Documentary Film My Odyssey – Between Two Worlds

Awarded Best Documentary at Jiangmen China’s Microfilm Festival
 
Film showing and book talk, "Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining Sea," by Dr. Raymond Douglas Chong. An intimate odyssey to discover the Chong (Zhang) ancestral roots from Kaiping, China to Gold Mountain. Tracing their origins of the Chop Suey food-ways across America.

 
January 20, 2019, Sunday 2:00 PM-5:00 PM

388 Ninth Street, Suite 290. Oakland, CA 94607
 
Free event
cosponsored by Oakland Asian Cultural Center and Eastwind Books of Berkeley
 
Raymond Douglas Chong’s journey in search of his family roots in Kaiping, Guangdong, China leads to his ancestral village where he interviews villagers and uncovers its peasant history With remarkable footprints, Chong traces his family’s five generation migrations to America. Following great-great-great and great-great grandfathers who worked as laborers in gold fields during the California Gold Rush and the Far West’s Transcontinental Railroad.
Then during the restrictive Chinese Exclusion Act which banned migrating workers and women, Chong’s grandfather joined a credit partnership, opening a foodway of Chop Suey (cuisine) houses. Raymond Douglas Chong’s family story is a unique personal view spanning the full spectrum of Chinese in America.
Raymond Douglas Chong is a civil engineer , cofounder and past president of Oakland Asian Students Educational Services (OASES). He is coauthor of the newly published book, Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining Sea: Chinese and Japanese Restaurants in the United States, published by University of Arkansas Press.  Author, historian, poet, lyricist and filmmaker.