Talk:History of the Jews in China

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Contents

[edit] Rework necessary?

Does anyone else feel the article (esp. first segment) should be re-organized, in more encyclopedic fashion? ~ Dpr 01:10, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Does my "yea" count as vote 1 or vote 2? Tomer TALK 07:43, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Diao jin jiao

Can we get a confirmation on which characters would be correct for this phrase? Thanks ~ Dpr 05:40, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The Chinese Wikipedia gives only 挑筋教 tiao jin jiao, which means "the religion that picks away the sinew". (Actually, the Chinese Wikipedia gives a very long list of ancient terms for the Jewish community, but no diao jin jiao.) Still looking... -- ran (talk) 06:56, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)
This must be the same phrase; it is the same meaning of the one I was looking for. The pinyin error must have been mine. Thanks! ~ Dpr 17:01, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] No mention of the crusades

Somewhere in my collection of Judaica I have a book about the Jews in China. From what I can remember, it indicated that a large number of Jews migrated to China during a Christian crudase (my memory thinks it was 1066 CE).

According to my poor memory, the Emperor welcomed the Jews, and assigned them seven last names. Some people in the 20th century are just discovering their Jewish heritage.

I will look for the book, if anyone is interested.


Jeffrey

drexpert@comcast.net

Jeffrey, any information you had would be great! Thanks! ~ Dpr 16:59, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
I think the book you are thinking of is either "Legends of the Chinese Jews of Kaifeng" or "The Jews of Kaifeng, China: History , Culture, and Religion", both of which are by Prof. Xu, Xin, professor of Judaic studies at Nanjing University. As I'm sure you know, the First Crusade didn't take place until 1095 which is well after 1066. Actually, in the book in question it states the "1090's". The stories and histories from each book are based on "oral" traditions passed on by descendents of the Kaifeng jews. However, the book, "The Kaifeng Stone Inscpritons: The Legacy of the Jewish Community In Ancient China" gives a more plausible history for when the Jews came to China. SEE Kaifeng_Jews#Literature.

[edit] 挑筋教 or 扚筋教

Which is the correct spelling? Tomer TALK 23:21, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

  • I've changed it to the former spelling, as that is what is apparently used in the chinese wp. Tomer TALK 23:26, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Functionally extinct?

Dpr, I see you've revisited this page. You changed the article a while ago to say that Judaism in China is "functionally extinct". I pointed out to you at the time (on your talk page) that there are a number of synagogues in China: in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. How can Judaism be "functionally extinct" (whatever that means) if synagogues are being maintained in at least 3 synagoguescities? Tomer TALK 23:25, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

To be frank I don't know if it was I who introduced that language or not; if it was, I don't know where I got it from. Regardless of what I or anyone else wrote in the past, I completely agree that this language is incorrect and should be removed. Thanks for your hard work on this page. ~ Dpr 01:21, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
My hard work?! Yours is phenomenal! :-) I like your rework so much that I took the {{clean}} tag off the article. Tomer TALK 05:19, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Title

Should this page really be History of the Jews in China? Why is Jews in China not preferrable? I maintain the latter to be preferrable since, as we just discussed above, there are still Jews in China, therefore unless we are to create a new, distinct article for Jews in China or Judaism in China (all of which current redir. to this one, now), this presents an ambiguity, since the topic is not merely "history" but also a current-day development. ~ Dpr 01:21, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

This is following the current naming convention for articles about the Jews in various places. See History of the Jews in the United States, History of the Jews in Poland, History of the Jews in France, and about 20 others. Many of these articles cover the present community as well, but they are focused on telling the whole story of the presence of Jews in the relevant country, just as this one does. Consistancy in naming conventions is worth preserving. --Goodoldpolonius2 01:31, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
Now I understand. Thanks for explaining this. Sorry for my ignorance on the convention. ~ Dpr 02:06, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Clean-up tag

Should the clean-up tag be now removed? ~ Dpr 02:12, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Done. Thanks again for your hard work.  :-) Tomer TALK 05:23, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Names for Jewish Chinese

Can we get a source for the Lanmao Hui? Pretty interesting addition! ~ Dpr 02:01, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, my source is the old man who runs a little shop around the corner from where the Kaifeng temple used to be and keeps a box of related memorabilia. A google search yields only one hit, in Japanese. I know no Japanese, but looking at the pictures and the kanji, it does seem to offer some corroboration. — Pekinensis 16:42, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Actually, there is confirmation at zh:犹太人. — Pekinensis 15:09, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Check References

Someone added two references:http: http://jewcn.com and http://jewcn.org Can someone who reads Chinese have a look at these? The fact that they flash "hot" in a bunch of places make me doubt their legitimacy. DHR 03:30, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Duplicate content with Kaifeng Jews

There's a bit of duplicate content on this article with Kaifeng Jews, especially in the history section. Should the duplicate content be merged? --- Hong Qi Gong 17:37, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that the duplicate content is brief enough and relevant enough to this article that it ought to stay. If it was going into extensive detail about the Kaifeng situation, and including significant amounts of material not relevant to the overall History of the Jews in China, I'd say get rid of it. But as it stands, I'm not really sure what would be removed without damaging the continuity and thoroughness of the article. LordAmeth 02:36, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Assessment Criteria for Ethnic Groups articles

Hello,

WikiProject Ethnic groups has added new assessment criteria for Ethnic Groups articles.

I rated the History of the Jews in China article: B-Class, with the following comments (see link to Comments page in the Ethnic groups template atop this talk page):

  • This article is unusually well-developed.
  • It only lacks referencing. With proper referencing, I would have rated it class=A.

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Thanks!
--Ling.Nut 16:25, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Literature

This was recently deleted from the article; I'm not sure whether or not I think it belongs in the article, but it is interesting, and so rather than lose it, I'm recovering it to here. LordAmeth 09:52, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

- In the book, The Kaifeng Stone Inscriptions: The Legacy of the Jewish Community in Ancient China (ISBN 0-59-537340-2), Mr. Tiberiu Weiz, a teacher of Hebrew history and Chinese religion, presents his own translations of the 1489, 1512, and 1663 stone steles left by the descendents of the Kaifeng Jews. (These steles were left to preserve their religion and to briefly touch on their origins, since the Jewish community was slowly dying out from Chinese assimilation). His translation reveals one of many proposed origins of the Kaifeng Jews. - - According to Mr. Weiz, after the Babylonian exile and Diaspora of the 6th century BCE, disenchanted Levites and Kohanim parted with the Prophet Ezra (because of a prohibition against taking foreign wives and the decree encouraging “intermarriage” within the Jewish tribes) and disappeared never to be heard from again. Mr. Weiz believes these Jews settled in Northwestern India or 天竺 Tiānzhú (“Heaven India,” as it is called in one of the Kaifeng steles), where they lived for centuries. - - Prior to 108 BCE, these Jews had migrated from northwestern India to the Ningxia region of modern day Gansu province, China and were spotted by a Chinese general, Li Guangli, who was sent to invade the “western region” (西域 Xīyù in Chinese) to expand the borders of Han Dynasty China. From this time until the latter part of the Tang Dynasty, the Jews slowly dispersed throughout China, taking Chinese wives, and siring “half-Chinese, half-barbarian” children. In the "Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution" (845-46), Buddhism and other foreign religions—Zoroastrianism, Manichaeanism, Nestorian Christianity, Islam and Judaism—-were forced from China proper back to its outlying territories under the supervision of the Khitan tribes (including the Ningixa region) and all foreign temples were burnt to make way for their Confucian and Taoist counterparts, the native religions of China. - - It was not until the early Northern Song Dynasty, when Emperor Taizong, a man with a great thirst for knowledge, sent out envoys to every corner of Asia to learn from and recruit foreign scholars, did the Jews return to China. According to former translations of the steles, the Chinese word Guī 歸 (in the Emperor’s speech to the Jews) was wrongly translated as “come,” leading most western and Chinese historians to believe the Jews first came to China during the Song dynasty. However, Mr. Weisz translates Guī 歸 as the proper “return,”[1] meaning the Emperor was aware of the Jews’ former Chinese citizenship and was welcoming them back to China. He then allowed them to stay under the protection of the Song Empire and to continue to practice the religion of the fore-fathers.

[edit] Ricci and Ngai

The story of Ricci and Ngai is repeated in many secondary sources, but I would really like to read the original contemporary account of this incident. None of the secondary sources seem to say where this anecdote was first published. Can anyone help me find this? --Iustinus 06:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)