CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE East Meets East
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by CSUN ScholarWorks CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE East Meets East A Chinese Restaurant in Little Tokyo A Video Documentary A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts in Mass Communication By Changyue Xie May 2015 The thesis of Changyue Xie is approved: _____________________________ ____________ Prof. David A. Blumenkrantz Date _____________________________ ____________ Dr. Jose Luis Benavides Date _____________________________ ____________ Dr. Melissa A. Wall, Chair Date California State University, Northridge ii ACKNOWLEGMENTS Upon completion of this Master’s degree and related project, I would like to thank my committee chair, Professor Melissa Wall. I couldn’t have made it this far without your help; thank you for your encouragement and expert guidance. Also thanks to my committee members Professor Jose Luis Benavides and Professor David A. Blumenkrantz for their continuous support, understanding and helpful suggestions. I am also thankful for the people of the Far East Café, Little Tokyo Service Center and Chinese Historical Society Southern California for their kind help and friendliness. It was very difficult for me as a foreign student to do interviews and to film in Los Angeles. This project would not have materialized without their support and hospitality, especially Dr. Edith Chen in Asian American Studies of California State University, Northridge, who recommended the Far East Café as my thesis project and offered me contact information; Mr. Bill Watanabe and Mr. Erich Nakano, who offered their knowledge of the history of Little Tokyo; Mr. Raymond Douglas Chong and Mr. Andrew Chong, who shared the history of the Far East Café; Dr. John Jung and Mr. Eugene Moy, who offered their knowledge of the Chinese immigration history; Mr Tony Osumi and Mrs Patty Ito Nagano, who shared their memories of the Far East Café, and various other who contributed on and off the camera. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents for their continuous support, encouragement and love. And thanks to my wonderful boyfriend Feng Liang, who became my camera assistant, best boy and driver. Thank you for giving me your never-ending understanding and sweet love. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page ii Acknowledgements iii Abstract vi Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Project Aims 2 Research Questions 4 Significance 5 Chapter 2: Literature Review 8 Introduction 8 Theoretical Framework 8 Hegemony 8 Culture Hegemony, Ideological effect and Mass media 9 Cultivation 10 Media in the U.S. Representations of Asian Americans 11 Chinese Americans 12 Japanese Americans and other Asian groups 14 History of Chinese immigration to the United States 14 Chinese communities and Chinatown in Los Angeles 18 Japanese communities in Los Angeles 18 The history of the Chinese restaurant in America 19 History of the Far East Café 23 Chapter 3: Methodology 26 Preparation 26 Timeline 27 Interview Subjects and contact 27 iv Interview Questions 31 Equipment 33 Release 33 Limitations 33 Video Outline 34 Chapter 4: Transcription of Multimedia 35 Part 1 Introduction: Transported Back in Time 35 Part 2 Chong’s History of the Far East Cafe 38 Part 3 Memories and Significance of the Far East Café 43 Chapter 5: Conclusions 50 References Appendix A: List of Television Shows Star Chinese Americans From 1949 to 2005 Appendix B: Visual/Audio Image Release Form Appendix C: My Far East Café by Raymond Chong (Zhang Weiming) Appendix D: China Meshi Dreams by Tony Osumi v ABSTRACT East Meets East A Chinese Restaurant in Little Tokyo A Video Documentary By Changyue Xie Master of Arts in Mass Communication This project is a video documentary that focuses on the 80-year cultural and symbolic history of the Far East Café, a restaurant began by Chinese immigrants in 1935. The documentary records the stories and experiences of the Chong family, who opened this restaurant. The Far East Café reflected the relationship between Chinese immigrants and Japanese immigrants in Los Angeles. Particularly after World War II, the Far East Café helped a number of Japanese American families come back to Los Angeles from Relocation Camps. The documentary also shows the history of early Chinese immigrants. It displays how difficult it was for the early Chinese immigrants to come to this country and build their own community. The purpose of this documentary is to depict Chinese and Japanese immigration stories, encourage people to change their stereotyped views of Asian Americans and help American audiences better understand Asian groups. The warm relationships between Chinese and Japanese immigrants, the Far East Cafe may influence other race relations, not just Asian groups, but also perhaps throughout the world. vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Based on the 2012 United States Census data, the total population of Asian Americans is 18,205,898, or 5.8% of the U.S. population. Asian groups have a long immigration history, and now these groups are the highest-income, best educated and fastest growing in this nation of immigrants (Pew Research Center, 2012). This growth may result in Asian American groups becoming a more significant part of the United States, especially in the twenty-first century. Asian immigrants historically have made a significant contribution to helping the United States enter the advanced stages of capitalist development (Hamamoto, 1994). Asian American stories, culture and history need to be highlighted. That is one of the goals of my project, to depict Chinese and Japanese immigration stories. Non-Asian people in the U.S. often learn about Asian culture from TV programs, films and other media products. Media plays a significant role in the creation of Asian American images. Asian Americans rarely play the main characters in most U.S. TV programs, and although Asian elements are present in media programs, the Asian depictions that American audiences come to know through media are often stereotyped, vague and misleading. Also Asian Americans are underrepresented in U.S. media. Throughout the history of U.S. film and television, Asians and Asian Americans have several common stereotypes: “yellow peril, dragon lady, the delicate lotus blossom; the mild, asexual Asian male; and the fierce master of martial arts” are the images U.S. media gives American audiences of Asian Americans (Holtzman, Sharpe & Gardner 2014, p.321). As Hamamoto (1994) argues in her book Monitored 1 Peril, “Most of the Asian American figures depicted in TV programs were indeed one-dimensional and peripheral when compared with the dominant, Euro-American lead characters” (p. ix). Yet, Asian Americans come from many places; they have different histories, cultures, and experiences in the United States. While some non-fiction contents such as documentaries reflect the history of Chinese immigrants’ history in the United States, these programs are seldom shown in the U.S. mainstream media. Compared with other ethnic groups, Asian immigrants’ history is subordinated and neglected in media and TV representations. Especially, there are very few TV programs that reflect the relationship between Asian immigrant groups. Project Aims For my thesis project, I filmed the documentary East Meets East -- A Chinese Restaurant in Little Tokyo. This story of a Chinese restaurant embodies the history and experience of the early waves of Chinese immigrants. It also reflects the immigrants’ relationships, especially the Chinese and Japanese communities in the U.S. Conventional wisdom has it that Chinese and Japanese are both defined as East Asian. Compared to other immigrants from the east, people from these two countries came voluntarily to the U.S. in search of economic opportunity. In contrast, Vietnamese and Thai people often came as refugees (Holtzman, Sharpe & Gardner 2014). Chinese and Japanese have similar cultures; furthermore, both Chinese and Japanese, in particular, were targeted as the “yellow peril” in the nineteenth century (p. 278). However, political events (for example, the militarism of Imperial Japan and the U.S. “loss” of China), different immigration experiences (for example, the 2 internment camps for Japanese), and living conditions create distinctions between these two groups. When “East” (Chinese American) meets “East” (Japanese American), their stories can be insightful and meaningful. The Far East Café, a Chinese restaurant located in the heart of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles at 347 East First Street, has an 80-year-old history. Ten Chinese immigrants, all part of the extended Jeong family, made the arduous journey from Guangdong Province in Kaiping County, China to the U.S. in 1935. Initially, the Jeong cousins leased the storefront commercial space and established the restaurant. In 1963, the cousins were finally able to buy the property for $70,000 (Chong, 2013). The Jeong family’s experience was similar to many early Chinese immigrants’ experience. K. Connie Kang, an LA Times staff writer states, the Chop Suey sign and the Far East Café in Little Tokyo were “part of Japanese American life in Southern California” for six decades. For those customers of the Far East Café, it was “like a home away from home”, and the Far East Café is “a part of history, a part of community and our (Japanese American) heritage” (Kang, 2003, B.3). The Far East Café was very famous in the mid-20th century. Sports figures including Michael Garret, gangsters including Micky Cohen and film sarts like Anna May Wong attended the Far East’s grand opening (National Trust For Historic Preservation, 2010). Since the 1970s, film and history buffs discovered the Far East Café and used it for location shots in some movies such as Farewell, My Lovely; Chinatown, Dragon; Running Through the Night; A Year in the Life (Harris, 1988); Restore America; Gasa-Gasa Girl, and Community Matters (Chong, 2013). It also played host to countless events for those in and around Los Angeles City Hall.