The Chinese Jews 



627 



another dignitary wanted to copy my 

 passport, and informed me that it would 

 be well to call at the Foreign Office. 

 This I did, and found the officials polite 

 and much interested in the object of my 

 visit to their city, particularly His Excel- 

 lency Chang Shu Shen, with whom I 

 paid a visit to the imperial palace, one of 

 the greatest curiosities in the whole em- 

 pire and situated in the very heart of the 

 city — a prodigious group of edifices, vast 

 courts, gardens, kiosks, and palms, sur- 

 rounded with a stately wall of consider- 

 able compass. It contains all the spa- 

 cious and stately apartments of the Em- 

 peror and his family and afforded a safe 

 retreat for the Dowager Empress during 

 the occupation of Peking by the foreign 

 troops. The city gates, pagodas, arches, 

 towers, castles, banks, and other public 

 buildings display a magnificence that 

 must have been truly grand prior to the 

 sad havoc wrought by the flooding of the 

 Yellow River. A number of new, rickety- 

 looking pieces of printed yellow and ver- 

 milion rice paper, pasted on the doors of 

 every house and shop, I discovered were 

 prayers against the evil influences of the 

 foreign devil that had just arrived, and it 

 was with considerable difficulty that I 

 managed to get through the tremendous 

 crowds, gathered in the streets to hear 

 the foreign devil speak and curse him as 

 he passed. 



During the first three days I located all 

 the temples and mosques likely to afford 

 me any data, and on the fourth morning 

 visited the ruinous site, which gave no 

 evidence of the magnificent synagogue 

 that once stood there or the wealth of its 

 community, save for a weather-beaten 

 commemorative stone that told the story 

 of these people. While I was photo- 

 graphing and rubbing this stone, thou- 

 sands of Chinese gathered around, and 

 they came to the erroneous conclusion 

 that I was a Jewish rabbi come to succor 

 Chinese Jews, which the Mohammedan 

 portion did not particularly relish, owing 

 to the fact that a great many of the Jew- 

 ish community had merged into Moham- 

 medanism through persecution and dis- 



tress. The Chinese always referred to 

 the Jews as the "sect which pulls the 

 sinews" and as the "Mohammedans with 

 blue bonnets," because they wear blue 

 bonnets as well as take oS their shoes 

 during all religious ceremonies. 



One handsome, intelligent Chinese 

 Jew came forward and introduced him- 

 self, inquiring very diligently the reason 

 of my taking the photograph and rub- 

 bing of the stone that spoke of the 

 grandeur of his ancestors and their syna- 

 gogue. I told him that I wished to in- 

 form the Westerners, who feel the deep- 

 est interest in the Jews, because our 

 Christian religion has come from a 

 Semitic race. The long line of noble 

 men to whom the Jewish nation has given 

 birth, from the time of its founder, Abra- 

 ham, and the fearless testimony which 

 since the days of captivity it has borne to 

 the lofty truth that there is one God, and 

 none other, must ever give to the scat- 

 tered people a large place in our venera- 

 tion and love. Only it must be no blind, 

 but a pure and true, veneration, born of a 

 careful study of all they have been and 

 all they have done. I persuaded him to 

 come to the house, and he unfolded the 

 following remarkable story: 



"My elder brother — I am not yet forty 

 years old, but I have thought and talked 

 much with my friends about our ances- 

 tors, who were rich and numerous and 

 who worshiped in a fine synagogue, built 

 on the land presented to them by the 

 Emperor Tai-tsu. This synagogue, you 

 know, has been swept away by 'China's 

 Sorrow' [the Yellow River]. Our an- 

 cestors came to this land from the north- 

 west nearly three thousand years ago, 

 and had with them a roll of the law that 

 was very ancient and in a language that 

 we do not understand today, because we 

 have no teachers. The beautiful syna- 

 gogue had a number of courts, and in the 

 center of the first there was a large, noble 

 arch, dedicated to the Creator, Preserver, 

 and Father of all men. The second com- 

 prised sacred trees, and the houses of the 

 good men who cared for the buildings. 

 The third had many trees, and on its 



