By Wan Yan
Amid the moaning waves, Anna, a Jewish girl fled away from Nazi Germany, played her beloved violin en route to Shanghai. All the fears, sadness and helplessness were blended into the melody, lingering on the deck and around the ship. The beautiful playing endears Anna to Synnott, a Jewish boy, like it’s had by destiny. In the drifting journey, the two scarred hearts got closer and closer. However, they would never imagine that in the tide of time, they were bound to struggle with more hardships and partings.
This is the opening of the novel “Love on Noah’s Ark to Shanghai”. At a length of 300,000 Chinese characters, the novel is mainly about the Jewish seeking shelter in Tilanqiao Area of Shanghai during the Second World War, written by a 70-year-old man.
Inspiration from old houses
Yu Qiang’s home is in a high-rise residence located in Tangshan Road of Tilanqiao Community. Looking down from the window of his apartment, it’s easy to see rows of red slope roofs of old-fashioned residences, which are the source of inspiration for Yu.
Ten-plus years ago, Yu moved to the community and soon became interested in a special scene in the neighborhood. A lot of foreign elders, some chaperoning each other and some accompanied by youths, wandered around lanes and alleys. But unlike those foreign visitors to Shanghai, these elders would roam around old houses sentimentally, and some would even shed tears when finding it hard to hold up emotions. However, seeing any Chinese passing, they would promptly untangle their sentimental complexity and zealously greet them in Chinese, or even in Shanghainese. Yu was touched by these special expressions on their faces.
With curiosity, he referred to the history of Tilanqiao Area and found the answer—the community where he’s now living provided refuge for the Jews during the Second World War. In the times of their own sufferings, the Chinese were so generous to give a hand to these Jewish brothers, who were suffering no less than them. Yu felt sympathetic and somehow understood the complicated feelings that those elders showed when returning to the place once their home. Yu excitedly told his friends about that but found that not many of them knew that.
Thus Yu, who was once engaged in foreign affairs work and interested in writing, came up with the idea of writing a popular fiction to promote the part of history to more people.
Careful researches reproduce reality
However, once starting, Yu came to realize the difficulty of writing about these former Jewish refugees. “There’re really, really few documents on that.” He said. For a novel of historical theme, it’s acceptable to make up characters and plots, but historical details should never go amiss.
For example, by which route did these Jewish people arrive at Shanghai? Where were they living? How did they lead a life? How did they get along with their Chinese neighbors? Before actually writing the novel, Yu listed questions like these, seeking answers from all historical documents available. He visited Foreign Affairs Office of Hongkou District and Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, and consulted extensive materials about the part of history. He also made friends with descendents of former Jewish refugees, who are now living in Shanghai, and tried to seek clues for his novel from oral accounts made by the refugees. Some useful information is only a short sentence in a whole book or a tiny part of a heap of accounts, but he treasured and well recorded them. In addition, Yu visited and revisited the lanes where the Jewish used to live to imagine and figure the scenes at the real time.
Yu was quite meticulous at his researches, especially about some details, like the names of Jewish people. Like Chinese names that bear certain meanings, it’s easy to judge a foreigner’s home country, family background and religious belief from his name. So Yu believed that the names of his characters must be taken seriously, with respect for Jewish customs. After consulting common Jewish names of Poland, German and Austrian nationalities, he created reasonable names for his characters.
Love is no doubt an essential element in a novel, and Yu’s is of no exception. A Jewish boy seeking shelter in Shanghai fell in love with a Chinese girl, and they finally got married. Yu was somehow hesitant about this idea in the book. Marriage with a foreigner is quite normal today, but in the lap of the hard time, would a Jew marry a Chinese? To make sure about that, Yu was plunged into documents again, and finally found out proofs from historical data, stating 300 couples in such a marriage. Thus Yu reassuredly “married” the two characters.
The book also described how Chinese neighbors helped out the Jews trapped in Japanese isolation area, and in return, the Jewish refugees funded construction projects in China after the end of the Second World War, which are both based on true stories. Yu said he wanted to make the real history known to more people in an artistic way.
A slick writer
Yu deemed himself no more than someone who is curious about the history and fond of writing. Love on Noah’s Ark to Shanghai was not his first novel themed at history. He used to serve in foreign affairs work in Ma’anshan of Anhui Province neighboring Shanghai, thus he had the chance to get in touch with someone special, a Japanese war orphan.
Yu first met Gu Lianyun in 1984, who told him that the next year of the end of the Second World War, she was abandoned in Dalian, Liaoning Province in Northeastern China, but luckily she was brought up by her Chinese adopters and later married to a Chinese veteran. Amid turbulences in the past of China, Gu confessed to her husband that she was a Japanese. Her husband was at first furious but faced the reality later, and they supported each other to get over hardships. On hearing the story, Yu was deeply moved and thus created his first novel to become an amateur writer since.
Yu expressed his favor for historical and realistic themes, because he spotted touching moves by average people despite depressing historical conditions. The Chinese couple, who suffered a lot from Japanese invasion, adopted a Japanese infant in mercy; the Chinese veteran, knowing the real identity of his wife, provided protection with tolerance; and Shanghai, thrown into miseries, embraced Jewish refugees with generosity. All these made Yu believe that people of conscience will take hold to love, forbearance and understanding, which is also the most important lesson he learned from the history.
So far Yu has finished final polishing to the novel and delivered it to a press. It shall come out in April this year. This is deemed a gift from a 70-year-old man living in Hongkou, Shanghai for the 70th Anniversary of victory of the World Anti-fascist War.