Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China: Tragedy and Splendor

by Matthias Messmer

Overview

Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China: Tragedy and Splendor focuses on the many extraordinary contacts between East and West in China during the 20th century. Through a collection of short biographies situated in the context of Chinese and Western history, it offers a panoramic view of China as experienced by many different persons of Jewish origins during their sojourn in the Middle Kingdom.

With their Western talents, skills, desires, hopes and expectations they tried to master their individual fates. There is the iconoclastic young woman journalist who enjoys breaking taboos at home in the USA. There is the swindler, the scoundrel known from novels by Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. There is the revolutionary, the man of thought and deed who thinks he knows what the Chinese need better than the Chinese themselves. There is the poetess loyal to her lost Chinese lover, the admirer of Chinese culture. There is the artist, fascinated by the exotic surroundings, portraying them with archetypes that merge East and West. There is the doctor, anxious to help. There is the archaeologist, desiring to make a name by discovering and returning with Chinese treasures. – By showing us these characters in action, working for their own ambition or survival, employing their talents and previous experience, we find a distant mirror of our own society.

One cannot return in a time machine to the past, but literature is a sort of virtual time machine, carrying us to distant periods of the past and exotic surroundings. The present book offers such a magical journey across vast reaches of space and back through time. Our impressions of visits to China have often been biased by sensationalistic journalism, Hollywood films and literary entertainment that have distorted the reality of this vast country. In the present book, we are shown the reality of life in Twentieth Century China for many Westerners through carefully-researched biographies of a wide variety of typical and less typical Western visitors to the Middle Kingdom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739169391
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	11/21/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Matthias Messmer was born 1967 in St. Gallen, Switzerland. He received his M.A. in Political Science, Law and Economics (St. Gallen) and Ph.D. in Social Sciences (Konstanz). His research is focused on intercultural subjects and topics related to China and Chinese culture. Dr. Messmer is also affiliated with the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) as Senior Research Fellow and his projects include cultural documentation and criticism in the form of writing and photography. He has previously published books (in German) such as Soviet and Post-Communist Antisemitism (1997) and China–West-Eastern Encounters (2007). In 2013, he authored (together with Hsin-Mei Chuang) the book China's Vanishing Worlds: Countryside, Traditions and Cultural Spaces (Cambridge: MIT Press). In 2018, he published the book China at its Limits: An Empire's Rise Beyond its Borders (Berlin: Kerber) together with Hsin-Mei Chuang.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

Names and Orthography

Introduction: Individuals, Biographies and Lifeworlds

Chapter 1. The Long Established: Jewish Old China Hands

I. Descendants: Jews with Sephardi Roots

II. Russian Jews Originating from the Czarist Empire

Chapter 2. Jewish Travelers: Temporarily and Voluntarily in China

I. Journalists

II. Couriers, Emissaries and Advisors

III. Adventurers and Lone Wolves

IV. Diplomats

V. Research Travelers and Travel Authors

VI. Physicians

VII. Independents and Freelancers

Chapter 3. Refugees Driven from Europe to the Far East

Chapter 4. “Foreign Experts” and Supporters of Mao’s Revolution

Endnotes

Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Irene Eber

In the pages of this amazing and unique book men and women come alive who arrived in China for longer or shorter periods of time. Hailing from Europe and elsewhere, there were merchants and journalists, physicians and writers, adventurers and communists, and refugees from Nazi Germany. They witnessed one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history, their lives forever affected by what they saw and experienced. In vivid portrayals the author masterfully allows us glimpses of such women as Emily Hahn and Ruth Weiss, or men like Harold Isaacs and Theodore White and how they viewed 'their' China. Many like Willy Tonn regretfully left the China they had come to consider their own. Others like Israel Epstein and Sidney Shapiro remained in the country which they loved and where they felt they belonged. This is a superbly stimulating book.

From the Publisher

"Jews in China doesn’t sound like an obvious topic at first blush but Messmer has compiled an extensive, admirable and fascinating collection of vignettes of a displaced people surviving and living through the most tumultuous time in China’s history." —A. Tom Grunfeld, Empire State College "In the pages of this amazing and unique book men and women come alive who arrived in China for longer or shorter periods of time. Hailing from Europe and elsewhere, there were merchants and journalists, physicians and writers, adventurers and communists, and refugees from Nazi Germany. They witnessed one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history, their lives forever affected by what they saw and experienced. In vivid portrayals the author masterfully allows us glimpses of such women as Emily Hahn and Ruth Weiss, or men like Harold Isaacs and Theodore White and how they viewed "their" China. Many like Willy Tonn regretfully left the China they had come to consider their own. Others like Israel Epstein and Sidney Shapiro remained in the country which they loved and where they felt they belonged. This is a superbly stimulating book." —Irene Eber, Louis Frieberg Professor of East Asian Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

A. Tom Grunfeld

Jews in China doesn’t sound like an obvious topic at first blush but Messmer has compiled an extensive, admirable, and fascinating collection of vignettes of a displaced people surviving and living through the most tumultuous time in China’s history.

Editorial Reviews

Readers of Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China will be amazed and astonished to learn how many Jews have influenced Chinese history. Finally, within one volume, an amazing, fascinating, exciting collection of old China hands, travelers, advisers, adventurers, diplomats, explorers, physicians, refugees, and even Mao’s inner circle, will dazzle every reader.

Jewish Book Council

Through a collection of short biographies situated in the context of Chinese and Western history, it offers a panoramic view of China as experiences by many different persons of Jewish origins during their sojourn in the Middle Kingdom”

“Divided into four chapters the book deals with Jewish old China hands, such as the Sasoon and Kadoorie families and the Russian Jews from Czarist Empire. It then focuses on the travelers, journalists, couriers, emissaries, explorers, physicians, the refugees and ‘foreign experts’.”

“The book offers a magical journey back through time using carefully-researched biographies in a wide variety of typical and less typical Western visitors”

Jewish Times

Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China is, indeed, panoramic: the book profiles a fascinating array of personalities whose only unifying characteristic is Jewish ethnicity.. .. Matthias Messmer.. . has vacuumed up details from newspapers, memoirs, academic archives, interviews, and other sources, and stitched them together into life narratives in an impressive feat of coordination and stamina.. .. As a reference volume for China through diverse Jewish eyes, then, this book succeeds. And it may serve as a blueprint for future writers seeking to articulate the depth and complexity of the ‘Jewish experience’ in China.

South China Morning Post

In the pages of this amazing and unique book men and women come alive who arrived in China for longer or shorter periods of time. Hailing from Europe and elsewhere, there were merchants and journalists, physicians and writers, adventurers and communists, and refugees from Nazi Germany. They witnessed one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history, their lives forever affected by what they saw and experienced. In vivid portrayals the author masterfully allows us glimpses of such women as Emily Hahn and Ruth Weiss, or men like Harold Isaacs and Theodore White and how they viewed 'their' China. Many like Willy Tonn regretfully left the China they had come to consider their own. Others like Israel Epstein and Sidney Shapiro remained in the country which they loved and where they felt they belonged. This is a superbly stimulating book.

Irene Eber

Dr Matthias Messmer, a Swiss author and journalist, recently published a book titled “Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China: Tragedy and Splendor” that deals with the memories and biographies of Jewish personalities.

Shanghai Daily

Jews in China doesn't sound like an obvious topic at first blush but Messmer has compiled an extensive, admirable, and fascinating collection of vignettes of a displaced people surviving and living through the most tumultuous time in China's history.

A. Tom Grunfeld

In the pages of this amazing and unique book men and women come alive who arrived in China for longer or shorter periods of time. Hailing from Europe and elsewhere, there were merchants and journalists, physicians and writers, adventurers and communists, and refugees from Nazi Germany. They witnessed one of the most turbulent periods in Chinese history, their lives forever affected by what they saw and experienced. In vivid portrayals the author masterfully allows us glimpses of such women as Emily Hahn and Ruth Weiss, or men like Harold Isaacs and Theodore White and how they viewed 'their' China. Many like Willy Tonn regretfully left the China they had come to consider their own. Others like Israel Epstein and Sidney Shapiro remained in the country which they loved and where they felt they belonged. This is a superbly stimulating book.--Irene Eber

Jews in China doesn't sound like an obvious topic at first blush but Messmer has compiled an extensive, admirable, and fascinating collection of vignettes of a displaced people surviving and living through the most tumultuous time in China's history.--A. Tom Grunfeld, Empire State College

Dr Matthias Messmer, a Swiss author and journalist, recently published a book titled "Jewish Wayfarers in Modern China: Tragedy and Splendor" that deals with the memories and biographies of Jewish personalities.--Shanghai Daily

From the Publisher