Duolun Road was also a hotbed of Left-Wing writers, and the venue for their activities is not hard to find. An elegant and homey European-style building tucked away in an alley was witness to the founding, on March 2, 1930, of the Left-Wing Writers Association. I closed my eyes, and the walls seemed to echo the orations of those great writers pushing their literary and democratic ideas to awaken the patriotism and political conscience of the Chinese people. I was told that Ye Shengtao edited Fiction Monthly magazine and Mao Dun finished his debut novel while living on Duolun Road. Ding Ling and Ba Jin also bore their literary fruits while lodging here.

Lu Xun spent his last 10 years in Shanghai and changed his lodgings three times, all within 100 meters of Duolun. Jingyunli was one of the alleyways in which he took shelter, and at the same time the 10-meter-long lane also accommodated Mao Dun, Ye Shengtao, Zhou Jianren, Rou Shi and Feng Xuefeng. The cultural caché of the lane is commemorated by a group of bronze sculptures depicting the famous literati.

At the end of Duolun Road are Lu Xun Park and Lu Xun Memorial Hall. Hongkou was his last home, and in the 1950s the government built his mausoleum here as well, which still attracts many visitors today.

In the vicinity of Duolun Road is the famous Sichuan North Road, home to one of the three busiest shopping centers in Shanghai. Renovations have produced a streetscape representing both classic and modern Shanghai, with a concentration of famous brands and tourist-shoppers.

Moses Synagogue

The 1938 Shanghai was laid low by the Japanese invasion, and in the meantime an unprecedented atrocity was befalling Europe’s Jewish population, forcing their exodus. After traveling more than half of the world, unwanted and refused wherever they went, some of their ships finally docked at Hongkou. Kind-hearted locals gave them a home and restored their dignity as human beings.

The Moses Synagogue stands as testimony to the friendship between these Jewish refugees and their Chinese benefactors. As an architectural masterpiece of modern Shanghai, the building is now under municipal protection, and the district government has invested US $1 million in its renovation and conversion into the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Memorial Hall. Many Jewish and other foreign visitors to the Shanghai World Expo have taken side trips to the place.

Between1933 and 1941, Shanghai adopted 30,000 Jewish refugees, the only city at that time that let them come ashore without a visa. Dr. David Kranzler, a noted Holocaust historian and retired professor from the City University of New York, wrote in his work Women in the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Community: “During the late 1930s and 1940s, Shanghai became a haven for almost 17,000 German and Austrian as well as some 1,000 Polish-Jewish refugees. The combined total exceeded the number of refugees accepted by the British Commonwealth nations of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India.” Shanghai, for tens of thousands of Jews escaping the tyranny of Nazi Germany, was like a talisman, providing hope, a refuge and an escape from a nightmare.

On February 18, 1943, the occupying Japanese authority decreed creation of a “settlement for stateless refugees,” ordering European refugees arriving in Shanghai after 1937 to move into this designated area within a month. The order suddenly created a mixed community in Hongkou, comprised of 30,000 Jewish refugees and 100,000 Chinese living within an area less than one square kilometer in size.

Jerry Moses, now an American citizen living in California, fled to Shanghai at the age of seven and left when she was 13. On a recent revisit to her Chinese adoptive home, she said, “The Hongkou people suffered more than we did at the time, but they nevertheless showed us great sympathy and kindness. This is the biggest miracle of my life: how could people share our sorrow and treat us in such a friendly manner when they were living lives more terrifying than ours? This is why Shanghai will fill my memories of childhood, always.”