An Isolated Remnant of an Exodus Thirteen Hundred Years Ago A correspondent writes in the "Morning Poss'':—"Those fellows! missed the bus,'*' remarked my host, indicating a couple of passers. fy, as we were sauntering through the streets of Amoy. They lock-slightly different from other Chinese. 'The bridge of the. nose was higher, though hardly aquiline, and the eyes were rounder - and more prominent. '"Jews,'? he con tinued. "They, or rather their ancestors, came aros into Chioa close on thirteen hundred - years ago, as camp followers of the last Sassanian King of Persia, when. he was chased out East by the Caliph Cthmau.. The Persian troops went home eventually, but a number of the Jews missed the bus,' and usselves, stranded in. the middle of China. And there they have been ever since."
On making further inquiries I ionnd that was quite true. Up-country clustered together in the town of Kaifengfu, in -the inland province of Honan, there still exists the most curious little Jewish colony in the world. They even have @ ruined synagogue in which they used to worship up to afew decades ago, and they are trying to raise funds for its reconstruction. So far as I could gather, however, foreign Jewry was not responsive to their appeal, and the numerous well-known international Hebrew philanthropists tad passed them over whom distri-a pity, for from a purely historic buting benefactions. This seens
cal and sentimental point of view so strange a colony of exiles might well be preserved, and rewarded for its pluck im holding its ground for so long. The ruined synagogue, which was. practically razed to the ground in the early pert of last century, at the iu-Stigation of the large. colony - of local Moslems, was more than i00 yards long by 50 broad, and had four cour It had a hall. of ancestors, where Moses,. Joshua, Isaiah, and the rest of the famous personages of the Old Testament had the worshippers' respects paid to them, in Chinese fashion, at the equinoxes. The last Rabbi diol about 1840, while away on a journey in the Province of Kansu.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.