Jewish Refugees Museum

Explore the fascinating Hongkou district, former home to leftwing writers, Jewish refugees and Anglo-American colonizers on this private full-day walking tour with tickets to the Lu Xun, Modern Art and Jewish Refugees Museums, and the Hongde Temple. On your private tour you will: 

In the northeast corner of downtown Shanghai, you’ll find the captivating, off the beaten path district of Hongkou, a living, breathing museum to Shanghai’s complex political and cultural history. You’ll find relics of its colonial past, its left-wing art and culture scene, the Memorial Site of the 4th National Congress of the CPC, museums to modern art, the Jewish community and refugees of many backgrounds, through many wars, as well as the plethora of homages to Lu Xun, the author, essayist and translator. Famous for writing in the vernacular of the common Chinese man, he is considered by many to be the founder of modern Chinese literature.  Both the park and the Museum (his former home) are named for him. Your guide will also point out the many houses of renowned left-wing rebel intellectuals from the early twentieth century. 

Hongkou is situated at the confluence of the Huangpu River and Suzhou Creek and was part of the American and British settlement, the so-called ‘Shanghailanders’ in the mid-nineteenth century, who refused to pay taxes to the Quing government of the day. During the First World War Japanese troops and civilians moved in and it became known as ‘Little Tokyo’, and by the beginning of the Second World War, it officially fell to Japan. The remaining Brits and Americans were put into the internment camp at Lunghua Civilian Assembly Centre alongside the Chinese prisoners.

The Chinese who were allowed to stay in Hongkou lived in squalor, in Lilong – narrow, claustrophobic alleys, the remnants of which your guide will show you.

With its focus on experimental contemporary art, you will get a taste of Shanghai’s modern cultural scene on Duolun Cultural road where you’ll venture inside the Museum of Modern Art and see the unique Hongde Temple – a Chinese styled Christian church.

Finally, your tour guide will take you to the former Ohel Moshe Synagogue - now the Jewish Refugees Museum. If Hongkou was Little Tokyo at the beginning of the war, by the middle years, it became the Jewish Ghetto or ‘Little Vienna’ as the Jewish Community called it, and is where your tour ends.