AllMovie

In 1940, many Caucasians from Russia and central Europe moved to China. By 1949, when the communists gained power, many, but not all had fled the country. This documentary from Ronald Levaco, a former resident of China, looks at the fates of those who chose to remain. Levaco himself spent his first ten years in China before he and his Russian-born parents emigrated to the US. Though he devotes some time to his own childhood there, much of the film centers upon the life of Polish-Jew Israel Epstein, who married a Chinese woman, adopted children and felt so closely aligned with the country that he chose to stay and become a citizen. He also honestly believed that communism was good for China and so became a supporter of Mao Zedong. In the early '70s, he was jailed along with other "round eye" intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution. Despite this, he remained an idealist committed to living up to his principles.