Zhelaizhai is an isolated village (the nearest city is more than 300 kilometers away) on the edge of the Gobi Desert; the ancient Silk Road passed through here. It was 1955 when Homer H. Dubs, professor of Chinese history at Oxford University, developed a theory that he would publish two years later in the book "A Roman City in Ancient China". The inhabitants - he claims - descend from the 6,000 Romans taken prisoner by the Parthians after the battle of Carrhae (eastern Turkey), in which the legions of Marcus Licinius Crassus were destroyed. Pliny recounts that one of these, led by Marcus Crassus, the general's firstborn, ended up deported to what is now Uzbekistan; but when 33 years later the Romans and Parthians signed peace and returned the prisoners, it had vanished into thin air. In China, meanwhile, the chronicles of the Han Empire report that when in 36 BC the Han army destroyed that of General Jzh Jzh of the Hun dynasty, it took prisoner a large group of "foreigners". 150 of these in battle would have assumed an unusual "fish scale" formation, which Dubs identifies with the Roman tortoise. These soldiers, recruited to defend Gansu, would later have founded the city of Liqian.
Dubs' hypothesis immediately sparked discussion and raised much criticism. The theory is not supported by facts, argue detractors, and the European features of the inhabitants of Zhelaizhai do not prove their Roman origin: the proximity of the Silk Road in fact favored contacts with people of different ethnic origins, and the Roman army itself from that point of view was anything but homogeneous. On the tortoise formation, at the time in Asia double wooden palisades were used in battle that could be described as "fish scale". In the meantime, however, research continues: scholars from Lanzhou University are the most convinced supporters of the hypothesis that the Romans arrived in China 13 centuries before Marco Polo, since an excavation campaign brought to light the remains of ancient fortifications whose structure recalls the cardo and decumanus layout of Roman fortifications, as well as the water channeling system. Today they collaborate with archaeologists from our country in the new Center for Italian Studies at Lanzhou University. Finally, about ten years ago, a team of geneticists from Beijing examined the blood of 2,000 people who had never left the region. The result: 46% of the tests revealed genetic links with Europeans.
And what do they, the inhabitants, think about it? They are certain that they descend from the ancient legionaries. And they proudly show off their Caucasian features: a nose too big to be Chinese, sometimes aquiline, light eyes and hair (sometimes curly), thick eyebrows, tall stature. Cai Junnian, one of the most European (58% of his genes are Western) and Luo Ying who is known to everyone as “Luoma”, the Roman, are among the best known, living on tips from visitors who wander around a strange pavilion with Doric columns built in 1994, where a plaque recalls that “A Roman legion founded a city called Liqian here”. Yes, since it ended up in the newspapers and on TV the village has become famous, and tourists come from all over the country to see the Chinese with Roman faces.
Hui, Han, Roman – multinational unity in Yongchang, Gansu
Two of my favorite topics when teaching about China’s geography, as many of my students know, are the cultural mixing that has occurred historically throughout China’s frontiers, and the ways localities in China have contrived all sorts of fantastic cultural narratives and landscapes as they seek to brand themselves for tourism and cultural development. I recently came across the story of Zhelaizhai, a village in Gansu’s Yongchang county where both of these wonderful aspects of Chinese cultural geography come together. In 2004, The Economist ran a brief story about the village. That story focused on the efforts of a Yongchang county tourism bureau director to promote the idea that Zhelaizhai’s residents are descendents of Roman legionnaires who were captured by the Parthians in the battle of Carrhae (in modern Turkey). This story was, in fact, floated in the 1950s by an Oxford history professor – Homer Dubs – who proposed the following seemingly unlikely chain of events that could have brought a band of Roman soldiers to Han Dynasty China: that the Parthians may have stationed the Romans captured at Carrhae (there were altogether some 10,000 of them) on their eastern frontier (in modern Turkmenistan), that some of these Romans may have escaped their posts and joined the Huns, that the Romans may have then been captured (again!) by the Chinese when the Huns were defeated by the Han army in 36BC (in modern Uzbekistan), and that the Chinese may have then stationed those same Romans as frontier guards in a garrison called Liqian. Liqian is today’s Zhelaizhai, in present day Gansu Province.
Well, it’s quite a story. And the tourism bureau director may have seen in it an opportunity to tout contemporary China’s multinational heritage. Or, he may have simply seen a cash cow for milking. Whatever he saw, one of his first acts was to erect a statue in the center of Yongchang, featuring a traditional-looking Han Chinese scholar-official, a Hui Muslim woman (with headscarf), and – yes, it’s true – a Roman. It’s a statue of multinational unity (民族团结) for sure, and there are hundreds of such ‘ethnic harmony’ statues scattered throughout China’s frontier regions, but the inclusion of a Roman suggests a more deliberate nod toward building a “new Silk Road” of global connections beyond China’s frontiers.
From The Economist
Many in Yongchang county of embraced the Roman connection with enthusiasm. The Economist, for instance, refers to the local abbot of a Buddhist temple who says that the ghosts of the Roman soldiers still visit his temple in search of salvation. And, even better, “Through an illiterate woman who acts as a medium, the abbot has discovered that Julius Caesar himself spent his final days in Yongchang county and died a Buddhist.” This is the kind of thing that makes China such a wonderful place to me!
On the less fanciful side of things, recent DNA testing was conducted on Zhelaizhai’s residents, and found that some villagers had DNA that was as much as 56% Caucasian in origin. And indeed, many of the villagers have blondish hair, blue eyes, and Caucasian features. What interests me most, though, is not so much the mystery behind their actual origins, but the ways their story has become a form of cultural development in today’s economy of contrivances. That and the truly international efforts that have gone into to producing the story in the first place (in addition to the Oxford connection, there was also an Australian David Harris, who wrote a book about his 1980s quest to find Zhelaizhai: Black Horse Odyssey: Search for the Lost City of Rome in China).
This video offers a useful roundup of the current situation, and usefully links the story with the broader cultural economy of contrivance in China today:
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This Chinese province may be filled with the descendants of a lost Roman legion
Around 36 BCE, Chinese forces from the Han Dynasty fought a group of rebels called Xiongnu at a fortress in what is now Kazakhstan. During the battle, the Chinese noticed their enemy employed a strange but distinctive formation. One his…
Around 36 BCE, Chinese forces from the Han Dynasty fought a group of rebels called Xiongnu at a fortress in what is now Kazakhstan.
During the battle, the Chinese noticed their enemy employed a strange but distinctive formation. One historian at the battle recalled a unit that formed a unique “fish-scale“-style of protection using their shields.
Some modern historians think that “fish scale” was a Roman phalanx.
(Wikimedia Commons)
The battle took place in a city that was once known as Liqian, now a part of Gansu province in Northern China. And strangely, people living where the old city once stood are known to have interesting genetic traits unlike people in the rest of the country.
Aqualine noses, green eyes, and fair skin are just a few of the features found among the villagers of Zhelaizhai, where the ancient city once stood.
Some historians believe the people of Zhelaizhai are descended from the Roman Legionaries who fought with the Han Chinese.
Just 17 years before the battle in Kazakhstan, Parthians fighting the Romans at the Battle of Carrhae (in modern-day Turkey) delivered one of Rome’s most crushing defeats. They captured 10,000 legionnaires and sent the powerful Roman General Marcus Licinius Crassus packing (parts of him, anyway).
Parthians were known to use captured soldiers as border guards and sent their POWs to the Far East, where escape was all but impossible. That Far East outpost is thought by some to be the ancient area of Liqian.
Nowadays, the Gobi Desert border regions are full of ethnically Chinese people whose DNA tested 58% Caucasian.
The theory does have naysayers. Some believe the DNA could be the result of contact from Silk Road trading between Rome and the Far East. Others say Caucasian Huns and warriors with other racial backgrounds fought through this area of Asia at the time.
At least one expert believes there just isn’t enough physical evidence to say these Chinese are descended from Roman legionaries.
“For it to be indisputable, one would need to find items such as Roman money or weapons that were typical of Roman legionaries,” Maurizio Bettini, an anthropologist from Siena University, toldLa Repubblica. “Without proof of this kind, the story of the lost legions is just a legend.”
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