Seder in Shanghai, Part 1 & Part 2

---

It's a rainy day in Shanghai, I guess we returned from our trip to enter the rainy season. I'm about to leave in a few minutes for the first night of Passover. I'm kind of excited to see how it will be done here. I've never been away from my family for Passover before - even when I'm at school in Houston, I have always flown home for the holiday. It will also be the first time I've participated in anything Orthodox - the seder here is run by the Chabad house, and we're expecting that it may take all night. That part may be unfortunate because this is our midterm week and I have my history midterm tomorrow - considering that we have, until this week, had like no work here, its unbelievable how every year without fail I seem to be under the most pressure around the Jewish holidays. But, I know that when I get to the seder I won't be worried about my work, and will just be taking this in as another thing to experience during my time here in Shanghai. What I know about it so far is that they are expecting about 400 people (I've got to think this may be all of the Jews in Shanghai!), and because of Chinese security, we have to have our passports in order to get in. And only foreigners are allowed, Chinese locals aren't - apparently the Chinese government demands that the Chabad House restrict entry only to foreigners because they want to prevent Chinese people from practicing any religion. It definitely is strange to be here and see some of the ways that foreigners get special treatment, and are exempt from rules concerning the Chinese people, and how we are allowed to participate in certain activities that all of the Chinese people around us, whose country we're in, are banned from. It also is kind of sad because when I have explained to my Chinese teacher and my Chinese tutor about Passover (and why I should therefore be exempt from some of my assignments this week), they have been really interested in it and I think my Chinese teacher even wanted to come. Oh well. Anyway, I'm off and I'll write again to report how it is. It is kind of cool with the time difference and all to be celebrating things a day early. Happy Passover!

So, to sum it all up: when we first got there I was really excited - because since I've been here I've discovered that I have two relatively new, non-animal related interests, which I knew would be intersecting at the seder tonight. One is my interest in the expat community here, and I think it's not even so much my interest in expats in general, but more so I'm super curious about what brings non-Chinese people to Asia, to China and to Shanghai. On the occasions I've had to meet these expats here so far, I've just been so interested in their stories and so intrigued when talking to them. So there was that. Also, while sitting at our individual seder table tonight (i think I mentioned it was held in a huge ballroom of a hotel), I also realized that I have suddenly become really interested in studying or learning what its like to be Jewish in lots of different countries. One of the things that prompted this is we had initially reserved a table just for CIEE people, but a lot of people dropped out from coming to the seder tonight, so we had a lot of empty space, which ended up being filled by people from Sweden, Switzerland and France. I was sitting next to a young guy from Paris, and so many languages were being spoken at our table - English, French, Hebrew and Chinese, and it was amazing to be such a part of such an international crowd, and yet we all had some things in common as well. I was asking the French guy about his experience being a Jew in France, which he said was terrible, and on the cab ride there, we had been discussing what passover would be like for us if we had been studying in a smaller Chinese city, not Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong. And we came to the conclusion that if we had been anywhere else in China, we probably wouldn't be able to have a passover, or have any place else to go for it, because we were already pretty surprised that the ONLY option in Shanghai even was an orthodox one - there were no alternatives, and no functioning synagogues besides the Chabad House, and it really got me thinking how weird it is that no actual Chinese people are practicing Jews. I feel like I should write my thesis on what it's like to be Jewish in countries around the world, all of a sudden I find that really fascinating...
There were a few things I noticed during the actual seder - one is how much I miss being at home for it, with my family, and our own traditions, and the way we've done it ever since I can remember. It was also unbelievably hard to try to do this kind of thing with such a big group of people, and I feel like I pretty much missed out on the whole first part of it because meeting the other people at my table was so interesting/distracting. By the end, though, most people had left, including our whole table (I ended up staying with only 2 guys from our group), and so we joined pretty much the one remaining table. The end was how I always remembered it from home, and it was nice to have what was familiar again, and I'm really glad I stayed until the end, even if it meant that I got home a little before midnight and have decided not to take my midterm tomorrow.
Oh another weird thing was that I walked in and JoBeth, the girl from my high school who is randomly studying in Shanghai this semester, was there too! See, occasions like this make people reunite.
And, all in all, there were a few little Chinese elements tucked into the seder meant for non-Chinese. Ok, so there weren't actually any Chinese elements, but the actual dinner portion of it certainly reminded me that I was still in China (and also reminded me why I won't even be attempting to keep kosher for passover here), one being that all of the dishes and seder plates etc were served around a lazy susan (oh China), another being that throughout the entire meal until we got the main course, we were not given any plates. I kept trying to ask for plates to the Chinese waiters, but to no avail, and so I picked up my fork and ate my portion of salad out of the communal bowl every time the lazy susan came around to me. It was pretty much exactly like the way we eat Chinese food. And also, the charoset was a Chinese version, of which nothing was similar, and it was actually some kind of eggplant. Interesting night, p.s. I still love it here!

---