Saturday afternoon Gloria and a native Shanghainese friend named
Tree took me to the old French Concession area.
Here all the streets have been renamed, but Tree, who has been
researching the old tobacco industry in Shanghai, knew about old maps. She and Gloria used the old maps to find Rue
de Lafayette and then matched it to the modern map. Fortunately, because it was an important
street, it was only renamed, not destroyed; and the house numbers pretty much
remained the same.
Thus, we arrived at 1462/10 Fuxin Road. Based on the layout of the little alley, we
are almost sure it is the same building that existed in 1937, though perhaps
rebuilt/repaired after the war. As we
were standing around taking pictures and excitedly chatting, a man walked out
the door of #10. We explained the
situation and he graciously invited us to come in. The apartment, which once took up three
stories, has been divided into smaller living spaces (that are very small,
indeed).
Initially, we only snapped pictures of doors, but then he
allowed us to go into his apartment on the second floor. His wife and mother-in-law were already
dressed for bed (it was about 4:30 or 5 p.m.), but the mother-in-law insisted
on getting dressed and inviting us into the sitting room, which doubles as her
bedroom. She was very excited about
meeting us. They think the building was
built in the early 40’s, probably a repairing of the original building. Her family has lived there for at least 50
years.
Although the third floor belongs to a different family, our
hostess did let us into the first floor bedroom and sitting room which they
rent to a calligraphy student from Taiwan.
The place seems very small, but I can see that if it had three open
floors, it would be something like a townhouse.
I think the first floor room could have not had the divider and could have been a dining area, convenient to the first floor kitchen.
It seems very plausible that it is where my brother and his mother were
living when the Japanese attack on Shanghai occurred – on August 13, 1937, my
brother’s 7th birthday. My
father and my sisters were all in the US at the time, and it was many frantic
days before he was able to determine the fate of his wife and son. They had been evacuated to the Philippines
but were not reunited with him until November when the two of them were able to
sail to Los Angeles.
So, Bill, if anything in the pictures looks familiar to you,
let me know. It would certainly confirm
our finding.
I apologize for the quality because I am not the world’s
best camerawoman. My son, Daen, gave me
a fine Android phone whose camera functions much better than my little digital
camera, though. As I discovered on the train
to Nanjing, it snaps pictures so quickly, that I can just point it at an object
outside the window of a high-speed train and click the shutter. It mimics a camera noise, and catches in
fractions of a second clear, focused images.
I love it!
