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History and Geography Department: A Field Trip Organized by the History Club

March 12, 2021

On March 6th, the History Club went on a trip through 3 different museums in Shanghai: The History Museum in the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, and finally, the Sihang Warehouse Museum. It was a vastly educational experience that took the students throughout the colorful history of Shanghai.

Everyone arrived at the first museum, the Shanghai History Museum located inside the Pearl TV Tower, at around 9:30AM. While touring the museum, they discussed the role that colonialism, industrialization, and globalization had on the development of Shanghai. The museum took them firstly through Shanghai’s history during the Qing dynasty using various wax figures and replicas, then through the Opium Wars, the eventual opening of the ports, and the various foreign concessions opening up during Shanghai’s colonial period. Over a period of over one and a half hours, they saw various models of Shanghai’s famous locations: the Huangpu River, the Bund, Nanjing Road, and the French and British concessions. There were also smaller dioramas of the city center across history, along with real artifacts of jade-ware, gold- and silver-ware, currency of the "Taiping Kingdom", old school badges, as well as the bronze lion of HSBC. Under Mr. Serrano’s guidance, they were able to learn in-depth about Shanghai’s colonial history such as the use of pidgin as a hybrid language, the nature of international relations within foreign concessions, as well as the historical role that SHS itself had played during its time as an internment camp.

The next stop on their trip was the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, an exhibit commemorating the role that the city had in helping provide a refuge for Jewish people during the Second World War and the Holocaust. It’s located at what was once the Ohel Moshe Synagogue, and it displays various films, documents, photographs, and personal belongings (such as the Torah and even report cards) of the Jewish refugees. The Museum itself is located at the Jewish Quarter of Shanghai, a foreign concession in the 19th Century where Jewish residents came to live under Japanese rule. After December 8, 1941, Japan invaded all of Shanghai’s foreign concessions and established the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees, better known as the Shanghai Ghetto. They observed the poor living conditions of the “Heime” group homes where Jewish refugees lived and the repression that many of them had to face under strictly patrolled Japanese rule. Despite this, however, the museum also displayed striking examples of love, solidarity, and courage that persevered throughout the hard time during the Second World War. At the end of the tour, the students signed their names in the guest books and paid a visit to the commemoration wall with names of every Jewish refugee residing in Shanghai during the Second World War.

Finally, the group arrived at the Sihang Warehouse Museum, at 3 in the afternoon. This museum serves to commemorate a specific battle in the Second Sino-Japanese War, in which “eight hundred” (in reality, it was only around 400) Chinese soldiers led by Colonel Xie Jinyuan defended the Sihang Warehouse from multiple waves of Japanese attacks, providing a morale-lifting defense in the grittiness and ceaseless violence of the Battle of Shanghai. The defense lasted from October 27th to October 31st in 1937. One of the most striking wax replicas in the museum was that of the private who launched himself off of the building, strapped in grenades, and killed over 20 Japanese soldiers shielded under metal boards along with himself. The museum was filled with various artifacts of different news, articles, and decrees related to the defense of the warehouse, as well as artillery shells and helmets used during the war. On one side of the building, the bullet holes and damage from the war itself can still be seen, a monument of grandeur speaking to the pivotal moment in history that occurred here decades ago. This museum was definitely the most memorable in its uncompromising patriotism and respect for the martyred soldiers during this conflict.

All in all, this field trip was an invigorating experience that helped broaden the students’ perspectives about the city that they live in.

(Written by Mimi Yang Pictures by Vicky Sack Supervised by Shen Zhou)