If you like to eat at Chinese restaurants in the United States, you’ve probably consumed copious quantities of General Tso’s Chicken, a crowd-pleasing dish that typically combines breaded, deep-fried chicken in a sweet-and-spicy red sauce with steamed broccoli. I know I did, before I became a vegetarian (now I restrict myself to General Tso’s Tofu).
Why does this particular dish turn up on the menu of virtually every Chinese restaurant in America? Where did it come from? Is it authentically Chinese? And who was General Tso, anyway?
Ian Cheney, a 2014-15 Knight Science Journalism Fellow, says these questions started gnawing at him back in 2004, when he was on his way to Iowa to film scenes for King Corn, his 2007 documentary on corn’s role in the U.S. food system. Many years later, his documentary delving into the answers—and their unexpected relevance to the historical and cultural experiences of Chinese-Americans—is in theatrical release.
The Search for General Tso will have its Boston-area premiere at 7:00 pm on Friday, March 6, at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, Cambridge. Tickets are available online now.
Cheney is co-founder of the independent documentary film studio Wicked Delicate, where his previous films include not just King Corn but also The Greening of Southie, about the construction of an eco-conscious apartment complex in South Boston; Truck Farm, a look at modern urban farming using a vegetable garden in Cheney’s grandfather’s pickup as the central narrative device; The City Dark, a meditation on light pollution and the way it’s cutting us off from the stars; and The Melungeons, about a small tri-racial ethnic group in the Appalachians of northeastern Tennessee.
The Search for General Tso, directed by Cheney and produced by former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee and Amanda Murray (to whom Cheney is married), is in part a whimsical exploration of the semi-mythical General Tso and his eponymous chicken, and in part a serious look at the historical experience of Chinese-Americans, who for so long were restricted by law and prejudice to businesses like food and laundry. Cheney says the film gave him a chance to exercise his drive to “trace things back to their sources” and recontextualize overlooked aspects of our environment by bringing in history, science, and other disciplines.
Here’s a transcript of a recent conversation with Cheney.
Wade Roush: What’s the current state of release of the film?
Ian Cheney: We premiered last April at the Tribeca Film Festival. This summer, we were picked up by IFC Films/Sundance Selects. We opened in theaters in January, and so far we’ve opened in about 40 cities, which, for a small, independent documentary, has been wonderful to see. Simultaneously, we were released on video-on-demand, which is becoming more common—they call it a Day-and-Date release. I suppose it’s all about concentrating the buzz about a film.
WR: In some comments you wrote recently for the communications website of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, you mentioned that you have about 35 film concepts stored up in your notebooks right now. How long was General Tso waiting on your list of film projects?
IC: I was driving out to Iowa 11 years ago with my best friend [Curt Ellis] to begin shooting King Corn when we stopped in a small town in Ohio and got a few rooms at the Tally Ho-Tel. Which is a motel. And the only restaurant open was a Chinese restaurant across the parking lot. This was late at night. We ordered General Tso’s Chicken, the usual. And there was something about this lonely outpost on the American road that made us both wonder, who was General Tso and why are we all eating his chicken? And wouldn’t that be more fun than making a movie about corn?
Both, in a way, are films about tracing things back to their sources. But I didn’t know anything about Chinese food or the phenomenon of Chinese food. It just seemed remarkable that no matter where you went in the country, you could find a Chinese restaurant and the General.
The idea simmered for a few years. I did a few shoots in Chinatown in New York City. But it wasn’t until 2008, when Jennifer 8. Lee came out with a book called 9The Fortune Cookie Chronicles](http://www.amazon.com/The-Fortune-Cookie-Chronicles-Adventures/dp/0446698970) that the project really got started. A former New York Times reporter, she chronicled the story of American Chinese food, and had an entire chapter devoted to General Tso’s Chicken, which was a delight, because she’d gone out and done all this amazing research. And fortunately she loved the idea of collaborating on a film.
Rather than trying to adapt the book somehow into a film, we decided to launch a new adventure, but building on Jennifer’s contacts and resources, and trying to carry forward the humorous spirit of the book. That’s kind of the origin of the film.
WR: You said you like to trace things back to their sources. Would you say that’s the common thread in the Wicked Delicate oeuvre?
IC: Such as it is. We haven’t made that many movies; they take a while so it always seems like I’ve worked on more than I have. But that’s the reason I got into filmmaking: this desire to follow things back to their sources. It started with food, because food seemed like the most tangible way of exploring our connection to—or really our disconnection from—the sources of the stuff we consume. My mother’s father manufactured hammers and hatchets, and had seemingly innate knowledge about where energy comes from and how buildings are put together. How stuff works. And at some point in college I realized that though I might be nimble with a computer, I knew very little about the fundamentals. So much of the film work I’ve done is about trying to reconnect to the sources of our things. I think a lot of documentaries have done that. It’s a pretty good reason to make documentaries.
WR: What was the story you wanted to tell with The Search for General Tso? What was the thing to which you wanted to reconnect your audience?
IC: I had no idea what the film would become. It may have been that my 23-year-old self just thought “General Tso” was a quirky name, and it would be fun to figure out who he was. This was pre-smartphone, by the way. So it was not Google-able from the road, and even though we probably Googled it several days later, by that time the idea had stuck somehow. (It makes you wonder how many bad documentary film ideas are squelched by instant access to smartphones.) But the journey we ended up taking with the film took me by surprise, and as such, the film is a true reflection of the journey we went on as filmmakers. The story we ended up telling evolved during the making of the film.
WR: What story did you settle on? I haven’t seen the film yet, as you know—I’m waiting for the local premiere.
IC: On the one hand, the film explores the origins of the dish, General Tso’s Chicken. But in the process, we explored the phenomenon and the history of Chinese food in America. So the film became, in its own small way, an exploration of the Chinese-American experience.
In the nineteenth century, especially, food played a critical role in helping Chinese immigrants gain acceptance in a country that was literally writing laws banning them from coming to the U.S. After the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and in the wake of the Gold Rush and the building of the railroads, restaurant work and laundry were two of the only options for Chinese laborers. So over the years, and really continuing to this day, Chinese food, as adapted to American tastes, became a way of seeking and gaining acceptance in American communities.
WR: Does General Tso’s Chicken as we know it have anything to do with cooking in China?
IC: Without giving too much away, General Tso’s Chicken definitely has roots in China. But while most people in China have heard of General Tso, few have heard of General Tso’s Chicken, and few would look upon General Tso’s Chicken as it is served here in Cambridge as a Chinese dish. In America, it’s breaded and sweet, and served with broccoli, which is not a Chinese vegetable.
You could pick any number of foods in the United States, whether it’s spaghetti with meatballs, or tacos at your local Mexican restaurant, and compare them to their source cuisines and find all sorts of hilarious ways in which Americans have changed the food. Part of what we were trying to understand in the film is, is that good or bad or neither? Is there such a thing as authenticity? Maybe Chinese-American food is its own authentic cuisine.
WR: Did you give much attention to the science or nutrition or economics of Chinese food?
IC: We stuck to the cultural history, partly to keep the story from growing out of control, but also because so much of my previous work, in King Corn and Truck Farm, had delved into the nutritional implications of American agriculture and food systems. So this felt like an opportunity to explore food from a very different angle. Initially, when I was telling people I was making a film about Chinese food, if they’d seen King Corn, for example, they’d assume I was making a film about how greasy or unhealthy Chinese-American food is. Ironically, after having improved my diet so much when I was making King Corn, I ate so much General Tso’s Chicken during the making of this film that I probably set myself back a few years.
WR: But this film isn’t entirely inconsistent with your earlier, more science-oriented films. Can you talk a little more about the links?
IC: One of the things that draws me to planetary science, in particular here at MIT, is its interdisciplinary nature. The attempt to see the world in a broader context, both temporally and spatially. With The Search for General Tso, our goal was to try and take something as tiny as a platter of chicken and see it in its broader context: its historical context, its cultural context, its culinary context. And so, even though The Search for General Tso was not exactly a planetary science documentary, in many ways it’s the same approach I would take with another long-form documentary, of following things back to their sources, understanding how things have evolved over time, and looking for patterns and processes that might have previously been overlooked. And, always, looking for interesting human narratives to bring it all to life.
WR: Let me turn around my previous question. Am I taking this all too seriously? With a film like this, are you trying to mark out some room for whimsy?
IC: I am not in love with this term, but some people call this “edutainment.” And I do like the idea that we can be entertained and educated at the same time. This became one of the big challenges for us as filmmakers when making The Search for General Tso. We were working on the one hand with a whimsical premise—this idea of General Tso, an almost mythical, mystical figure who is somehow related to chicken. And then on the other hand, we were telling very real stories about the repression and discrimination and racism that Chinese immigrants have faced and continue to face.
So even though we wanted to make the film feel like a romp, it was a serious journey as well. So, no, I don’t think you’re taking it too seriously. It became important to try to find a way to tell these stories.
We were at our Tribeca premiere, and one of the folks who appears in the film, a Chinese-American tax attorney named David R. Chan, who has eaten at over 6,000 Chinese restaurants, came up on stage to join us for the Q&A. And I was nervous; I didn’t know what he would think of the film. And he said, “Thank you for telling our story.” And I realized, once again, that the history of Chinese-Americans is not enough of a part of our national narrative.
WR: The obligator semi-humorous final question. Of all the restaurants where you ordered General Tso’s Chicken, did you have a favorite?
IC: When we met the man who invented General Tso’s Chicken, and tasted the dish at his restaurant, it was an incredible experience. It didn’t taste like the General Tso’s Chicken of my childhood, but it was delicious. That’s all I will say.
WR: Wait, what? The inventor of General Tso’s Chicken is still alive?
IC: He’s still alive. But my other answer to that is: we posted the recipe on our website, and it’s pretty darn easy to make at home with a few simple ingredients. You can even make General Tso’s Tofu. The recipe there is a compilation of three or four different recipes. Adapting General Tso’s Chicken is entirely in the spirit of the dish.
Update, April 7, 2015: Over at New England Public Radio, Karen Brown, KSJ ‘13, has published a radio interview with Ian Cheney.
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