Henan B, Halloween, Heading Out (HHH)

So I was taking a nap when I left you last week, if I remember correctly. Blogspot has now become Blocked Spot…so I have to go on memory and a draft that I saved to the hard drive.

In any case, it was good nap, and I woke up around 6, to check out the night market I’d heard so much about. The market took up much of central Kaifeng, virtually stopping traffic by virtue of people constantly wandering across the street. It was centered around the intersection my hotel abutted, and spread from there in the four cardinal directions, with most of the food stalls crowded around the central part. Further out, people sold everything from slippers to electronics to bamboo massage rollers. In short…nothing anyone would want to buy.

I grabbed some food from one of the plethora of vendors, and began looking for Jews. This was accomplished primarily by walking up and down the market, stopping every 50 meters or so, and asking the old men. Old men are the best, followed by old women, and lastly by everyone younger than 40. It’s a mix of knowledge and the desire to shoot the breeze with strangers.

At first, many directed me to Henan University, where they thought I could meet some foreigners. “No no,” I responded, “I’m looking for Chinese Jews.” Some expressed disbelief at this, suggesting that I must be crazy. How could there be Chinese Jews? Weren’t Jews all foreigners like myself? Gradually, as I moved farther down the line, I started getting somewhere.

I finally got acknowledgement that there were Jews in Kaifeng after maybe 15 minutes of asking, and shortly after that I was given the name of an alley ay to take a look at. That’s where the Jews live, my informant told me, and preceded to ask what I thought about the war in Iraq. He was a Muslim, and quite certainly the most informative man I talked to, always willing to stop and chat. Was there ever any conflict between the Muslim’s and the Jews, I asked. How could there be, he replied, after all—everyone was Chinese.

His directions were confirmed by two other independent sources, and so with an address in my notebook, I went to back to the hotel to watch X-Men on TV.

In the morning, I set off to find the Jews, scoffing at the guy with the Pedi cab who wanted to take me right there. After all, I had an address, and a map; I could find them no sweat.
This proved easier said than done. Finding the general area was no problem, it was right around the former synagogue cum hospital. But finding the narrow alley named Jiao Jiang Hutong (teaching scriptures lane) proved harder than expected. I resumed my strategy of the night before, and soon was getting increasingly closer, judging by the specific-ness of the directions. All in all it probably took around two hours to find Chui Suping The Jew of Kaifeng.

She was a little old lady, not particularly special in any way, and not, it turns out, Jewish either. Her husband, since deceased, had been Jewish, but she was ethnically Han Chinese, just like 90% of the other people in the world’s most populous country.

Still, with all the Jewish tour-groups coming through Kaifeng, the presence of a Jew was a necessity, so Mrs. Chui took the burden on herself to become the city’s professional Jew. She sells Chinese paper cuts with the Star of David amid Chinese lotus patterns, and I suspect she makes a killing. But she was not what I was looking for, not the last in a line stretching back into the Northern Song Dynasty and across the silk road to Persia. After a couple questions and a picture or two, I took my leave.

However, amusingly enough, in the old lady’s house, I met a NYT reporter, also looking for Jews in Kaifeng. Her question was why Jews like Chinese food, and Mrs. Chui had provided the answer. Because it’s good, obviously.

In any case, we hung out for the afternoon, and in general had a good time eating street food and swapping stories.

There are other Jews in Kaifeng, ethnically anyway, and there are some younger ones that have even begun holding evening services on Friday nights, if reports are to be believed, but finding them wasn’t easy. After all, they look Chinese, they act Chinese, and they do nothing to distinguish themselves from any of Kaifeng’s other residents. Not only that, but the idea of a Jewish community is completely alien. I might as easily have been searching for the community of people with attached earlobes.

It took another couple hours of canvassing the streets, asking every likely looking individual, to find another Jew. Some asked if I was looking for Muslims, which was a common misconception apparently.

This makes some sense, given that both Jews and Muslims wear head coverings, both pray facing the same direction, eat hallal food, and are ethnically distinct yet physically identical to the Han Chinese.

Others knew that there had been Jews in Kaifeng but swore up and down that they were all gone from this earth. In short, I was getting nowhere, and then a fruit seller told me to go to Xing Hua Yuan Street and ask for a couple named Rui. They had died, apparently (as had every other Jew in Kaifeng it seemed) but somebody mentioned that I should look for someone named Ai, who used to live in the neighborhood. Through more asking I found out that Ai had moved out of the low houses into a nearby apartment building, and through even more asking, and much climbing of stairs I found the correct apartment.

Mr. Ai, for he turned out to be a man, seemed delighted to let me in, and not at all surprised that I was knocking on his door. Around three or four highly bull headed or well informed people make it to his apartment a year, as opposed to three a four visiting Mrs. Chui a day at the peak of tourist season.

He was the real deal, such as it was. The product of a Jewish father and a Han mother, he proudly admitted to being Jewish, and when asked if his 6th grade son was Jewish as well, he response was “of course!”

However, that seemed about as far as it went. He remembered his father talking about three festivals, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover. But that was it. His household registration card listed him as Muslim, because the authorities said that there weren’t enough Jews to warrant their own category.

He had a Star of David on his otherwise empty dining room wall, but this was a gift from foreign visitors, not a family heirloom, as was the Israeli flag on the TV. He was just a day worker really, but he knew he was Jewish, and I think he was proud of it.

And that was it. We got some dinner and I got on a night bus, sleeping fitfully all the way home, and went to work on Thursday afternoon. End of trip.

Since then, I had some friends visiting, which was fun, and ridiculous, and expensive. I learned a bit more about the Night culture of foreignerville, which is a story, but one for another time.

And then, it was Halloween, which was fairly ridiculous. I got invited to somebody else’s party…and showed up before it was time to be fashionably late. Which left me dressed all in brown, awkwardly holding a tree branch, talking to the hostess’s mother. It was good fun though, and gave me a chance to practice my cocktail party skills. They had halloween peeps, which made the whole thing worth it in and of itself. By 11, the apartment, hidden off in a dark corner near the north 2nd ring road, was full of people from all over. I met two aussie crashers who'd just seen people walking in, a danish guy who'd quit his embassy job because it was boring, and even couple people who'd heard of maine. There were even a couple chinese kids there. It was loud for maybe 15 minutes, and then people started filtering out, heading to the clubs for the official party of the year. It was a good time, but more work on weekend nights cut it short. Oh well.

This week was just work, but I leave tonight for my “Seoul Journey.” I’ll take a train to Qingdao, then a bus to Weihai, and the ferry from Weihai to Incheon, where I’ll get on the “Seoul train.” If it all works, I’ll be there Saturday morning sometime. If it doesn’t I get stuck in Shandong Province for 2 days. Worse things have happened. Well. Look for an update in maybe two weeks, or something like that. Stay good. Martin.