Taking Out Chinese from Chinese Take Out

This project is a short personal documentary about the filmmaker as an international student from China, shocked by the “Chineseness” represented by those commonly seen Chinese take-out food restaurants in Philadelphia. Why are they everywhere? Why do they all look so similar without being chains? Who are the people behind them?

Denying this is her culture and trying to figure out how it happened, the filmmaker started her journey getting to know the restaurant owners, their stories, the food, as well as the neighborhood – only to find out that her initial assumption was mistaken. These Chinese restaurants do not represent an accented or distorted “Chineseness” but a genuine culture, with its own depth, glory, pain, and history that she had never thought about before.