing more of my efforts on that project in the coming weeks. On top of that, I also was a co-Investigator for an observing proposal for the first time! Since most of my science has been done with archival data, I haven’t had the opportunity to do this before!

Unsurprisingly, given the title of this entry, the majority of my time this week not spent doing work, was spent preparing for Passover. However, even with that, I still had to take advantage of the warm weather (mostly in the 60s-70s) and go for 4 runs! Even though I wear a mask when I run, I feel so much better now that I’m able to go running multiple times per week. I hope that you’re also able to still go outside for walks or runs as well! Below are some highlights from my runs!

Jewish Life in Shanghai

Passover began on Wednesday evening. As I mentioned in my last post, I helped co-lead the Moishe House Seder on Wednesday night and then lead the Kehilat Shanghai Seder on Thursday night. Given that prior to this year, I had only lead one Seder, I was incredibly nervous about how these would go. Thankfully, both Seders were lovely experiences! As one of the few communities where in person Seders were possible, I was thrilled that so many people came and enjoyed the Seders that I lead. It’s hard for me to believe that Passover marked having spent 6 months in Shanghai. I feel so fortunate that I’ve been able to become part of two warm and inviting communities and that I’ve made so many wonderful friends through those communities! 🙂

The Moishe House Seder on the first night was held on the 2nd floor of a French restaurant. We were joined by ~25 people, many of whom were my friends or people that I had met at previous Moishe House events.

Above you can see a few photos from the Seder! We were able to squeeze in to the space. You can see my influence on the Seder plate, where we had a mushroom as the vegetarian alternative to the shankbone. (As a side note, we did have eggs, they just came a little after the photo was taken.)

This Seder was a lot of fun to lead, we read a fun Passover play to tell the story of Passover and got lots of participation from members of the community to help lead other blessings and prayers. I even read my Dad’s Passover story, one of my favorite parts of my family’s Passover Seder, which many of the attendees told me they really enjoyed!

Since we were the only Moishe House hosting a Seder, the international Moishe House organization even put together a Youtube video highlighting our Seder!

On Thursday, I got to go through the process a second time! The Kehilat Shanghai Seder was hosted at the Millennium Hotel and had about 40 attendees. This was the first in person event that Kehilat Shanghai has done since January, so it was wonderful to see the community come to celebrate. It was also really nice to see so many of my friends there, some of which had been the previous night, which really helped me get comfortable!

One of my favorite parts of this Seder was continuing Kehilat Shanghai’s tradition of doing the four questions in as many languages as possible. First, I had the children lead the four questions (with the help of their parents) in Hebrew, then read in English. Then community members read the four questions in Mandarin, French, Spanish, Russian, and Latin! We truly are an international community! We also again told the Passover story through reading the play, in which one of the young children got to play G-d, which was adorable!

Overall, I’m really happy that I had the opportunity to lead these two Seders. While it was a lot of work putting the plan together (special thanks to my Dad for all his help and insight!) and exhausting, it was really special feeling the appreciation from my new community and getting the opportunity to be together again. It also made me so happy when as people left they thanked me for leading an enjoyable Seder and for helping them to celebrate the holiday. While generally we end Passover with next year in Jerusalem, I chose to end the Seders instead by saying “Next Year Together,” as a message that while we were lucky to be able to celebrate together, not everyone around the world was as fortunate as we were. Hopefully, next year, everyone will have this opportunity!

In addition to celebrating in person in Shanghai, I also woke up in time on both Thursday and Friday morning to join my parents, brother, and other friends and family for both of their Zoom Seders! While it was a different experience than being gathered around my parents dining room table, it was really nice to feel like part of their community as well! Maybe next year, I’ll have to convince my parents to Zoom me in again!

Food in Shanghai

Most of my food adventures this week centered around the Passover Seder. Both nights we had delicious meals; however, the first night’s food was incredibly photogenic, so I had to share some photos with you all! We had matzo ball soup (thanks to my friend Hannah Maia for the matzo balls), roasted green beans and mushrooms, carrots and peas, potatoes, cauliflower, fritata, and a delicious flourless chocolate cake for desert!

In addition to the wonderful Passover Seder meals, I also made some fun Passover treats! Of course, I had to make a Matzo pizza (using my homemade vegan cheese). I also made a Passover ice cream sandwhich, using chocolate covered matzo and filled with chocolate tofu mousse and a yummy vegan matzo brei! Lastly, but not pictured, I also made my Mom’s homemade applesauce to enjoy for breakfast.

With all that happened this week, it’s hard to believe that it’s only been a week since my last update. I’m glad that I was able to make significant progress on my research while also enjoying my Passover Seders. For those of you who celebrated either Passover or Easter, I hope that even though the celebrations were likely not normal, that you still found them meaningful and hopefully (virtually) spent with friends or family.

I hope that this update about my life and experiences in Shanghai offers hope that eventually things will return to normal. This week should be a relatively normal week. It’ll be nice to have a calmer week after all of the excitement last week. If you have any questions/comments or concerns about the current covid-19 situation, please let me know. As you reach your first month of life spent in lockdown, if you need advice for how I’ve dealt with it or just someone to talk to, please reach out. I’d love to help support you and assure all of you in any way that I can.

In peace,
Jesse