The scene at the Kabuki for the last night of the Asian-American Film Festival was jam-packed, with three movies all starting at the same time, and people dressed to the nines for the closing party. We were in attendance at the sold-out show for part three of the thirteen-part series Chinese Restaurants: Three Continents, a labor of love for Chinese-Canadian director Cheuk Kwan, who has eaten in Chinese restaurants around the globe -- including Israel, South Africa, Mauritius, Cuba, and Turkey -- and sought to learn the stories of how the proprieters came to live in these unexpected places.
Chinese restaurants are a constant source of fascination -- the co-sponsor for the screening was the Chinese Historical Society, which is currently showing an ecstatically-reviewed photography exhibit of Indigo Som's pictures of Chinese restaurants in Mississippi. (You may also remember Som's other project, collecting all the Chinese takeout menus from across America.) The movies screened on Thursday -- Three Continents and two shorts, BBC House Special and Selling Louie's Village -- all explored the role of the Chinese restaurant in representing the Chinese diaspora.
Egg Foo Young, a Chinese restaurant in Norway, and Chinese people with Liverpudlian accents, after the jump.
Images from Three Continents
The BBC in BBC House Special means "British-born Chinese." This film, by Ray Wong, is done entirely in voiceover by two BBCs reminiscing about their North English Chinese family restaurants as you watch the daily goings-on at the Liverpool restaurant "Panda Garden Carry Away." The typical musings of first-generation immigrants ("I live in two worlds. It is weird to go back to Hong Kong. My mates think it's funny when I speak Cantonese.") are made newly interesting by the fact that the people in the film are going through this same process in a place we here in San Francisco don't necessarily think of Chinese people as living.
The second movie, Selling Louie's Village (Without Breaking the Yolk) was originally made by director Jason Mak as a masters' thesis in the UCLA Asian-Am department. It follows one large Chinese family in Eugene, Oregon; their Chinese restaurant, Louie's Village; and its Chinese/American food (including the mysterious dish "egg foo young," which no one can really identify). The restaurant works as the backdrop for their family history and their future hopes and dreams. It's a tender and affectionate evocation of family identity, even as the Louies discuss the possibility of selling their business.
And Chinese Restaurants! This was amazing! Director Kwan portrays himself as a very hungry traveler, as he cheerfully packs away smoked pork and chop suey around the world. This part of the series focuses on Madagascar, Norway, and Saskatchewan. Kwan visits the restaurant "Le Jade" in Tamatave, Madagascar, where he eats the best steamed fish he's ever had (and you'd think this guy would know!), from a Malagasi proprietress who has never been to Hong Kong; travels above the Arctic Circle to Tromso, Norway and stops by the sleek restaurant "Lille Buddha" to meet its peripatetic owners and staff; and finally, stops by a standard diner in Outlook, Saskatchewan, to meet the affable "Noisy Jim," who tells his story of how he emigrated from Hong Kong on false papers and settled in the middle of Canada to open a diner and charm the pants off his small town (which wanted to elect him mayor).
This series, like 24 Hours on Craigslist or The Grace Lee Project, takes a basic organizing principle and follows various examples to see what turns up. The Chinese restaurant is such a good example of the patterns of Chinese immigration and assimilation throughout the world, and it's wonderful to see such an essential part of the Chinese diaspora's experience memorialized in such a warm-hearted and historically-sensitive fashion.
Plus, all the food looked great -- even Noisy Jim's fried eggs and pancakes. In fact, we got some bacon and eggs at the Lucky Penny in celebration afterwards.
The whole Chinese Restaurants series will be coming out on DVD soon -- watch it over chow mein and beef with broccoli! (And hey, food bloggers -- did you guys see this movie? What did you think?)
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I saw the film in its first showing at the Festial last Sunday, and loved it. I've been checking Cheuk Kwan's website almost daily to see if he's released the whole series on DVD as promised, and I'll be the first to buy it. I'll say, though, that the movie seemed really more about the restaurants (as a vehicle for survival) and their owners than about the food. In an interview on another website Kwan did say that the food at Restaurant Le Jade in Madagascar was the best he had in any of the 15 he visited for the series.