In March and April of 2019, Zeng Dekuang and I spent more than 20 days traveling. Starting from the Wanzhou Sanhe Prison in Chongqing where his close friend Qin Yong was serving his sentence, we went to several places where he lived for a long time and lived in his childhood. The mountain villages in Wugang, Hunan, the city of Ningxiang where he lived in his youth, the county town of Zhongxian County in Chongqing, where he has been living for many years after graduation, and Daling Mountain in the Golden Town of Zhongxian County, and the ancient city of Phoenix where his wife and daughter now live. He Lu, an old friend, also went around for ten days, and De Kuang called it a homecoming trip.

Six life stories of German, Austrian and Russian Jews which intersect in exile in Shanghai. Out of narratives, photographs, documents and new images of the biggest and most contradictory metropolis of the Far East an entity develops in which the historic exile takes and turns on a completely current power and appeal. Fascinating and rich with dry humour; EXILE SHANGHAI is an extraordinary cultural odyssey that affectionately conjures up the lost Jewish world of Shanghai, the most fabulous city of the Far East.