Preparing Meals

In the days of living together with Shanghai residents, Jews gradually learned to cook Chinese food and became accustomed to using Chinese hearths and cookers. Due to crowded living conditions at that time in Shanghai, neighbors all cooked in public courtyard, where they exchanged cooking experience and tips and gossips and complained about children’s naughtiness and various kinds of distresses regarding family education. Jews and Chinese got along so well that they had infinite topics to talk about in ethics, family and education.

Oil painting, Preparing Meals (Photo Credit: CC – BY Zhang Ping, Chinese Jewish Cultural Foundation)

Refugees preparing their meals in a crowed courtyard in the Hongkew Ghetto. (Photo Credit: CC – BY Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum)

Special thanks to Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum for providing the sources of literature and photo on this topic. Further contact with Chinese Jewish Cultural Foundation (CJCF) via email:postmaster@cjcf.org.cn‍.