Results tagged “jewish”

Shanghai-born Dr. Liliane Willens will be speaking twice this weekend about her newly published book, Stateless in Shanghai at several venues around the city. But first, a word of explanation about what "stateless in Shanghai" really means:

Vienna Café cooks up with a Truffaut movie this coming Thursday! One of film history´s most important directors didn't only write and direct Les 400 coups, Jules et Jim, Baisers volés...but also Le Dernier métro (The last metro), which is the movie of choice for this week.

Israeli photojournalist and documentarian Dvir Bar-Gal speaks to Thomas Crampton about Shanghai's Jewish history and intrigues us with what he had to say about Dr Ho Feng Shan, the Chinese Consul-General in Vienna in 1938-9 who was named a "Righteous Gentile" by the government of Israel for using his position to provide visas to Austrian Jews seeking to escape from the Nazis while the consulates of other world powers refused to do the same. This letter by Dr Lotte Marcus addressed to "ex-Viennese Shanghailanders" throws up another interesting fact — in those days, you didn't really need a visa to get to Shanghai and anyone who had the means to come was welcome. By issuing those visas, Dr Ho had provided Jewish refugees the legitimacy of "official" documents which helped them to escape.

Jesus seems to be making a comeback in the PRC. Since the introduction of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox missionaries to China, many of them to Shanghai, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, Christianity has been a popular minority religion. While practice abated during Mao’s hay day, China has experienced a resurgence in past years. Just two weeks ago, we reported that Orthodox priests were allowed to lead a service in Shanghai for the first time in over four decades. An article by the Chicago Tribune shows this incident may be indicative of a larger trend of successful Christian advocacy, some of which may challenge the Chinese government’s role as supreme authority over its citizens:

As China's Christian population has climbed to an estimated 70 million, a growing number of lawyers and scholars have converted to Christianity and turned their skills to the issue of religious freedom. They are teaming up with churches to challenge the government in court, suing for the rights they believe are guaranteed under China's constitution.

Continue reading "Jesus Christ Superstar! (and other religious news)"