Bookstores in Chinese cities are stocked with dozens of Chinese-language books on how Jews conduct business, manage the world, and raise their children. At least ten universities throughout China offer popular Jewish Studies programs, some with advanced degrees. Yet there are virtually no Jews in China. The Chinese are constructing an identity for a people that the large majority of them will never meet. This edited volume critically examines the image of Jews from the contemporary perspective of ordinary Chinese citizens. It includes chapters on Chinese Jewish Studies programs, popular Chinese books and blogs about Jews, China's relations with Israel, and innovative examinations of the ancient Jewish community of Kaifeng.

Around the tenth century Jewish merchants from Central Asia arrived in Kaifeng. Welcomed by the Emperor, they integrated into China's economy, society and culture. They intermarried with their hosts, following patrilocal custom with Chinese wives adopting their husbands' Jewish traditions. In 1163 they built a synagogue, where the group, numbering 5,000 at its apex in the sixteenth century, continued to conduct Jewish rituals for seven centuries. Despite the loss of this building in 1849 by flooding, the families and clans of Jewish descent continued to recall their ancestral identity and preserved a few basic customs. In 1978 with the "opening-up" of China, foreign visitors to Kaifeng generated both a renewed interest in the group and a communal revival of its Jewish identification. This cultural revival has created both opportunities and risks, due largely to an ambivalent Chinese policy denying ethnic status to the Kaifeng Jews while allowing them limited cultural expression. This book explores how a small minority was able to transmit its blend of Sino-Judaic culture over the centuries and how their descendants are striving to revitalise that cultural heritage today.