- Beyond Frontiers, 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 travel to India and Brazil delving into Chinese communities who transcend geographical, political and social frontiers. These stories celebrate the resilience and complexity of the Chinese diaspora and expand the definition of what it means to be "Chinese" today.—Kwan, Cheuk
- Filmmaker Cheuk Kwan travel to India and Brazil delving into Chinese communities who transcend geographical, political and social frontiers. Together, these community and personal histories illustrate the wider story of Chinese migration and settlement.
Samson, Richard, Samuel and Stephen Yeh were born in Calcutta and suffered from the aftermath the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict. Today, the four brothers take turns running the New Embassy Restaurant in Calcutta and Hotel Restaurant Valentino in the Himalayan hill-station of Darjeeling. As they reminisce what it was like to grow up Hakka Chinese in India, the next generation's emigration to the West has decimated the once vibrant and prosperous Chinese community who came with the British two hundred years ago.
In the frontier city of Manaus, on the great Amazon River, Taiwan immigrant Jack Sun has been running the Mandarin for thirty years. Sun came to Brazil in 1967, when he was a young man, to build his life in the resource-rich country. After long years of hard work in a frontier town, Sun is feeling the effects of a burnt-out career. Meanwhile, his business-savvy US-educated son, Eddy, navigates his own unique identity as a Chinese Brazilian in the Amazon -- Chinese in heart, but Brazilian in spirit.
The brothers Nini and Baba Ling grew up in a Chinese-Indian family. While Nini inherits his father's Bombay restaurant, Ling's Pavilion, his brother branches out into Delhi, opening the Imperial Garden. Both establishments enjoy success by strictly using the freshest ingredients in their cooking. As Nini contemplates his retirement, Baba is forging ahead with the ambitious construction of Nanking, the re-incarnated name of a landmark restaurant his father established in 1947, the year India gained independence.
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 struggle of ethnic minorities to break through social boundaries.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
Top Gap
What is the English language plot outline for Chinese Restaurants: Beyond Frontiers (2005)?
Answer