So the story goes that around 2000 years ago approximately 10,000 Romans, prisoners of Parthia after a failed campaign by Marcus Licinius Crassus (played in this blog post by Lord Laurence Olivier), were put to work guarding the Parthian Empire’s eastern borders in exchange for not being put into slavery or executed.
Members of the “Lost Legion” are then theorized to have worked as mercenaries for the Kingdom of Kangju (modern north-central Asia). The Kangju lent out the mercenaries to a Xiongnu chief named Zhizhi who was having troubles with the rather powerful and expanding Han Dynasty China. Accounts from Han historians mention a small group of men fighting to defend a local Xiongnu fortress in a “fish-scale” formation.
The legend (or hypothesis, if you’re historian Homer H. Dubs — who pioneered the theory in the ’50s) states that the Romans along with other defeated Xiongnu prisoners were granted land by the Chinese, which became the now defunct city of Liqian (modern day Zhelaizhai, Gansu) on the fringes of the Gobi.
The mystery has swirled around for decades, and may well go back much much further as some locals of the area have the very un-Chinese characteristics of light hair and blue/green eyes. Dubs theory was largely put to bed in 2007 when tests concluded it just wasn’t possible. However, new testing seems to suggest that up to 56% of some villagers’ DNA are Caucasian in origin, lighting new interest in the “Lost Legion” connection.
Not long ago I went out to dinner with some friends who had just recently arrived in China. Since this was their first time in Beijing, we naturally went for the city’s signature dish at Quanjude. Just as any religious pilgrimage is accompanied by certain obligatory rituals and prayers, so too does the Beijing visitor’s requisite eating of kaoya demand its own incantation.
