Harbin revisited

When I returned from my visit to the Harbin Ice Festival  (blog, Jan. 31, 2100), I suggested to Jeff that we should go back to Harbin together in order to explore its Russian-Jewish history.  During the January AWA trip we only had a brief visit to the synagogue/museum.  The -15C temperatures did not permit a walking tour of the Jewish neighbourhoods on foot, nor a trip to the Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town.  
As luck would have it, Hong Kong's Jewish Historical Society organized a tour to Harbin in September.  Jeff and I were among the first to sign up!  We booked our airline tickets through Orbitz, as did Ursula and Stephen.  Never again!  There were so many miscommunications from Orbitz, that we weren't quite sure our flights would ever get sorted out.  However, in the end, we had no problems flying from HK to Shanghai and on to Harbin.

We arrived in time for Shabbat dinner.  The weather was crisp and delightful.  No humidity, no pollution, very little noise.  A driver and guide met us at the airport, and drove us to the Modern Hotel.  The hotel was our first example of Jewish history.  It was built by I.A. Caspe in 1906, five years after the China Eastern Railway was completed - it was modern in its day.   Caspe was among the first group of Russian-Jewish entrepreneurs to take advantage of the growing business opportunities in Harbin.  Before the railway was built, connecting Harbin to Russia, Harbin was a fishing village.  By the time Caspe built the Modern Hotel Harbin was becoming a boom town, which, in its heyday in the 1920s, boasted a population that hailed from 28 different countries and fancied itself as the Paris of China's northeast.  The hotel is filled with priceless old photographs and Russian antiques.

The hotel set aside a room for our group.  Dinner was UPSed from Beijing's Chabad, and kosher wine was transported from HK by various group members, in their checked baggage.  This was to be our only non-vegetarian meal of the weekend.  Amazing how easy it is to travel, even to remote spots in the world, and still observe kashruth or vegetarianism.

Our guest speaker, Professor Dan Ben Canaan, addressed us after dinner.  You could hear a pin drop during his two-hour talk.  We could have listened to him talk about Harbin Jewry all night, however, the hotel staff started clearing up our banquet about 11 p.m., giving us the not-so-gentle hint that it was time to leave.
Professor Ben Canaan teaches at the local university in Harbin.  He hails from a kibbutz in Israel.  He is married to a Chinese woman, who is a senior official in the provincial government.  The professor is the leading expert on the story of Harbin's Jewish population.
The short version of the Jewish community goes like this:  In 1895, the Russian government leased land from China to build the Chinese Eastern Railway across Manchuria as an extension of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.  The Czar wanted to establish Russia's economic hold along the route, so he offered Jews a chance to live without restrictions (i.e., institutionalized anti-semitism) if they moved to Harbin.  Most Jews came from the Ukraine or Siberia.  At its peak in the 1920s, the Jewish community numbered more than 20,000.  Jews helped turn Harbin from a cultural backwater into a sophisticated city.  Russian was the "lingua franca" of the city, and, even today, many Russian words are still used by the local Harbin people.  By the 1920s, the Jewish community boasted two synagogues, day schools, hospitals, and charitable organizations, in addition to newspapers and magazines (some in Russian, others in Yiddish).  Jewish life in Harbin was not idyllic.  After World War 1 and the Russian Revolution many White Russians fled to Harbin, bringing anti-semitism with them.  The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931, and occupied Harbin in 1932.  Harbin became part of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo.  The Japanese allowed Russian fascists to spearhead anti-Jewish and anti-Soviet actions.  One of the most tragic stories involved Simeon Caspe, the son of the owner of the Modern Hotel.  Simeon, a 24-year-old aspiring concert pianist, was kidnapped by Russian gangsters, and held for ransom.  His father's fortune had waned, and his hotel and other assets were mortgaged to the hilt.  As a result, his father could not afford to negotiate with the kidnappers.  Simeon was tortured for months, and eventually killed, while the Japanese authorities turned their backs to the incident.  Jews began fleeing Harbin during the Japanese occupation, moving south to Shanghai, and abroad to America, Australia, and Israel.  The last Jewish family moved in the 1960s, and the last Jewish resident died in the 1980s.

Armed with our mini course in Harbin Jewish history, we set out early Saturday morning on a walking tour of the historic centre of the city.  On a leafy side street, we stopped in front of a run-down, low-rise building, where laundry hung from every window.  Our guide, (who only spoke the local Mandarin dialect and some Russian), explained that this building had been a private Jewish hospital.  Most of the historic buildings in Harbin have been well-preserved - this one was not.  I very much doubt that it has been painted since the 1930s, let alone restored to any modern safety code.
More about our guide:  she seemed to be an expert on Jewish buildings in the city, but much of the information was lost in translation.  A woman who claimed to be a manager at the Modern Hotel accompanied us.  At first we thought that she was the official translator, but after five minutes of listening to her struggle with English, we realized that she was quite inept.  Mercifully, there were four Mandarin speakers in our group.  Linda, Yvonne, Grace, and Howard - thanks again for your help!

On our way to the synagogues and Jewish school (all built in the first decade of the 20th century), we passed a wet market.  None of us could resist buying apples and pears, but the melons were just too enormous to carry!  Merchants also lined the sidewalks, selling toys and clothing.  Some people sat on stools shucking shellfish.  Kathy looked at the vendor in my photo, proclaimed that he was selling "traif", and quickly hustled on!

Our next stop was the Jewish day school.  The building is beautifully preserved, and has been in constant use as a school.  Today it is a Korean school.  (Harbin is close to the Korean peninsula, and boasts a large Korean population).  None of the Jewish motifs have been removed from the windows and doors.

Less lovingly restored is the old synagogue.  To put it kindly, the building is run down.  It is used as a cheap hostel, with many of the old meeting rooms subdivided into pokey bedrooms.  One storefront of the building is a pizza parlour, while another is a dusty shop selling Indian clothing and artifacts.  Even so, there are still some original Jewish designs on the windows and walls.

Passing the Jewish soup kitchen (used today as a taxpayer service hall), we came to the "jewel in the crown" - the "new" synagogue, which has been turned into a Harbin Jewish history museum.  We had a lot of time to explore the museum, read all of the inscriptions, and even laugh at some of the strange translations.  In the section of the museum devoted to the Jewish cemetery, we couldn't suppress our giggles at the sign commemorating Poor Xenia's grave:  "young and dead in 1939".  (More funny signs at the end of the blog).

After lunch, we walked to the St. Sophia Church.  This was a time of truth for our group:  entrance tickets varied according to age.  59 and under - RMB20; 60-69 - RMB10; 70 and over - free.  Ketty proudly flashed her passport, and got in free!  A wonderful surprise awaited us inside: a women's choir entertained us with songs from around the world.

Jeff and I spent the rest of the afternoon strolling on Central Street.  This main drag is a pedestrian mall.  Shopping, walking, and eating along this avenue is the way locals spend their weekends.  We went into many shops, looking for more Russian nesting dolls.  On my previous trip to Harbin, I bought one matryoshka doll.  This time, we had fun comparing the quality and detail (and price) of the various dolls. Central Street boasts many original Russian buildings, but even the newer structures follow the Russian style.  There was a huge lineup outside the H&M store - we later found out that this was opening day!  Unlike HK, where H&M caters to tiny women, the Harbin store carried normal sizes, since the locals are much larger than the southern Han of HK.

Before dinner, we wandered over to the hawker food stalls near our hotel and had our favourite snack: beer and freshly fried potato chips on a stick.  Who needed a meal after that!

After dinner (more vegetables ...), we discovered the main square off Central Street where locals dance every evening until 9 p.m.  The more professional dancers dress up and waltz around and around.  Their faces are frozen, and their bodies are erect.  Towards the end of the evening, our little group joined the line dances, and tried to keep from stepping on people's toes.  Lots of fun.

Jeff and I got up early on Sunday and went for a stroll down Central Street to the Flood Control Monument in Stalin Park.  All along the river, people were seated on the stairs leading down to the water.  Of course, this being China, there are no barriers separating the steps from the murky Songhua River!

Driving out to the Jewish cemetery later that morning, we passed the newer parts of the city.  Some buildings were definitely influenced by Frank Gehry.  And I couldn't resist taking a photo of the hockey statue in the middle of a wide boulevard!  But this was not to be an idyllic morning in northern China ... Our bus turned onto a semi-finished road and we ended up in the worst traffic jam I've ever seen!  Teams of construction workers were building a major intersection.  There were no traffic cops, no detour signs, and no way out of the mess!  The bus was literally parked for about 45 minutes before the driver could turn down an alley and attempt to get us out of the mess.  As we expats say, TIC (This Is China).

Our trip to the Jewish cemetery took almost two hours, but it was definitely worth it.  Now for some background: the original Jewish, Russian, and Chinese cemeteries were located on Sun Island in the central part of the city.  In the late 1950s, the government decided to turn the island into a year-round park, so they relocated many of the graves to its current location way out of town.  About 600 Jewish graves were moved.  (It is rumoured that only the headstones were moved.)  The cemetery is not particularly well cared for - weeds and bushes everywhere.  Most of the monuments are inscribed in Russian and Hebrew.  We even found poor Xenia's grave!  In 2004, Ehud Olmert, then the Prime Minister of Israel, visited his father's grave in Harbin.  The new tombstone in the photo was erected to commemorate his visit.  We had a good chuckle looking at the Magen David and the Masonic symbol at the top.  It seems that the local craftsmen decided that the Masonic symbol, which appeared on a nearby grave, would be a pleasant artistic detail on Mr. Olmert's granite stone.  Mr. Olmert had no affiliation with the Masons.  (Another TIC moment!).

After a while, we wandered away from the Jewish section of the cemetery, and found ourselves in the Russian cemetery, and then the Soviet Army cemetery.  But the most interesting section by far was the exclusive part of the Chinese cemetery, set aside for the bigwigs in the Party!

The most touching grave (which we also found very unusual because of the English inscription) belonged to local Chinese.

By the time we left the cemeteries and headed to a Buddhist restaurant for lunch, it was almost 2 o'clock, and we were really hungry.  We were in for a big treat!  Dessert was unusual but absolutely yummy - fried yams.  Some were unadorned, the rest were covered with CHOCOLATE!  Yes, I know it sounds gross, but the chocolate covered fried yams were "to die for".

Our last group outing of the hectic weekend was a trip to Sun Island Park, an absolutely enormous green space near the central part of the city.  During the Ice Festival, the park is home to ice and snow sculptures.  In the summer, it is filled with walkers and picnickers.

The park also houses an ice sculpture museum, so that summer visitors can get a taste of the winter ice festival.  At the entrance, we were given heavy parkas, and even warm booties to cover our sandals.  Jeff was pleased to see so many ice sculptures, since he has no plans of ever visiting Harbin during the winter.
When we first started walking around HK and travelling through Asia, we took a lot of photos of funny/odd signs.  After a while, we stopped doing this, because we truly appreciate all attempts to communicate in English.  However, Harbin's signs were just too amusing to ignore:

This is a chain of restaurants.  All of the other branches spelled Noodles correctly.  Guess this particular restaurant features exotic dancers?

Could this bathroom sign be more explicit?

Finally (thank you for reading this far!), a correction to the Rosh Hashanah and T8 blog:  I mistakenly wrote 5722 instead of 5772.