Unfinished Journeys Rachel Robertson
Shanghai, 2014: golden temples crouched between dusty high-rises, Pudong glass towers sitting inside the curl of the Huangpu River, retro fantasy Pearl Tower, colonial Bund architecture, old women squatting in the gutters, luxury shops, spaghetti road junctions, dumpling street vendors, the cacophony of 25 million people in a city of contradictions. I fell for a beautiful man, his face delicate as jade, his mind sharply subtle. He whispered translations into my ears, words scented of lemongrass. He gifted me green tea and poetry, a tour of the Xi Garden, and later, his own story. I would not have been surprised to see him lift his arm and peel back the streetscape to Shanghai of the 1930s, Paris of the East – glamorous, seedy, cultured. The refuge for 20,000 European Jews, Hongkou a home for my Ashkenazi ancestors.
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