By Soe Han Tha, AsAmNews Intern
Dr. Raymond Douglas Chong’s pursuit of the American dream focused on his career as a civil and traffic engineer. The American born Chinese gave little thought to his ethnic identity. Despite his curiosity, he never took the time to explore his family history. A tragedy involving a personal friend would change that.
John Thomas Killip, a friend interested in his Scotish roots, piqued Chong’s desire to learn about his own family. When Killip committed suicide on January 30, 2003, Dr. Chong’s way of looking at ancestry and roots became more urgent.
“The suicide created a catalyst of my thinking and way of life,” Dr. Chong told AsAmNews. “I was very white-washed and all about making money. His death caused a paradigm shift to look inwards.”
His new film My Odyssey — Between Two Worlds follows Dr. Chong on the journey to look within and connect with his Chinese identity. Dr. Chong stated that in order to look within, he had to look back to the past. He scoured through “bits and pieces of data floating around.”
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According to the film’s producer and editor Alvin Wright, a significant portion of the data came as a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. “The Chinese Exclusion Act provided a paper trail that allowed [Dr. Chong] to trace his forefathers back to the village” – Yung Lew Gong in the Guangdong Province of China.
Dr. Chong discovered that in 1849, his great-great-great grandfather, Cheun Saan Jeung, left the village in hopes of finding gold in California, becoming the first of Dr. Chong’s ancestors to immigrate to the U.S. The film outlines the successes and failures of each generation’s immigration story since then, including Dr. Chong’s great-great grandfather who worked in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and Dr. Chong’s father who served as the mechanic for the China Clipper seaplanes during World War II.
Before researching his forefathers, Dr. Chong did not know much about his father Gim Suey Chong’s immigration story.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forced Chinese immigrants to enter the U.S. with false documents to overcome the legalized discrimination. Those who entered the U.S. this way became known as paper sons. They falsely claimed to be relatives of naturalized Chinese Americans. With his own false documents, Gim Suey Chong immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 10.
“[My father] could have been deported if he talked about this stuff,” said Dr. Chong. “Most want to forget the past because it’s so hurtful, brutal, and ugly.”
Fortunately, Dr. Chong overcame the grim aspects of the past to connect with his ancestors. By embarking on this voyage into the past, he found the inspiration for his artistic projects. He has also edited a book and penned poems. With My Odyssey — Between Two Worlds, Dr. Chong experiments with a new medium of art.
The initial version of the film can be viewed on YouTube, and the final version of the film is set to premiere on 15 December, 2018 at the Asian Society Texas Center in Houston, TX. When asked about future projects, Dr. Chong expressed his desire to direct several spin-offs that focus on each generation of his forefathers.
To those who want to find out more about their ancestral history, both Wright and Dr. Chong have advice. Wright points out that if hard data in the form of documents doesn’t exist, “stories, folktales, and dialogues” serve as other forms of data to trace one’s roots. Dr. Chong’s advice is to “be patient and have an end in mind. Each person has his/her own goal. Mine is to share my family’s story.”
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