The Shikumen Wulixiang Museum

Thanks for joining me for on my Shanghai adventures! I hope you enjoy this entry and virtual visit to Shanghai!

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Now, onto this week’s adventure!

Life in Shanghai

The first full week of 2020 was a relatively productive week for me. I’m still working at getting the prior Luminosity function measurements reproduced. So, I haven’t made tons of progress on that project yet. In more positive news, this week, Dr. Song Huang, who I’ve previously met and whose research overlaps quite nicely with mine, visited SJTU and the T.D. Lee Institute (located on campus). On Friday, I met with Song, and now have a few new research ideas to explore, which is exciting! Although, I think I have more ideas than I actually have time for, but that’s a good problem to have. 🙂 Additionally, this week, I started to notice how the semester is wrapping up, since some of the graduate students and postdocs have started to leave to go home for the Lunar New Year holiday (which starts on the 24th).

The weather was weird this week. It was ~ 70 on Monday and Tuesday, but then I think we transitioned to a somewhat normal winter in Shanghai. This means that the highs are in the mid to upper 40s, with lows in the 30s. However, instead of snow, we get lots of rain (it’s not heavy, but it happens often). So far it hasn’t been below freezing. However, I was stunned on Sunday morning when I woke up and realized that it was about 20 degrees warmer in Boston and Saratoga than it was in Shanghai! I think that this might be the first time that this has happened while I’ve been here.

However, despite the cooler and wetter weather. I still went for a 4.5 mile run on Sunday afternoon and did a lot of walking. As usual I saw lots of interesting buildings, signs, statues, and pieces of art!

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On Sunday, I also saw an adorable Greyhound, which brought back fond memories of visiting my cousin Margaret and her family in Ann Arbor and getting greeted by her to two Greyhounds. While I know her Greyhounds would wear jackets, when it was cold, I’m not sure I had ever seen one wearing pants before!

In addition, I saw a lot more decorations for the Chinese Lunar New Year!

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As you can tell, it is the year of the rat (though often depicted as the much cuter mouse). These decorations are everywhere from major shopping centers to local convenience stores. The primary recurrent decorations are the red lanterns, which are hung on tons of buildings!

For this weeks adventure, I visited the Shanghai Shikumen Wulixiang Museum located in Xintiandi (where I live). It’s a family’s traditional Shikumen lane house that has been converted into a museum that preserves the culture and style of the family who lived there in the 1920s and 30s. I believe that all of the items on display and photographs in the museum belonged to the family. As soon as I arrived, I realized that this is one place I’ll definitely have to bring my Mom when she visits since it reminded me of visiting different antique shops with my parents when I was growing up.

The home was divided into 3 floors. The first floor featured the courtyard/entrance way, the welcome room, the father’s study, the grandparents bedroom, and the kitchen.

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I think my favorite thing on this floor (and possibly in the museum) was the grandparents bedroom. Even though this bed is probably too small to fit me, I think we can all agree that it is a luxurious bed!

On the small second floor, was the Tingzijian bedroom. These were small bedrooms that were rented out by Chinese families to earn extra income, and in the 1920s and 30s were rented by Progressive writers.

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On the third floor, was the parent’s bedroom, the son’s bedroom, and the daughter’s bedroom.

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As you can see, this is a rather ornate house, with both fine pieces of furniture and decorations. The guided tour (done via WeChat) described this family as upper middle class. The father worked for a foreign company, which likely explains some of the foreign influences you see in the possessions found in the different rooms.

I was also really impressed by the different pieces of art hung on the walls as well as some of the pieces of china!

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Interestingly, the museum also featured some works by a local Chinese comic artist that highlighted life during the Shikumen period.

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In these pieces you can see the bustling and active streets that characterized this time in Shanghai’s history.

Overall, I really enjoyed my visit to the Shikumen museum. To me, it was like stepping back in time. If you’re at all interested in Shanghai’s history, it’s definitely worth a visit!

Food in Shanghai

In terms of food, I’ve now switched to cooking most of my meals. I’m making my own breakfast, lunch, and dinner most days, so I’m definitely eating healthier and feel better. The main difference is that I’ve switched out fried and oily foods at lunch for salads.

Despite these switches, I still had food from a lot of different cuisines this week!

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On Wednesday, I went to an Indian restaurant with my friend Julia. We enjoyed samosas, naan, vegetable kofta, chaana masala, and aloo gobi. The food reminded me a lot of the Indian food I enjoy at Little India in Saratoga, just spicier.

On Saturday, I went to a Malaysian restaurant for lunch, where I got Vietnamese Spring rolls and a Malaysian yellow curry with tofu, carrots, mushrooms, beet croquettes, eggplant, and Brussels sprouts!

Additionally, the Malaysian restaurant sold boxes of vegan Quinoa hot chocolate which I got for myself! Once I try it, I’ll report back and let you know how it is. 🙂

To end the weekend, I got tea/coffee with my friend Ilan and had a delicious raspberry cake! For those of you keeping track, this is another European style desert. I still haven’t had a really Chinese desert yet.

Jewish Life in Shanghai

This week, I went to quite a few Jewish events. On Tuesday evening, Moishe House hosted an improv game night. I had fun trying different improv games, which I probably hadn’t played since summer camp. Then, for Shabbat, I again joined Moishe House for their Monthly Shabbat, which was lovely. I even helped prep some of the dinner that was made! Shabbat was a great opportunity to hang out, chat, and catch up with a lot of the people that I’ve met and become friends with by attending their events.

Probably the most significant thing that happened this week was that I was asked to join and accepted a position on the board of Kehilat Shanghai! As part of my position, I’ll be serving on the Shabbat and Jewish Rituals committee. On Sunday, Kehilat had there annual members meeting, where I was officially announced as a new board member. Sunday’s meeting also provided me an excellent opportunity to learn about all of the ways that Kehilat has grown over the past year as well as learn the goals for 2020. As I’ve stated in prior posts and you can likely tell, Kehilat Shanghai has been a huge part of making me feel comfortable and at home here in Shanghai. So, I’m excited to be more involved and give back to this community!

I hope you enjoyed learning about my visit to the Shikumen Museum as well as seeing my delicious food pictures and learning about me joining the Kehilat Shanghai board! This week should be a fairly normal research week, likely the last normal week for a while, since Chinese New Year is the following week. I look forward to sharing my upcoming adventures with you all! If you have any questions/comments about Shanghai, let me know!

In peace,
Jesse