Nicholas Zane, at The Blogs

Apr 28, 2022, 8:53 AM

A (Jewish?) delegation reached Kaifeng in 998 CE

Kaifeng Torah during Father Ricci’s time dated to the year 1008 CE On 18th August 1723, Father Antoine Gaubil (1689–1759) wrote to Father Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (杜赫德, 1674–1743). The letter said, “Father Matteo Ricci found that the content of the...

Mar 26, 2022, 9:01 PM

108 BCE: Chinese General spotted Jews in Ferghana

Destruction of the First Temple Professor Tiberiu Weisz is a specialist in cross-cultural issues linking China and Judaism; he is also the author of The Kaifeng Stone Inscriptions. He believes that based on the rituals and prayers described on the...

Jan 29, 2022, 7:54 PM

Hangzhou had a Jews’ Gate

Jews’ Gate 犹太门 in Hangzhou [Zane Archives]

Ibn Battuta (伊本白图泰) was one of the greatest medieval Muslim travellers Ibn Battuta (1304–1368) was of Berber descent, born into a family of Islamic legal scholars in Tangier (Tangier), Morocco (摩洛哥). His most commonly used full name was Abu Abdullah...

Jan 25, 2022, 11:49 AM

Marco Polo, Kublai Khan and Jews of Ancient China

Marco Polo was in China from 1274 to 1291 Between 1274–1291, Marco Polo (1254–1324) lived in China and served an active role in the Yuan Imperial Court. Shared experience in China with a fellow prison inmate In 1295, Marco Polo returned to...

Dec 16, 2019, 4:05 PM

Other Jewish communities in Ancient China

Before the end of the Ming dynasty (1644), other than Kaifeng, there were several other Jewish communities in China. It is still unknown how all these communities eventually perished. HANGZHOU (杭州) Hangzhou became an important city in Chinese history when the...

Sep 24, 2019, 8:03 PM

Kaifeng Synagogue

In 1163, the Great Jin (1115-1234, ruled by the Jurchens) government granted the Jews in Kaifeng a plot of land and subsidised the construction of the Kaifeng synagogue. The assigned land was bounded by the Teaching Torah Lane North...

Aug 19, 2019, 4:14 PM

Shanghai Ghetto (上海难民营)

Prior to the arrival of German and Austrian Jews, there were already two relatively well established Jewish communities in Shanghai - the Sephardic Baghdadi Jews, numbering roughly 800, and the Ashkenazi Russian Jews, numbering roughly 4,000. Both communities, due to...

Jul 30, 2019, 1:05 PM

Jews in Harbin

From the reign of Catherine the Great (1762-1798), Jews of Russia were confined to live within the Pale of Settlement (1791-1917), made up mostly of modern day Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, and Ukraine. Life in the Pale of Settlements was exceeding...

Jul 8, 2019, 1:46 PM

Sassoons in Shanghai

The first wave of Jewish immigrants to modern China was the Sephardic Jews from Iraq and India. Their story is closely related to that of the Sassoon family. David Sassoon, treasurer of Baghdad between 1817 and 1829, moved from...

Jun 11, 2019, 7:30 AM

Chinese words for ‘Jew’

For close to a thousand years, Judaism in China was called Tiao Jing Jiao (挑筋教), literally translated into “religion that removes sinew” which refers to the kosher practice against eating the sciatic nerve. It is probable that the Jewish dietary...

About Me

I was born in Hong Kong, completed my secondary education in the United Kingdom and now pursing higher education in the United States. I am fascinated by Jewish history, particularly in China; this points towards Jewish communities in Shanghai, Harbin, Hong Kong, and above all Kaifeng. This is a fairly niche area of interest and I would like to share what I learn on my academic journeys with everyone. For more, please check out our website https://www.chinesejews.com/.

Contact Me