DVD 5: Beyond Frontiers

From the series " Chinese Restaurants: Stories From A Diaspora"

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India East

Samson, Richard, Samuel and Stephen Yeh were born in Calcutta and suffered from the aftermath the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict.   Today, the four brothers take turns running the New Embassy Restaurant in Calcutta and Hotel Restaurant Valentino in the Himalayan hill-station of Darjeeling.   As they reminisce what it was like to grow up Hakka Chinese in India, the next generation's emigration to the West has decimated the once vibrant and prosperous Chinese community who came with the British two hundred years ago.

Brazil North

In the frontier city of Manaus, on the great Amazon River, Taiwan immigrant Jack Sun has been running the Mandarin for thirty years.   Sun came to Brazil in 1967, when he was a young man, to build his life in the resource-rich country.   After long years of hard work in a frontier town, Sun is feeling the effects of a burnt-out career.   Meanwhile, his business-savvy US-educated son, Eddy, navigates his own unique identity as a Chinese Brazilian in the Amazon -- Chinese in heart, but Brazilian in spirit.

India West

The brothers Nini and Baba Ling grew up as in a Chinese-Indian family.   While Nini inherits his father's Bombay restaurant, Ling's Pavilion , his brother branches out into Delhi, opening the Imperial Garden .   Both establishments enjoy success by strictly using the freshest ingredients in their cooking.   As Nini contemplates his retirement, Baba is forging ahead with the ambitious construction of Nanking , the re-incarnated name of a landmark restaurant his father established in 1947, the year India gained independence.