one, and that the Kaifeng community claimed to have kept some Jewish practices since before they are known to have begun. Xun Zhou posited that the Kaifeng community was not Jewish in any meaningful sense. Her hypothesis has not found any support within the scholarly community. In an overview of the place of Kaifeng Jews within the broader context of Jewish history, Simon Schama notes its exceptionality to the tragic diffidence of host societies to Jewish settlements:- "To survey the predicament of Jews in much of the rest of the world is to marvel at what the Kaifeng community escaped. In China, Jews were not subjected to violence and persecution, not demonized as God killers. Their synagogues were not invaded by conversionary harangues. They were not physically segregated from non-Jews nor forced to wear humiliating forms of identification on their dress. They were not forced into the most despised and vulnerable occupations, not stigmatized as grasping and vindictive, and portrayed neither as predatory monsters nor pathetic victims." Books and films Literary references The American novelist Pearl S. Buck, raised in China and fluent in Chinese, set one of her historical novels (Peony) in a Chinese Jewish community. The novel deals with the cultural forces which are gradually eroding the separate identity of the Jews, including intermarriage. The title character, the Chinese bondmaid Peony, loves her master's son, David ben Ezra, but she cannot marry him due to her lowly status. He eventually marries a high-class Chinese woman, to the consternation of his mother, who is proud of her unmixed heritage. Descriptions of remnant names, such as a "Street of the Plucked Sinew", and descriptions of customs such as refraining from the eating of pork, are prevalent throughout the novel. The Broadway musical Chu Chem is a fictional tale which revolves around the Kaifeng Jewish community. In the show, a group of European actors joins a troupe of Chinese performers in order to present the story of Chu Chem, a scholar who journeys to Kaifeng with his wife Rose and his daughter Lotte because he wants to learn about his ancestors and find a husband for Lotte. Documentary films In his 1992 documentary series Legacy, writer Michael Wood traveled to Kaifeng and walked down a small lane known as the "alley of the sect who teach the Scriptures", that is, the alley of the Jews. He mentioned that there are still