[KS] Re: Jews in China

Sun Aug 27 00:43:12 EDT 2000

REPLY sends your message to the whole list
__________________________________________

While I am certainly not able to respond to the details of the inquiry 
passed to us by Henny, I do know that the field of Chinese Jewish studies is
very compelling, indeed.

In 1992 I attended an excellent international conference "Symposium on
Jewish Diasporas in China: Comparative and historical Perspectives" at
Harvard's Fairbanks Center for East Asian Research. Many papers (in English)
were presented by scholars from throughout the world focused on Jewish
communities in Kaifeng, Shanghai, Manchuria and Harbin. The offerings were
diverse, addressing topics from the Silk Road to Shanghai Zionist
organizations, from the Jewish connection to the Opium Wars and a Jewish
member of Mao's Red Guard (he was there!). It was breath-taking. There are
now active organizations of Jews whose families lived in China as 19th and
20th Century refugees from Europe. Jews of Persian ancestry whose families
were stalwarts prior to the Revolution remain powerful leaders of the
remnant Jewish community in Shanghai. For a good read on the early history,
try Michael Pollak's "Mandarins, Jews and Missionaries: the Jewish
Experience in the Chinese Empire" (Weatherhill). My review of it will be in
the next issue of Kyoto Journal.

On the contemporary political front, there is much interest in China's lack
of recognition of Jews as a minority population or Judaism as an "official"
religion, not to mention it's position re trade with Israel.  This is being
addressed actively by the American Jewish Committee's Asia and Pacific Rim
Institute.
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----------
>From: Henny Savenije <adam&eve at henny-savenije.demon.nl>
>To: "korean-studies at mailbase.ac.uk" <korean-studies at iic.edu>
>Subject: Jews in China
>Date: Thu, Aug 24, 2000, 9:04 AM
>

> REPLY sends your message to the whole list
> __________________________________________
>
> These two messages came up in another list, together with a number of
> others and I think it is of interest for this list as well.
>
>>I will be very interested in the outcome of the discussions regarding
>>Jacob d'Ancona.  Like others, I found that Selbourne's translation made
>>absorbing reading, and could see nothing in it which would immediately
>>condemn it as a fake.  Could somebody give us the gist of the  criticisms
>>that have been levelled against it ?
>>Arabic sources suggest that Jewish merchants had reached China as early as
>>the ninth century, and that at least by the thirteenth century a
>>network of Jewish entreports existed across much of the known world.  For
>>those interested, the paragraphs below summarise what I believe is the
>>current state of knowledge regarding the Jews in China.  If anybody can
>>add anything to these notes, I would be delighted to hear from them.
>>
>>
>>It was reported by the merchant BUZURG IBN SHAHRIYAR in his "Kitab 'Aja'ib
>>al-Hind" ("Book of the Wonders of India", c. 950) that the
>>Jewish merchant seaman, Ishaq bin Yahuda, visited China between the years
>>882 and 912.  After a quarrel with a Jewish colleague, Ishaq left Sohar
>>(in Oman) in poverty to seek his fortune in China and returned thirty
>>years later with marvellous wealth.  After a disagreement  with
>>the emir he again sailed for China but his ship and its contents were
>>seized by the ruler of a port of Sumatra and Ishaq was murdered. It is
>>generally accepted that the first Jewish families arrived in China via
>>India during the Sung dynasty (960-1126), although other traditions
>>maintain that they arrived via Persia as early as the first century, after
>>the capture of Jerusalem by Titus.  The first mention of Chinese
>>Jews (the Tiao-kin-kiao) in European literature is found in the records of
>>the Jesuit missionaries of Peking, although clearly by that time the
>>Jews had lost virtually all recollection of their homeland, or precisely
>>where it lay.
>>JACOB D'ANCONA, who visited China in 1271-72, reported that there were two
>>thousand Jews in the port of Zaitun (= Quanzhou), and many tens of
>>thousands throughout China.  He stated that they had arrived in the time
>>of the patriarchs, and that only the rabbis could read Hebrew, the prayers
>>and scriptures having been transformed into an unintelligible mixture of
>>Hebrew and Chinese.  The first mention of the Jews (under the name of
>>Chu-hu) in Chinese literature (in which they were often confused with the
>>Moslems, or Hwei-hwei) occurs in the Annals (Yuan-shi) of 1329, and again
>>in 1354.  There is just a passing allusion to the Chinese Jews in the
>>letter of FRANCISCO XAVIER, written from Cochin on January 29th, 1552.
>>In 1605, a young Chinese Jew, NGAI, during a visit to the Jesuit
>>missionary MATTEO RICCI, declared that he worshipped one God, and on
>>seeing at the mission a picture of the Virgin and child, believed it to be
>>of Rebecca with Esau or Jacob.  He stated that he had come from
>>K'ai-feng, the capital of Ho-nan, where his brethren resided.  Ngai stated
>>that there were but ten or twelve families resident at K'ai-feng
>>and that they had been there for five or six hundred years.  Ricci sent a
>>Chinese Jesuit convert to K'ai-feng, where it was discovered that the
>>Jews possessed a synagogue (Li-pai-sze) orientated towards the east, where
>>they had many books (some of which were published in facsimile at Shanghai
>>in 1851).  One of the tablets found at K'ai-feng stated that seventy
>>Jewish families arrived in China at the court of the Sung dynasty,
>>although another proclaimed the first arrival of Jews via India in the
>>time of the Chou (1122-955 BC).  K'ai-feng was subsequently visited by the
>>Italian Jesuit, NICCOLO LONGOBARDO (1565-1655), on account of his
>>particular interest in the Jewish community there.
>
> ------------------
>
>>Given the detailed responses the d'Ancona text has raised, I had better be
>>more specific than I was in my first rather general e-mail:
>>
>>I am referring to the second edition of 'The City of Light' (1998, Abacus).
>>The first was published by Little, Brown and Co, 1997.  Selbourne has
>>added an afterword to the second edition in which he defends himself
>>against what sounds like a barrage of criticism from various quarters on
>>various grounds - linguistic, historical, and not least the fact that
>>no-one but himself seems to have laid eyes on the manuscript, which he
>>says is in the private possession of a Jewish family and cannot be
>>generally accessed for reasons of privacy.  The articles mentioned by Greg
>>McIntosh and cited by the people at Overlee Farm Books are doubtless among
>>the ones Selbourne is referring to:
>>
>>THE CITY OF LIGHT does not seem to have met the strict criteria for
>>historical writing.  See the following articles, Nicholas D. Kristof, NEW
>>YORK TIMES (Sept. 21, 1997), p.1; Robyn Davidson, LONDON TIMES (Oct. 2,
>>1997), p. 40; Jonathan Spence, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (Oct. 19, 1997),
>>pp. 20-21; Doreen Carvajal, NEW YORK TIMES (Dec. 9, 1997), p. A-9 (New
>>England Edition).
>>Martin Torodash
>>
>>Selbourne also mentions (p441) that he wrote an article in the Times
>>Literary Supplement, 20 November 1997 arguing for a committee of scholars
>>to critique the text - but not the manuscript.
>>
>>I am not in a position to accurately comment on any of the issues
>>Selbourne raises in the afterword.  What Selbourne does not discuss is the
>>rather problematic notion that there were well-established groups of
>>French and English merchants in China when he arrived  there in August,
>>1271.  The particular passages that have aroused my curiosity are:
>>
>>"...a man may go about the streets of Zaitun as if it were a city of the
>>whole world...in one separate quarter are the Mohometans, in another the
>>Franks, in another the Armenians, in another the Jews (peace upon
>>them)...and in each quarter separate parts again, as in the quarter of the
>>Franks there is a part for the Lombards, a part for the Germans...and
>>another part for those of our countries." (137-38)
>>
>>The last line is taken to refer to people of the Italian states.  The
>>writer elsewhere clearly distinguishes between 'Franks' and Genoese,
>>Venetians, etc.
>>
>>"...the city is a mixture of peoples, and each people in the city, of
>>which there are said to be as many as thirty, even those that have
>>inhabited it a long time, has its own language.  Therefore the Saracens
>>speak in Arabic, the Franks in the Frankish language..."  (137).  (French?)
>>
>>Further on the same page he mentions hostels, cemeteries, and trade
>>councils run by these trade enclaves.
>>
>>
>>"...a man may see in Zaitun merchants from Aragon or Venice, Alessandria,
>>or Bruges of the Flemings, as well as black merchants and English." (127).
>>
>>"There...being so large a number of Franks and other peoples in the city
>>who have lain with women of the place, a man may easily see their
>>offspring as he goes about, whom they call 'arguni'...or those who are the
>>sons born of a woman of the city and a Christian." (140).
>>
>>If this last section is true, it must be taken as evidence that at least a
>>fair number of Europeans had been in the city for long enough to produce a
>>new generation - Jacob meets one of these 'arguni' who is twenty four
>>(140).  He nowhere precisely specifies how long the 'Franks' had been
>>present in the city or exactly how many there were.  For the Jewish
>>presence, he rates their oldest temple at over a thousand years, and the
>>Nestorian Christian presence at six hundred years.  My estimation that the
>>'Frankish' presence must been over a hundred years old is based on Jacob's
>>account of the 'Arguni', the cemeteries, and the notion that trade guilds,
>>city quarters and cemeteries take time to establish.
>>
>>Having qualified my original message, I still find this all very
>>surprising if it is true.  I also still find the text excellent reading
>>and I must admit that I hope there is some validity in it somewhere.  I
>>gather from Selbourne's afterword (which is still the only source I've
>>got) that the text has been dismissed as a literary hoax by some writers
>>and supported as a great historical find by others.
>>
>>
>>Andre Engels wrote:
>>"In the first place, trade-related documents of this period have survived
>>much less than church-related ones. In the second place, I still do not
>>believe that there can have been MANY English traders in China at the time."
>>
>>Nor do I.  Even a small number seems extraordinary.  What puzzles me now
>>is the fact that this would seem to be quite a clear objection to the
>>validity of the work, but it is not one that Selbourne tries to defend
>>against in the afterword.  Has anyone else raised it?
>
> -----------------------------
> Henny  (Lee Hae Kang)
>
> Feel free to visit
> http://www.henny-savenije.demon.nl
> and feel the thrill of Hamel discovering Korea (1653-1666)
> In Korean
> http://www.henny-savenije.demon.nl/indexk2.htm
>
> 