Legend of the blue-eyed Chinese

Villagers in Gansu province believe they could be the descendants of an ancient Roman legion that was allowed to settle down in a Han dynasty village named Liqian.

FOLKS of Liqian Village in China’s northwestern Gansu province are used to being interviewed by the media. They have received foreign and local media, scholars and historians since a theory first spread in the 1980s that the village used to be a settlement for war prisoners during the Western Han dynasty, and linking some of the villagers to a lost Roman legion.