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The third of October, 1949, was the 2,500th anniversary of Confucius’ birth. This date has been under dispute for more than 2,000 years. Early and reliable accounts state that the birth was on a certain day of the Chinese sixty-day cycle and that it was fifty days after an eclipse of the sun. But those same accounts list eclipses of the sun in two successive months, something that is impossible in China. Only recently has any one bothered to calculate which eclipse actually occurred and discover that, in a period of twenty years before and after the birth, only one eclipse of the sun occurred on that day of the cycle and was visible at Confucius’ birthplace. So this date can be fixed accurately by modern scientific methods.1

It is a very remarkable fact that, in the register of Chinese cities and counties for the year a.d. 5, there should appear a city and county with the most ancient Chinese name for Rome. The Chinese, then as now, did not give foreign names to their cities. In that list, with its over 1,500 cities, there are only two other Chinese places with foreign names. We know that both those localities were populated by immigrants who came from those places outside China. It follows that people from the Roman Empire must have emigrated to China and founded this city.

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