The Jews of Kaifeng

by Michael Pollack

The Beginnings

No one can say with any degree of certainty precisely when Jews first set foot on the soil of China. Numerous theories have been proposed that place them there, either as travelers or as settlers, at varying intervals within a time-span beginning shortly before the birth of Moses and extending several hundred years beyond that. However, when subjected to critical examination, none of these theories holds fast. Some, it transpires, are totally contrived; others are patently conjectural; some are tied in with the mythology surrounding the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel; and still others are derived from the inept readings of Hebrew and Chinese texts. Nevertheless, the fact that no corroborating evidence has so far come to light does not necessarily exclude the possibility that occasional footloose Jews could have made their way to China as early as the time of the Hebrew prophets. We know, of course, that large numbers of the descendants of those hapless Jews who sat and wept by the waters of Babylon in the sixth century B.C.E. wandered progressively eastward-closer, that is, to China. We know, moreover, that a thriving trade was conducted during this time, both by land and by sea, between China and its neighbors to the west. To assert that Jews played no part whatsoever in this ongoing commerce appears ill-advised. But if we acknowledge that they did participate in it, then we must conclude that the prevailing logistics would have also made it feasible for some of them to have settled in the outposts that flourished along the interconnecting caravan trails, as well as in way stops and coastal cities situated within China proper.

Whatever the case, the first piece of tangible evidence we have of the presence of even a single Jew in the Middle Kingdom comes from a much later period-around 718 C.E., that is. This takes the form of a business letter written in Hebrew characters on paper, a commodity then manufactured only in China. The language is Judeo-Persian, at the time a common idiom of Central Asian commerce. The writer was a Jewish merchant-adventurer who, as best as we can make out from the tattered sheet on which the letter is written, was seeking the assistance of a coreligionist in Ispahan in disposing of a flock of inferior sheep. His letter, apparently never delivered to its destination, was discovered a century or so ago at Dandan Uiliq, some seventy miles northeast ofthe Khotan oasis, in Chinese Turkestan. A second find, a page of Selihot (penitential prayers) written in pure Hebrew, was found a few years later at Dunhuang, in the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas (also known as the Mogao Grottoes); it dates back to the late eighth or perhaps the early ninth century. And, of course, there is no reason to suppose that these texts, which fell into our hands entirely by chance, are necessarily the very first Jewish texts to have been wntten in China. We may surmise, accordingly, that Jews were traveling in China substantially before these two documents were composed.

There is, in any event, additional credible evidence of Jewish activity in China that goes back to the latter part of the ninth century, when ibn Khurdadbih, the so-called Postmaster of Baghdad, alluded to Jewish traders known as Radanites who traveled from such distant points as Spain and France all the way to China and back by any of four already well-established land and sea routes. In the tenth century, the Muslim chronicler Abu Zaid al-Sirafi told of the capture of Khanfu (probably Guangzhou, i.e., Canton) in 877/78 and the ensuing massacre of great numbers of Muslim, Christian, Magian, and Jewish merchants in that city. The Muslim traveler ibn Battuta also spoke of a Jewish presence in China When he and his party arrived at the outskirts of Hangzhou in 1346, he wrote, they entered the city "through a gate called the Jews' Gate," and that among the inhabitants of the city there were "Jews, Christians and sun-worshiping Turks, a large number in all."

Christian travelers began to encounter Jews in China during the latter part of the twelfth century. Marco Polo met several of them in Beijing around 1286. Shortly thereafter, the Franciscan missionary John of Montecorvino, writing from China, reaffirmed the existence of Jews in the country. In January 1326, Andrew of Perugia commented resignedly that the Jews of Quanzhou obdurately refused to accede to his pleas that they undergo baptism. And in 1342, John of Marignoli told of having engaged "in glorious disputations" in Beijing with both Muslims and Jews.

No further indications of a Jewish presence in China appear to have been received in Europe until the middle of the sixteenth century, when rumors of the survival of one or more Sino-Judaic settlements were passed on to Rome by the missionary Francis Xavier (later to be canonized for his work in the Far East). At about the same time, the Portuguese traveler Galleato Perera, writing about his incarceration in China from 1549 to 1561, stated that in Chinese courts of law "the Moores, Gentiles, and Jewes, have all theyr sundry oathes," and that members of each of these religious designations are sworn in "by the thynges they do worshyppe."

To date, no more than six indisputable allusions to Jews have been discovered in the Chinese records, and these relate to events occurring between 1277 and 1354. Though all are exceedingly brief, they cast pencils of light upon a few aspects of Jewish life in the Chinese world. Surprisingly, however, only one reference to Jews in China has been culled from the vast treasury of Jewish literature that was written outside the country prior to the seventeenth century. And, disappointingly, that one reference turns out to be the product ofthe fervid imagination of the colorful raconteur who called himself Eldad ha-Dani. It was this Eldad who, in the latter part of the ninth century, succeeded in persuading the more gullible among his coreligionists that he had once been kidnapped by a band of cannibals, brought forcibly to China, and ransomed there for thirty-two pieces of gold by a merchant whom he airily identified as a Jew "of the tribe of Isaachar."