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September 2, 2016

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Sadness, joy mingled in 1943 visit to the convent

EVERY year, nearly 100 couples take their wedding vows in a domed hall atop a Shanghai restaurant in the heart of Xujiahui.

The four-story restaurant is the only remnant of what was once the Xujiahui Virgin Mary Convent.

“The restaurant building used to be a dormitory for the nuns in a site founded by the Convent of Sacred Heart,” says Fudan University Professor Li Tiangang.

According to the “Xuhui Brief Record” published in 1933, the convent was originally founded in 1855 in Hengtang in Qingpu County. It was moved to Xujiahui in 1869.

The 6,000-square-meter convent was a mini society, featuring a Christian church for women, a hospital for foundlings, a kindergarten, two schools for girls, a school for deaf children, craft workshops and a nursing home for the elderly.

“The Xujiahui convent was influential,” Li says. “It attracted Chinese women from wealthy families, who either missed the prime years for marriage or didn’t want to get married at all. They brought their dowries with them. Poor women from neighboring towns like Taicang or Changshu (in today’s Jiangsu Province) also joined the convent. It was obviously a better choice than working as a maid.”

Shanghai Library expert Zhang Wei explains that the convent had a much larger population than the Tushanwan Orphanage for boys, also in Xujiahui, because baby girls were more often abandoned than boys.

“Archives show that ratio was 300 baby girls for every 30 baby boys,” says Zhang, who wrote a book about the orphanage’s operations and contributions.

A visitor to the convent in 1943 described its “grand, tall buildings in an environment of flower gardens and vegetable plots.”

In an article published in the Sacred Heart newspaper, the unidentified visitor wrote: “The foundling hospital nursed and educated thousands of deserted babies. Many of them later left for work or started their own families, but there are still 550 children in the convent, including 180 babies, 200 children between the ages of four and 15, and more than 100 teens 15 years and older.”

Walking through the convent, the writer said he was struck by two sentiments — sadness for the plight of abandoned children and joy that their suffering was eased by the devotion and care of the nuns.

“We saw every baby lying quietly in a tiny iron bed,” he wrote. “Their clothes and quilts were neat and tidy. They were being well cared for. The young children were learning characters in kindergarten, while more elderly children were engaged in book-learning.”

Zhang says baby boys also lived in the convent, looked after by the nuns, until they were six and then sent to the Tushanwan Orphanage.

The girls who stayed were given education and taught skills such as embroidery, weaving, cloth-making and laundry. The chasubles, or outer vestments, worn by priests at the time and the decorative embroidery in Shanghai churches largely came from the convent.

The visitor in 1943 was most impressed by the school for the deaf, Shanghai’s first school for disabled children.

“The nuns had amazing achievements in teaching the students to speak and write,” the visitor wrote. “First, they used French letters and hand gestures to teach them pronunciation, after which the students were taught to recognize characters, read books and create their own compositions. Some of the deaf children could speak to other people after three or four years. After five or six years, their pronunciation was almost the same as that of ordinary people.”

Zhang says training for orphaned girls and boys was different. The boys learned painting, woodworking or metalwork in the Tushanwan Orphanage, while girls focused on exquisite embroidery. In addition to religious objects, the girls made quilts, tablecloths, handkerchiefs and other needlework items.

Though they lived separately in Xujiahui, the orphans sometimes met and later married.

“An orphan older than 18 was free to find a girlfriend,” Zhang says. “The boys would usually ask a Jesuit director for help. He would take the matter to the nuns to see if there might be a suitable match. If the boy and the girl found one another agreeable, the nuns would prepare a traditional Shanghai dowry such as quilts and a night stool, and the Jesuits would find a house for the couple nearby.”

Renowned painter Xu Yongqing took this route to marriage. His address for receiving commissions after leaving the Tushanwan Orphanage was Wu Dai Tou, a congregation of homes for orphan couples located near what is today the Jianguo Hotel.

According to “Zikawei in History,” the convent had at least 14 buildings, each accommodating 300 people. Today, only one white steel-and-concrete structure remains, with its white cement plaster walls, gable and elegant dome intact.

Shanghai Station Restaurant that took over the dormitory building is filled with old Shanghai memorabilia, including gramophones and telephones. There are even two vintage trains parked on the lawn. One was said to have been owned by Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) Empress Dowager Cixi, and the other by Soong Ching Ling, wife of Dr Sun Yat-sen.

Restaurant manager Qiao Fang recalls the thick dust that greeted them when they went to convert the convent into a restaurant around 1999. The last several nuns living in the building were relocated to Nanhui in today’s Pudong New Area.

“The domed hall is a former chapel that has been a popular wedding venue for our restaurant,” Qiao says. “Christian brides and grooms especially love the atmosphere of this special banquet hall.”

Though now a popular restaurant, the building is still imbued with the tranquil atmosphere of its past. The corridor is paved with old tiles with patterns of crosses. Stained glass glistens in the former chapel. Green-framed windows offer a breathtaking view of St Ignatius Cathedral just across the street.




 

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