Shanghai
Shanghai Children's Home
No. 9977 Zhong Chun Road
Min Hang District
Shanghai, China
201101
*Please note that Half the Sky no longer funds or supervises programs in Shanghai. In 2004, the Shanghai City Welfare Association took over funding and operating the infant nurture and early education programs created by Half the Sky in 2002.
Half the Sky’s 6th Children's Center opened 6/2002
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Infant Nurture Program June, 2002 - June, 2004 |
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Little Sisters Preschool Program June 2002 - June, 2004 |
With a population of 18 million, Shanghai (“above the ocean”) is the largest city in China and one of the largest cities in the world. Shanghai was a sleepy fishing village when it was established in the 11th century. In the nineteenth century China lost the Opium War of 1842 and was forced to open Shanghai to opium traders, ushering in the city’s turbulent modern history characterized by drugs, finance and war, and sealing the city’s destiny as the huge, cosmopolitan, financial, and cultural, and tourism center it is today.
When Shanghai opened as an international port in 1843, opium dealers made huge fortunes that financed profligate lifestyles that included magnificent castles for British traders back home in Scotland. Many of the foreign “Shanghailanders” spoke next to no Chinese and lived like royalty, as their sumptuous mansions attest, while most Chinese were denied their comforts and privileges. When the city’s Gongyuan Park, formerly the British Public Gardens, was built in 1868, no Chinese (except for servants accompanying their foreign masters) were allowed to enter.
With so many people making so much money and so few rules, by the 1920’s Shanghai had become synonymous with prostitution, opium, jazz, brothels, and pleasure in just about any form, prompting one Christian evangelist to say: “If God lets Shanghai endure, He owes an apology to Sodom and Gomorrah.” Despite its reputation, the city was not only a paradise for adventurers and pleasure-seekers, but also a haven for millions of people who sought refuge from the wars and poverty that surrounded the city. Juxtaposed to the decadent, lavish lifestyles was the misery and exploitation of the city’s poor, who died by the thousands of hunger and cold. In some textile mills, children were chained to their machines.
Chinese resistance to the foreign domination of Shanghai as well as the city’s social stratification and widespread opium addiction began to grow. One manifestation of that resistance was the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 in a home on Xingye Road. Twenty-eight years later, the era of foreign domination of Shanghai ended completely when the People’s Liberation Army took control of the city, closed the opium dens, and forced opium addicts into rehabilitation.
The home where the Chinese communist party was born is now a museum that borders Shanghai’s stylish Xin Tian Di district, a two-square block development that saved scores of historic buildings from the wrecking ball by transforming them into some of the city’s hottest clubs, restaurants and boutiques. Xin Tian Di is a delightful maze of cobbled streets and scores of trendy outlets including a Vidal Sassoon, the requisite Starbucks, French and Italian restaurants, and trendy nightclubs, including Star East, which was launched by Jacky Chan and other Cantonese stars.
The Bund (“Embankment”), Shanghai’s famous waterfront on the western shore of the Huangpu River, was the center of the city’s economic and cultural life when western powers dominated the city and is still a showcase for 52 colonial buildings of varying western architectural styles, including Gothic, Baroque and Romanesque. Shanghai’s 3.4-mile-long Nanjing Road, which starts at the Bund, is a shopper’s paradise, offering famous brands, silk goods, jade, embroidery, open-air bars, abstract sculptures and street musicians.
On the Bund’s eastern side is the Promenade, a raised embankment that acts as a dike against the Huangpu River; the city’s downtown, situated on a soggy delta, is slowly sinking below the river level. The Promenade features great views of both the Bund and the Pudong district across the river. Since the beginning of its development in 1990, the Pudong district has emerged as the symbol of Shanghai’s booming 21st economy, just as the Bund was the symbol of Old Shanghai’s economy. The Pudong district is home to the Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone and a skyline that includes the Oriental Pearl Tower and the Jin Mao Tower.
The Yuyuan Garden, south of the Yangtze River, is a classical garden south with a history of over 400 years, features halls, chambers, towers and pavilions, rockeries and flowing streams displaying the essence of the Ming and Qing Dynasty garden architecture.
The Jade Buddha Temple, in the western Shanghai, was built in 1882 to house two jade Buddha statues that had been brought from Burma by a monk named Huigen. The temple was destroyed during the revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty. The jade Buddha statues were saved and a new temple was built on the present site in 1928.
Outside of Shanghai are the ancient gardens of Suzhou, one of the oldest towns in the Yangtze basin, and Zhouzhuang, a town whose interconnected waterways have earned it the monker “Venice of the East.” The majority of Zhouzhang’s houses date from the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Shanghai natives have their own dialect, Shanghainese, which differs considerably from Mandarin in pronunciation and vocabulary, as well as their own, signature cuisine. Shanghainese cuisine favorites include Beggar's Chicken, which is coated in wet clay, then baked, so that the hardened clay can be chipped away from the tender chicken; Soup Dumplings, which are filled with a broth, then steamed; and Hairy Crab, in season in the fall when poets pen verses on the joys of sipping wine and eating crab under an autumn moon. The crabs are steamed with ginger and herbs and served with minced ginger and vinegar. Dragon Well Tea, grown near Shanghai, is a favorite beverage and is considered by some tea lovers to be the finest green tea in the world.
If you adopted a child who was in a Half the Sky program, we will be happy to send you any progress reports with translations we may have on file. Please fill out and send us this Form so we can start processing your request.
You should also have received a Memory Book at the time of the adoption so that your child will have an additional record of her/his earliest years in our program. If you don’t read Chinese and don’t know anyone who reads Chinese, we suggest that you check with a local college to find someone who can translate it. If you did not receive your child’s Memory Book, our Beijing office will try to track it down, though occasionally there are bureaucratic glitches and the institution is unable to find the original or in even rarer cases a copy. In every case, we will do our best to retrieve the Memory Book.