Three waves of immigration the chinese seaport Shanghai has seen: on merciantilistic in the 19th century and two of the escape from the progroms and the german genocid. From Shanghai anew the jews were displaced- some because of the japanese occupation in the 1940’s, the rest after the chinese recapture int the 1950’s. Ulrike Ottinger portraits six jewish people from german, austrian and russian origin, who immigrated in the 1930’s and 1940’s to Shanghai. The filmarker visits them in their new home in California and let them report in front of the camera: of the battle for work for everyday surviving, of german papers and chinese coal-burning stoves, wiener bakeries and “Wurstküchen” in Berlin, from the new misery in the gettos again or from the luxiry of colonial existtance. Mostly based on the reports, the artificial movie, which is a contemporary document either. With little filmparts from achrives, the camera “searches” the traces of the past in Shanghai. The direktor and photographer Ulrike Ottinger is one of the most idiosyncratic german filmakers with international status.