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Rarely Mundane, Usually Extraordinary: Jewish Women’s Lives in Shanghai – Hong Kong Jewish Cultural Centre – 15/4/18

Posted: April 14th, 2018 | No Comments »

I’ll be talking about old Shanghai and the remarkable Jewish women who lived there Sunday night to the Jewish Historical Society of Hong Kong…

Rarely Mundane, Usually Extraordinary: Jewish Women’s Lives in Shanghai

Sunday evening, 15 April 2018

It’s actually pretty hard to find a Jewish woman in the first half of the twentieth century in Shanghai who was living an “ordinary”, mundane life. From cabaret artists who survived bombs and chorus line dancers who went home at night to

care for their children, through to secretaries who picked the wrong men and bookshop owners who became communist spies, it seems that every Jewish woman in Shanghai at that time lived an incredible life. Their stories were extraordinary.

Now based in London, award-winning author Paul French has lived and worked for many years in Shanghai. His New York Times bestseller, Midnight in Peking, is currently being filmed for television. His previous talk to our community, “Recovering Lost Jewish Lives in China: Yiddish Tears on the Bubbling Wells Road”, just over five years ago to the day, was extremely well received.
Paul is now back in Hong Kong to launch his new book, City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir, a true story of twisted friendships and betrayals set in the 1930s underworld of Shanghai’s casinos, cabarets, dance halls and opium dens.
Sunday evening, 15 April 2018

Time:

6:15 PM for a prompt 6:30 start (new time!)

Location:

Jewish Community Centre, One Robinson Place, 70 Robinson Road, Mid-Levels

Please note that visitors to the JCC are required to register at the Reception desk upon arrival.

We expect the talk to last about an hour. Sorry, no kids under 10.

RSVP:

To reserve your seat at the chat, please contact us at contactus@jhshk.org.

A HK$50 entrance fee will be charged and donated to the JHS Library Fund.

About the Society…
The Jewish Historical Society is a registered society licensed under the Societies Ordinance in the Hong Kong SAR.

The main objective of the Society is to promote a centre for the collection, study and preservation of historical materials relating to the history of the Jews and Judaism in Hong Kong and China.

The JHS has published several volumes on the subject of the Jewish community in Hong Kong and the Jews in China, in addition to promoting the spread of balanced knowledge about Judaic traditions in Chinese academic circles. This has included assisting with the establishment of a Jewish studies programme at Nanjing University and the publication of the world’s first Chinese language “Encyclopaedia Judaica”, copies of which are now in the libraries of almost every university throughout China.

For more information about the publications of the JHS, please contact our librarian at the Jewish Community Centre. She can be reached at 2589-2660 or via email at contactus@jhshk.org.

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