Chinese Restaurants: Three Continent...
导演：Cheuk Kwan|
主演：
年份：
Three Continents, based on the 15-part documentary series Chinese Restaurants, tells the story of the Chinese Diaspora through its most recognizable and enduring icon - the family-run Chinese restaurant. Filmmaker Cheuk Kwan visits Madagascar, Norway and Canada, exploring the meaning of "home" in Chinese communities that have established themselves on three continents. Did the Chinese come to Madagascar in the fifteenth century, years before the Europeans? And how have recent immigrants integrate in the most multicultural country of the world? These and other questions are answered as we visit Restaurant Le Jade in the port city of Tamatave, where there is a large Chinese population. More traces of Chinese settlements are revealed as the filmmaker visits the oldest Chinese immigrant on the fourth largest island of the world. In Norway in the land of the midnight sun, Michael Wong and his wife Ting have opened one of the very few Chinese restaurants inside the Arctic Circle, the Little Buddha. As the owner couple promotes their Hong Kong-style efficiency on the Norwegian waitresses, the Chinese kitchen staff openly discusses their lives as Chinese restaurant workers -- how they first entered Europe illegally and the loneliness away from home. Chinese workers came to Canada in the 19th century to build the trans-continental railroad, but by 1923, the country were keeping the Chinese immigrant workers out as their services were no longer required. Against these odds, Jim Kook came to the Prairie town of Outlook, Saskatchewan as a "paper son" using a dead Canadian's identity. The gregarious "Noisy" Jim soon became the most popular man about town and ran his New Outlook Cafe for forty years until his recent death. Together, these community and personal histories illustrate the wider story of Chinese migration, settlement and integration. These stories celebrate the resilience and complexity of the Chinese Diaspora and expand the definition of what it means to be "Chinese" today. They highlight the fluidity and highly personal nature of identity, and the human impulse to connect both with the past and with those amongst whom we find ourselves. e84 Written by Kwan, Cheuk
