AHC: Kaifeng Jews last until modern day.

Jewish people in China are still around (one of my Chinese co-workers at the office is descended from the Kaifeng Jews). It'd just never become too popular due to the fact that Chinese people love their pork.
 
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Jewish people in China are still around (one of my Chinese co-workers at the office is descended from the Kaifeng Jews). It'd just never become too popular due to the fact that Chinese people love their pork.

And yet there are Chinese Muslims.

It was just too small a community, subject too many outside pressures, too cut off from the world Jewry. Lots of Jewish communities suffered heavy attrition, but there was always a connection to the world Jewish community to help them out in times of need and help with doubts about their position. Plus, Christians and Muslims were always very aware of Jews being all Jew-y. The Chinese just didn't care, so ironically may have been less pressure to maintain a coherent Jewish identity.
 
I've been asking myself about this a lot lately. The Hui, at least according to their tradition, claim to descend from foreign Muslims (Arab, Persian, and Central Asian) who settled in China and intermarried with the locals. Today, of course, the Hui are more related to the Han than anything else in terms of genetics, language, and cuisine, with the only key difference being their religious practices and the cultural differences that result from that (like the pork thing).

The Kaifeng Jews are very much in the same boat as the Hui. They originated as foreigners and slowly assimilated into the Han through intermarriage, but unlike the Hui they were not able to salvage their identity or their religion.

I think the key difference is that Islam is a proselytizing religion while Judaism isn't. No doubt, the Hui community grew not just due to intermarriage but also because of conversions. The Kaifeng Jews didn't really care about converting anyone.
 
It's also just a question of size and isolation as Minchandre-the Kaifeng Jews weren't in close contact ever with the major centers of Jewish life and too small to become a major center themselves(and with Kaifeng shrinking and becoming too small to attract tradespeople or diplomats) and too at risk of disruption by regime changes. Maybe a more viable route would be to somehow keep Kaifeng the capital of China longer, so the Jews stay prosperous and are maybe able to fund a proper Yeshiva for the training of rabbis when their isolation from the Jewish communities elsewhere is less of an issue? Alternately, could they wind up settling somewhere else at the outset of their history so instead of Kaifeng Jews we have Jews in the South and Southwest in one of those cities who can maintain contact with other Jews via maritime routes, keep in contact with Indian Jewish communities, and perhaps when the Dutch become a major power come to the attention of the Dutch community and thus build contact with a major center? I could see, say, a native Formosan Jewish community being in a position to find out that there are other Jews from the Dutch and begin a correspondence with Dutch Jews, maybe even arranging to pay for the most promising rabbinical candidates to study in Amsterdam?
 
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