What the Chinese Know about the Jews Wald observes: “How can we know what ‘the Chinese think about Israel and Jews?
The country has 1.4 billion citizens and offers very contradictory experiences. I remember a rough, bumpy ride on a public bus through the countryside of Shandong province. My Chinese friend and interpreter told the peasants sitting around us that I was Jewish. One or two said, ‘Ah, Jews very clever people, Kissinger, Einstein.’ Other well-known names of Jews are Marx and Freud. “But I also remember talking to an approximately twenty-year-old female student in Urumchi, the capital of Xinjiang province. The city has perhaps five million inhabitants. She studied English and spoke it perfectly. Her dream was to work one day for Chinese TV. She followed the English news, but had never heard the words Jew or Judaism. I then gave her the Chinese words for these terms, which also didn’t mean anything to her. “My impression is that a large number of Chinese know that there is a state called Israel, Islele, in the Middle East. Chinese Central Television Channel 1, which is watched by hundreds o
