Google opens the door to the Jewish history of Harbin, China

By JON CAMPBELL
Special to The CJN

HARBIN, China — Ask a Chinese person about the town of Harbin and they’ll probably know a thing or two: that it is bitterly cold and that it used to have a sizable Russian population. That’s all I knew before I made the overnight train trek northeast from Beijing in search of a few stories about Russia, some hearty food – including, likely, some vodka – and a bit of snowboarding at the nearby resort of Yabuli.

But thanks to the wonders of technology, I stumbled upon Harbin’s Jewish history, something I’d neglected to consider, despite knowing full well the extent of the Russian presence in Harbin at the turn of the 20th century.

My journey to Harbin’s Jewish community began in a gritty neighbourhood Internet café the night before I was to depart Harbin. I sat among more than 30 gamers of college age, mumbling curses at themselves and their opponents and teammates across the tiny room – and cyberspace. I had come to find out more about the beer Harbiners drank: I noticed that the local brew, Harbin Beer, touted itself as “China’s Oldest Brewery,” and sensing a story, I had set up a private tour of the 103-year-old brewery. But before I went on the tour the next afternoon, I figured I should do some research.

A Google search for Harbin beer brought me face to face with Harbin’s Jewish history. The 10th hit was an article from the China Daily, China’s official English newspaper. The article was written to commemorate the release of a coffee table book issued by the Harbin Jewish Research Centre of the Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences. I was aghast. The Harbin Jewish Research Centre?

I decided to track down the centre and its director, Li Shuxiao, possibly forsaking my brewery trip if need be. After almost four years of nail-biting, wondering just how much longer her crazed son would be spending in China, my mother, if nobody else, would understand. I was on the phone with Professor Li first thing the next morning and was in his office soon thereafter.

“So few people have heard of Harbin,” he said. “But it was China’s first international city, the first place that China met the rest of the world.”

Li has spent his academic career researching Harbin’s international population, specifically Russians, making three trips to Israel to continue – and promote – his research.

The Russian population grew out of the construction of a Vladivostock-Dalian railroad that passed through what was, in 1896, a collection of fishing villages. Within a few years, Harbin was known as “Little Moscow” and before the Japanese invaded China in 1932, it hosted residents hailing from 30 countries.

While Shanghai might be best known for its European Jewish history, and Kaifeng famous for a Jewish population that followed the Silk Road more than a thousand years ago, Harbin’s Jewish history has not been well-publicized. But, with Li and others on the case, that is set to change.

“At its peak, there were 20,000 Jews out of a Russian population of 200,000,” Li said.

It wasn’t the numbers of Jews, but rather, their prominence in Harbin life that led Li to focus his work on his city’s Jewish population.

“You can’t research Harbin’s foreign population without looking into the Jewish population,” he said. “Even though they were a minority of the community, they comprised the bulk of its influential members.”

Thanks to Li, there is more than decaying and restored architecture – not to mention the best-preserved Jewish cemetery in the Far East – commemorating the former Jewish presence in Harbin: the Jewish Research Centre opened in 2000, and it has an impressive exhibition of photographic displays of the history of the city’s Jewry, currently housed in a vacant room in the Academy of Social Sciences, a building not far from the centre’s cramped quarters.

Li hopes to move the collection into a former synagogue that he’s hoping to renovate into a permanent museum should funding become available. The funding, says Li, should come from a combination of donations and government coffers. Local and provincial governments are both in favour of the move, he says, but there is bickering over who should foot the bill: the centre is in a provincial institution and the synagogue is a city building.

Li’s mission of publicizing Harbin’s history will be boosted should the synagogue move happen, but the coffee table book, based on the centre’s collection, is helping as well – despite his protests that it isn’t of a high-enough quality for mass distribution. Currently, aside from the several dozens Li has given away, the book has only been distributed in China, and he hopes it will go through another round of editing before being distributed internationally.

The book features photographs and stories of the community whose progeny have since scattered throughout the world, having left, like most other foreigners, when the Japanese took over the area in the early 1930s. These descendents include internationally renowned politicians and artists.

“Had it not been for the Japanese invasion, many would have stayed longer. They had established homes there,” Li said.

The Olmerts are one of the families of which Li speaks. Ehud Olmert is the former mayor of Jerusalem and currently Israel’s deputy prime minister. His brother, Amram, is posted at the Israeli embassy in Beijing.

“My grandfather came to Harbin in 1917,” Amram Olmert said. “It was, in a way, the most convenient place to go. And one of the first things I did when I came to China was visit Harbin.”
Olmert’s father, Mordechai, trained in electronics at Harbin’s Technical University and left China against his grandfather’s wishes for British Mandate Palestine in 1931, stopping in Holland en route to study agriculture. He eventually rose to a prominent position in the Knesset’s agricultural department. Olmert himself has carried on his father’s tradition: he is science and agriculture minister at the embassy.

The Olmerts spread throughout the world in the 1930s: to Shanghai and Tianjin, to Russia and to Israel. On his first trip to Harbin, Amram found his grandfather’s grave, and cleaned it up. In total, four Olmerts are buried in China: “I like to tell Chinese people that I’m a true capitalist,” he said. “‘I’ve got bits of property all over the country,’ I tell them. ‘A plot in Tianjin, one in Shanghai and a couple in Harbin.”

Olmert sees his posting in China as completing the cycle of his family’s story.

“I’m coming back to the place from where my parents began their life,” he said. “They brought the skills they learned here to Israel. Now I’m bringing Israeli technology and know-how back to China.”

His department has been busy lately, with several dozen ongoing projects, and Olmert is about to make his 20th trip to the northwestern province of Xinjiang, where yet another massive project is about to begin.

Meanwhile, other Jews are focusing their gaze on Harbin. Tour East, a Canadian-Chinese travel agency, has been offering Jewish trips to China for the past four years.

“When Jews come to China,” said Wang Jianguo, who runs the Chinese end of the tour operator, “they want to know more than your average tourists. We take them to all of the regular sites, but add sites with Jewish history.”

Tour East adds visits to Kaifeng, a synagogue off-limits to non-researchers in Shanghai and to a former synagogue-turned restaurant in Tianjin. In October of this year, for the first time, they will be visiting Harbin, with Li’s help.

According to Li, most Harbin-based foreigners lived lives as far removed from those of the locals as was possible.

“Most people only knew how to say ‘Hello’ and ‘We’re from the same hometown’ in Chinese,” he said. The Olmerts were different.

“When my parents didn’t want us to know what they were saying,” said Olmert. “They would speak Mandarin.”

“When my father was dying,” Olmert recalled, “he spoke Chinese for a whole day. I think he was at the point where he was returning to the happier times in his life.”

Jon Campbell is a Toronto writer/editor living and travelling in China.