By Beatrice Lee, bostonese.com columnist
Boston Nov. 22, 2015, — I went to St. James Church in Boston Chinatown this morning, and met a lot of old friends and took a lot of pictures. Also went next door to Tuft’s Auditorium for a Chinese documentary movie. The afternoon event was very well attended.
(L to R)Connie Chan, Yau King Eng and Kenneth Eng at the event(photos by Beatrice Lee).
Most of the film was in Cantonese. Fortunately it has English and Chinese translation on the film. This is a well-made film and all people in the audience would understand it. This event was hosted by Chinese History Society of New England and Boston Asian American Film Festival.
I don’t think they got a lot of publicity as there were not non-Cantonese speaking people were in the audience. Filmmaker and director Kenneth Eng and actor Mr. Yau King Eng were amount the audience. We had QA session at the end and took a lot of pictures with them.
After graduating from Boston Latin School, Kenneth Eng left for NY in 1994 to study film at the School of Visual Arts. His thesis: “Scratching Windows”, was broadcast on WNET as part of Reel NY’s 4th Season (NY local PBS). In 2007, Ken was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship to launch “My Life In China”, a film that retraces his father’s epic journey to America in search of a better life.
The following is the plot summary of My Life In China.
“In America, everyone has a family story of immigration. Every family, at some point, has had somebody leave their native country behind to search for a better life. How did they hold onto their identity? How did they adapt to their new life? Every family has a special story. In my case, it’s my Chinese-American story. My father would always tell us his story about walking for 7 days and 6 nights, before swimming for 4 hours to Macau to escape communism in 1966. His story would fall on my deaf ears until I returned to China with him.”