I am particularly excited about the planned showings of a thirteen-part documentary series called Chinese Restaurants by Canadian filmmaker Cheuk Kwan (though I will probabl miss most of them).
 

"The documentary takes Kwan to restaurants around the globe, bringing the audience into the lives of extraordinary families as they share moving stories of struggle, courage, displacement and belonging, and what it means to be 'Chinese' today."

I first became interested in the study of Chinese-restaurants-as-American-cultural-institutions when I read about Indigo Som's project to collect Chinese restaurant menus from across America, as a visual catalog of American perception of Chinese culture. I wrote this post about it.

Now that I am in China, I laugh when I reread this post -- what did I really even know about "authentic Chinese food" when I wrote it? I guess I did know that crab rangoon was not Chinese food -- but I didn't grow up in China or even Chinatown for that matter. My knowledge is based on intermittent exposure to Cantonese cooking (which I still contend blows any kind of the "Americanized" stuff out of the water).

Currently, I am trying to make heads or tails of Hunan food vs. Sichuan food vs. Northern food vs. the Cantonese-style Southern food that I know something about. And so I realize that I have a lot to learn about what exactly is "authentic" food. NOTE: The dish in the photo is a scrumptious fried spicy shrimp dish that I had at the Foreign Teacher's Welcome Dinner during my first week in Jiujiang.

What is interesting now is that a lot of what I am learning about Chinese culture reinforces what I felt I already knew, based on my limited exposure. And one of the things I have learned is that food really is an intricate component of Chinese culture.

And the MoCA exhibit excites me because it showcases that very point in the context of the U.S. It certainly was part of my family's history -- the Chinese side of my family got settled in Brooklyn by doing what else -- opening a restaurant!

>> Slightly related - Sue-On, the author of the site I mentioned in a previous post, has started a discussion on eGullet about how Chinese food and customs are perceived, received and handed down in biracial families based in the West.

>> Even less related -- I though this conversation on Chowhound about a Mao-themed restaurant in the East Village that eventually toned down its theme due to public outcry was interesting.