Enjoying the Culture 159The largest community of Chinese Jews can be found
in Kaifeng, in the Henan Province. Although little of their
original religious beliefs and customs remain, they consider
themselves Jewish. At one time, Kaifeng was the capital of
China, and it is thought that these Jews came as merchants
and traders to Kaifeng along the Silk Road.
About 1 per cent of Chinese are Christians. The earliest
traces of Chrstianity date back to a 7th-century visit by a
Syrian named Raban, who presented Christian scriptures
to the imperial court. Later, the Jesuits visited in the 1580s.
Christianity didn’t really become embedded in the country
until the early 1900s, when a number of missionaries
established themselves in China during the Western
colonisation. Occasionally, you will meet a Caucasian who
can claim that four or five generations of their family were
born in China, and these are the descendents of the earliest
missionaries in China.
COMMUNISM
Religion was banned with the advent of communism in
China, and only atheists were allowed to be Communist
Party members. In 1982, the Chinese government amended
its constitution to allow freedom of religion. This legislation
was a high point for religion in Communist China—during the
Cultural Revolution, there was an extreme backlash against
religion that involved temples being destroyed and monks
being killed by the Red Guards.
Influenced by the Russian school of political thought,
an idealistic group of young men sought to overthrow a
government in China that gave privilege to an elite group
of the wealthy and powerful. If you ask any Chinese person
what the role of the Chinese government is in their life, they
will tell you it is to ‘improve my quality of life’.
Communism brought a single-minded determination
to this goal that had immense societal cost. The effect
on modern culture can still be seen, as the educated and
skilled who were ‘sent’ to the countryside, rural areas or
borderlands, maneuver to gain their children entry into
the better schools in China so that they may be successful