Song Title:  Waltzing to Mongolia

Music by:  Traditional Russian

Lyrics by:  none

Meter / Style:  Waltz

Story:  This song is about Jewish migration from Russia to Mongolia and inner China during the late 1800s.  More Jews followed during the turbulent times that foillowed.  The following historical summary of the community that sprang from these migrations comes from Xu Xin, Nanjing University:

"The so-called “the Harbin Jewish Community” could, or should, be considered as a large umbrella organization that covered an area of Northeast China and today’s Inner Mongolia, where thousands of Jews settled from the end of the 19th century to the mid-20th century. Harbin is a harbor with many cities such as Hailar, Manchuli, Dalian, Mukden, and etc. closely adjacent to it. In a wider scope, the Harbin Jewish Community is an essential part of the history of Jewish Diaspora in modern China, which has a much clearer beginning than the history of Jews in pre-modern China (before 1840) with the Kaifeng Jews as its best-known group.

From the year of 1725 when Chinese emperor Yung-cheng decided to order all foreign missionaries to leave China to the year of 1840 China was more or less a closed society in which foreign people were not allowed to live. The major event for this change is the First Opium War between China and the Great Britain from 1839-1842 over the issue of the trade of opium in China as China wanted to ban it while the British wanted to do it. China was defeated and was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 to bring the war to its end. According to the Treaty and its supplementary protocols (1843), China agreed to surrender Hong Kong to the British and open five major port cities in China to British trade and settlements, which soon led to establishment of territorial enclaves under the British flag. Other imperial powers followed the suit and many foreign adventurers came to China since then. Among them were Jews.

In next 100 years or so, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and later Harbin, Tianjin (old spelling Tientsin) and many other cities became centers of Jewish communal life in China. Therefore, it is clear that the beginning of Jewish Diaspora in modern China started in the second half of the 19th century when China was forced to open her doors to Western powers. There had been a few waves that carried tens of thousands of Jews to China. However, Harbin Jews did not belong to the first wave but the second. The first were Sephardic Jews, originally from Baghdad and Bombay, to look for business opportunities in newly-opened Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong in the second half of the 19th century. By the beginning of the 20th century they had built up solid Jewish communities in those cities. Harbin Jews were from a different region of a different group. They were Ashkenazis from Russia and other East European countries. Although a few came in search of better economic opportunities, the majority was either fleeing from pogroms or revolutions in Russia in the early 20th century.

Why did they come to Harbin and what kind of place Harbin was? Harbin as a modern Chinese city was founded in 1898 when Russian engineers chose it as the headquarters for the Chinese Eastern Railway Company. The plan for a railway across Manchuria to Vladivostok was part of a treaty between China and Russia in 1896 ensuring mutual assistance against any future Japanese aggression. To build the railway Russia also obtained extraterritorial rights, two and half miles on each side of the railway. Harbin, a small fishing village by the Songhua River, soon became a thriving Russian town. Russian Jews began to gravitate to this part of China. Beginning with the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway from Manchuli to Hailar, Jews from Russia began to settle in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia.1

Jews there were almost free from persecution because Tsar Nicholas II, at the end of the 19th century, was anxious to Russify and encouraged immigration of Russians, including Russian Jews, to this region in order to strengthen Russian influence. The Tsar even declared that Jews willing to settle along the Railway would be allowed freedom of religion, unrestricted business rights, and quota-free education. Besides Russian authorities in Northeast China did not want to show the Chinese that any white man—even a Jew—could be treated as inferior to an Asian. Many Russian Jews fleeing pogroms in Odessa, Kishinev, and other towns, decided to move to Northeast China for permanent settlement...."

To see the paper in full context, click <HERE>.

Lyrics: None.

Whether lyrical in nature, or purely instrumental in arrangement, each song carries its own story. Here are listed the stories and the lyrics to the songs sung by THAT Damned Band. This page will be updated from time to time.