The accidental discovery in the 17th century of a Jewish community
in the city of Kaifeng, and the findings there by Jesuit
missionaries, marked the beginning of widespread interest in the
subject of Jews in China. In the centuries that followed, Western
Sinologists arrived in China and engaged in a variety of
investigations. In the 1980s, however, Sidney Shapiro, a former New
York lawyer who has lived half a century in Beijing, felt that
"there was a crying need to learn what the Chinese scholars
themselves have to say about the history of the Jews in China".
With that in mind, he compiled the remarkable fruits of research
conducted by Chinese social scientists, and edited and translated
them into English.
Jews in Old China was originally published by Hippocrene Books
in 1984 with considerable success. It was then translated into
Hebrew and published in Israel in 1987.
This newly expanded edition offers a rich exposition, according
to the Chinese investigations, on the origins of these Jewish
migrants -- when and why they came, the routes they followed, where
they settled, and descriptions of their religious and social lives
under the Hans, the Mongols and the Manchus. This book provides a
wealth of information about the conflicts, contributions,
adaptation and ultimate assimilation of the Jews in China. It also
introduces, from the Chinese perspective, the Radanites, the great
medieval Jewish mercantile traders, who provided an important link
between China and the West.
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