1600: Other Jewish communities in China
Ten other cities
There is direct evidence that Jewish communities flourished in several Chinese cities in addition to Kaifeng. The list includes Luoyang, Dunhuang, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Beijing, and probably Quanzhou, Ningxia, Yangzhou, and Nanjing.
All but the Kaifeng community ceased to exist by the 1600s
The abandonment of the Silk Road at the end of the Yuan and the isolationism of the Ming cut the Chinese Jews from their brethren in the rest of the world.
By the beginning of the 17th century, all other Jewish communities in China — some even rumoured to be bigger than Kaifeng's and had a synagogue as well, such as the one in Hangzhou — had disappeared. Since none of these kehillot left any records, it is hard to gauge why they ceased to exist while the one in Kaifeng survived. As the thriving capital of the Song Dynasty, could it be that Kaifeng offered more social and economic opportunities to the Jews? In Professor Xu Xin's words, the "development, growth and fall of the Kaifeng Jewish community parallels in many ways the rise and decline of Chinese society and the city of Kaifeng in particular."