There's a good reason why they pose those queries to Xin. He's considered the world's top expert on the history and culture of Chinese Jews.
The friendly scholar, short even by Chinese standards, shared some of his findings with a nearly full house at the Asper Jewish Community Campus's 210-seat Berney Theatre January 8, 2004.
The Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada and the Yunnan Project Hope of Canada Inc., headed by Chinese Winnipeggers Len Hew and his wife, Cora, co-sponsored Xin's visit and talk here.
"Some scholars believe Jews were in China pretty early, even back to the (biblical) Second Temple period," said Xin, professor of the History of Jewish Culture and director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at Nanjing University.
Scholars also maintain that Jews from Western Asia were initially traders on an overland caravan route from Western Asia to China. Evidence from inscriptions Kaifeng Jews wrote centuries later, legends and other sources suggest they started settling in Kaifeng, the northeastern Chinese city that was then a regional capital and metropolis, some time during the early part of the "Song dynasty", from 960 to 1126.
"We do have evidence that in 1163, they built a synagogue," Xin noted. The synagogue was rebuilt or renovated "at least 10 times".
"They came to trade in cotton cloth," Xin added.
Cotton was then "valued" in China, because the "usual cloth" there was "Chinese silk"; senior officials encouraged Jews to found a community in Kaifeng, where they could live free from religious persecution.
From their first settlement in Kaifeng to the mid-19th century, when the city's Jewish community died out because of intermarriage, a thriving Jewish community evolved there. Smaller ones arose in other Chinese cities along the caravan route.
Where did these Jews come from? Kaifeng synagogue "ritual books", including words written in a "Judeo-Persian" language, suggest Persia, today known as Iran, as a possible place of origin. Other available information indicates "beyond a reasonable doubt" that Kaifeng Jews were initially, at least, "predominantly of Persian origin".
WEST ABOUT KAIFENG JEWS
Xin and other scholars can thank Christian missionaries in China during the 16th century for discovering the Jews of that country.
Matteo Ricci, an Italian-born Jesuit missionary there, met Ai Tien, a Kaifeng Jew and a supervisor of schools, in Beijing in 1605.
Tien told him about his community, and through Ricci, news of these Chinese Jews reached Europe.
The Chinese Jewish community had its "golden age" between 1300 and 1600.
"Jews in China were welcomed into Chinese society," Xin noted. "They were encouraged to participate in the civil service in China."
At its "highest point", the Chinese Jewish community of that era numbered "about 5000", mainly in Kaifeng.
But a disastrous flood in Kaifeng in the 17th century wiped out most of that city's Jews. Kaifeng, initially the capital of China, also became a backwater town, cut off from communication with the West.
So the Jewish community dwindled, and with the death of its last rabbi in the mid-1800s, more floods and other disasters, it came to an end by 1860.
Meanwhile, although there are no more Jews in Kaifeng, Xin estimates there are "two to three hundred people in Kaifeng with Jewish descendants."
Since China reopened to the world in the 1970s, "many Jews" have visited the city, reviving those descendants' "consciousness" about their ancestry.
To qualify as a descendant of Kaifeng Jews, those offspring maintain, you have to have one of seven different surnames: Ai, Kao, Jin, Li, Shi, Zhang and Zhao.
"At Passover, they don't eat unleavened bread, and they paint their doorposts," Xin said, commenting on their remaining Jewish rituals. "It's not too much. But today, some are trying to revive their traditions." Xin is helping them do that.
"In 2002, I organized a workshop there on Jewish history and culture. Eleven of them came to study their heritage."
Some have gone to the U.S. and Israel, to learn more about Judaism.
"I don't know how much they'll take back," Xin admits. "It may take 10 to 20 years."
Xin also spoke about more recent waves of Jewish immigration to China, including the influx of tens of thousands fleeing Eastern Europe during the Holocaust.
JEWISH WRITERS
Most later left China, but the country's growing trade with the West, and diplomatic ties with Israel since 1992, have brought in several thousand new Jewish immigrants.
As for Xin, himself, his interest in Chinese Jewry proved another fascinating topic.
A product of China's Cultural Revolution who taught himself English, he enrolled as a literature student at Nanjing University in 1976. That was the year American Jewish writer Saul Bellow won the Nobel Prize for literature. Xin was so impressed with Bellow's writing, that he started exploring other American Jewish writers, ranging from Philip Roth to Isaac Bashevis Singer.
That ultimately led him to study Jewish history, culture and religion, and delve more and more into the relatively little-known history of Chinese Jews.
Today, he's billed as the world's top expert on that subject, and heads one of "over 10 centres" in China for Jewish studies.
Besides his duties at Nanjing University, Xin is president of the China Judaic Studies Association, editor-in-chief of the Chinese edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica, and author of several books, including Legends of the Jews of Kaifeng (1995) and The Jews of Kaifeng, China: History, Culture and Religion (2003).
He's also taught at universities in the U.S., Israel, and other countries, and given about "300" lectures outside China about Jews and China.
Len Hew played a key role in bringing Xin to Winnipeg, after learning he was slated to speak in Toronto. Hew and his wife, Cora, retired Manitoba schoolteachers, have raised funds for and built a series of schools in poorer areas of China, over the years; he's also taken an interest in and visited descendants of Kaifeng Jews.
Hew arranged several years ago for shipment of unused books from the Asper Campus's Kaufman/Silverberg Resource Centre to the Jewish Studies Centre at Kaifeng's Henan University.
He also publicized Xin's lecture here in the Chinese community, and some other Chinese Winnipeggers showed up. Jewish Heritage Centre President Louis Kessler noted that the centre first forged links with the Chinese community here three years ago. Both presented the Shanghai Connection, an exhibition describing the wartime presence of Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe in Shanghai.
"We're continuing this wonderful work with the Chinese community with this particular lecture," Kessler said.
As for Xin, he left no doubt about his love of Jewish history, religion and culture.
Commenting on that scholar's in-depth knowledge of Chinese Jewry, a Chinese man in the audience said: "Listening to you, I'd think you were a Chinese Jew." "I wish I was," Xin replied.
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