For Jews, the attitude of most Chinese netizens towards them has gone from pity to contempt and even hatred. In addition to the harm caused by Israel to the Palestinian people, it is also related to the growing understanding of modern history among Chinese. Most of the opium that flowed into China during the Opium War was sold by Jewish merchants, and the Jews' intention to establish a state in Northeast China and the use of Jewish capital to manipulate the U.S. government behind the scenes and start a trade war with China all made the Chinese dislike Jews increase dramatically. So if the Jews are a branch of the Chinese, I wonder what everyone thinks of this view?
Perhaps the Jews are the descendants of Chiyou?
I don't know when a joke circulated on the Internet that the Jews were not only descendants of Judas, the traitor who betrayed Jesus in Christian mythology, but also descendants of Chiyou, one of the ancient tribes in China.
This statement sounds very nonsensical, as we all know, the descendants of the Chiyou tribe, in terms of blood and historical relationship, should be the Miao people, one of the ethnic minorities in China. There is a huge gap between the Jews and the Hmong, both in terms of appearance and cultural identity. Except for the similarity in the pronunciation of the names, there is little common ground to be found.
But with the development of the Internet, there are more and more explanations for this statement, for example, there is such a saying on Zhihu that after the Chiyou clan was defeated by the Yan and Huang tribes, some people stayed in China and evolved into the current Miao people. The other part fled the land of China and fled to Western Asia, where they were once enslaved by the Babylonian kingdom at that time.
According to the explanation of this Zhihu netizen, the Jews were not originally called Jews, they were in honor of their ancestor Chiyou, and they were called You Tairen at first, but the Babylonians thought that these Jews were too vulgar and barbaric, so they gave them the title of Jews, and it has been passed down to the present.
Some netizens are also looking for the connection between Jews and Chiyou, for example, the Jews have a leader named Yago, which means chief in ancient China. However, what really opened the minds of Chinese netizens was the mysterious organization circulating on the Internet, Freemasonry.
Masonic was founded by the descendants of Chiyou?
Whether Freemasonry exists remains a mystery to this day, but its name gives Chinese an incomparable sense of familiarity. The word "mutual aid" has the same meaning in the meaning of the word "Tongji" in Chinese words.
The word Tongji means solidarity and cooperation. The meaning of Freemasonry is also somewhat similar to the word Tongji, which was originally an industrial organization formed by Jews in the Middle Ages and dominated by the group of low-level stonemasons. The early purpose of the organization was to unite intellectuals in various fields to resist the religious influence of the Christian Church at that time, and to support the secularization of European countries. Later, with the development of time, it gradually became a network organization of world talents. Many of the later well-known cultural figures, such as Newton, Napoleon, Voltaire, etc., are rumored to be Freemasons.
From pronunciation to word meaning, Freemasonry has many connections with Chinese culture, making some Chinese wonder whether Freemasonry has anything to do with China, or whether its founder, the Jews, is actually a branch of the Chinese nation.
Jewish organization with Chinese elements
There is also an argument that Jews are one of the branches of the Chinese, and that Jews have been treated as ostracized in the West for thousands of years. Some believe that perhaps this is due to the fact that the Jews have some oriental cultural attributes.
From the point of view of national integration, it is very unreasonable for a people who have lived in Europe for more than 2,000 years to be disliked by Europeans instead of being assimilated by European culture. Even after World War II, it triggered Hitler's Holocaust. Until now, the religious ideas of the majority of Jews are still incompatible with the Christian civilization of the West.
This alone is not enough to prove that the Jews have cultural roots in China. But there is no doubt that the Freemasonry formed by the Jews, in many ways with a strong Chinese color.
For example, in terms of organizational thinking, Freemasonry pursues the solidarity and mutual assistance of the world's talents, which is in stark contrast to the liberal individualism of the West, but is more appropriate to the idea of China's great unification, where one side is in trouble and all sides support.
There is also the organization logo of Freemasonry, the logo of Freemasonry is very simple, composed of a ruler and a compass, meaning that Freemasonry is a social organization with strict rules, and attaches great importance to the loyalty of members internally, which is very consistent with the idea of "no rules and no circle" advocated by the Chinese, and the brotherhood and one heart advocated by the Chinese folk jianghu organization.
Similar peoples, similar historical circumstances
As the descendants of Chiyou, the Miao people have Miao people not only in China, but also in Southeast Asia and the United States, and they have similar circumstances like the Jews in the past, such as not having a country of their own, living a life of exile for centuries, and being oppressed by foreign regimes.
The Hmong people living in Southeast Asia are called the new Hmong. In modern times, due to the invasion of Western colonizers, these new Miao people, like the local aborigines, have been exploited and oppressed by the French and Japanese, but the Miao are not those Southeast Asians who are easy to submit. In the face of the oppression of foreigners, they inherited the indomitable spirit of their Chinese children and always insisted on fighting each other, such as Vietnam, Laos and other places of the new Miao people, who broke out six wars of resistance against the French.
Back to reality, whether the Jews have anything to do with the Chinese nation
Although there is a lot of speculation on the Internet that Jews are descendants of Chiyou, there is no direct connection between the two in terms of blood, culture, etc. Not only the Hmong, but also the other 55 ethnic groups have very little cultural connection with the Jews or Judaism, and it is completely impossible to form an argument for the Chiyou branch.
The Jewish people were actually formed by two kinds of people: those who were descendants of the people of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel; The other is the Jews who practice Judaism.
With the development of the times, Jews are no longer an adjective of a nation, but a cultural symbol and a label of interests, such as Kaifeng Jews, which are the descendants of Jewish merchants who settled down in China during the Northern Song Dynasty and intermarried with Han Chinese.
There are also alternative groups of people who deliberately change their ancestral home to Jews in order to cling to Jewish capital groups, such as Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla. But these cultural factors, whether in the Han or Miao people, exist too little, so the association of Jews with Chiyou is just wishful thinking of Chinese netizens.