Jewish visitors to China often receive a snap greeting when they reveal their religion: “Very smart, very clever, and very good at business,” the Chinese person says. Last year’s Google Zeitgeist China rankings listed “why are Jews excellent?” in fourth place in the “why” questions category, just behind “why should I enter the party” and above “why should I get married?” (Google didn’t publish a “why” category in Mandarin this year.) And the apparent affection for Jewishness has led to a surprising trend in publishing over the last few years: books purporting to reveal the business secrets of the Talmud that capitalize on the widespread impression among Chinese that attributes of Judaism lead to success in the financial arts.
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One of the apothegms of asian studies is that the southern and overseas Chinese are the Jews of the East.
BTW,
The Koreans are the Irish.
Must be why china’s foreign policy is stridently anti-semitic.
@9–Cubans were considered the “Jews of the Caribbean”.
The Arabs too have a long history of trading, culture, science and many similar “Jewish” characteristics, but have been somewhat stymied since the Turks crushed the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople in 1453 and Catholic Spain pushed the Moors out in 1492. It went downhill from there.
jonathan @ 7: Jews maintained history, meaning they kept the accounting principles developed in ancient Rome. The Christian prohibitions against accounting were numerous and even included bans against writing numbers as numbers, instead requiring they be written out as words.
According to Wikipedia, double-entry bookkeeping was widely used in the Islamic world from at least the 12th Century, so its use in ancient Rome and preservation by Jews throughout the Medieval period sounds suspect. By the 13th Century it was commonly used in Italy, one of its developers being a monk who used it to record tithes paid to his monastery.
The good thing about Jewish is that they know how to take use wisely their opportunity cost. Chinese also like the concept that Jewish people are also hard workers and have money. The Chinese are trying to get better and why not copy the good things from other cultures, specially the Jews? They don’t lose anything by doing the same good things that these people have, it is all the opposite, they learn the good things and benefit from what they learn.
abraham goes to china orders a container of goods , 2 months later his partner isaac flies for the quality control before shipment and goes nuts ” it’s not the right size, not the right color,the quality is no good!” and cancels the order, the week after jacob comes to the factory and ask “do you have any closeouts?”
Apparently complimentary stereotypes are perfectly acceptable now?
Can we say things like “Black people sure can run fast and jump high”?
Or how about “Asians are smarter than white people”?
Wait, wait!–how about “Mexicans….”
If we will accept the “good” stereotypes, then we must take all the medicine on the spoon and accept the bad stereotypes, too. Something we should be loath to do…though, to be fair, there is likely a bit of truth in both the good and the bad stereotypes about folks.
It’s just a “rule of thumb” way to identify people. It can be insulting or even a bit insightful. After all, our Jewish friends, by maintaining a significant level of “otherness” and “us-ness” have held together through thick and thin, allowing the wisdom of the generations to pass, to pass, to pass.
I suspect that some will see this post as a bit stereotypical. But if we’re going to play the game, we must be prepared to sometimes lose a point here and there.
Because most of Han Chinese are racist in secret. Actually it’s extremely fascinating to ask why people categorize a group of people as “distinct” at something. It’s not rare to hear the stories from Han Chinese that Hui are very good at business but…canny. So is their attitude to Jew: they are clever but…canny and deserve death.
I’m Han-Hui mix, I know lots of rumors run by both folks.