Category Archives: Documentary

Coming to the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan’s CineMatters series, accompanied by a Chinese meal, this Thursday, December 25: THE SEARCH FOR GENERAL TSO

Ian Cheney’s exploration of Chinese food in America bowed at Tribeca this Spring. It has also screened at Seattle, IFF Boston, AFI Docs, Camden, and Sidewalk, among others.

General Tso’s Chicken is indisputably the most popular item on Chinese restaurant menus across the United States, but it’s likely that those who regularly order it have no idea who General Tso is – if he ever existed – or how the dish became so ubiquitous. Cheney’s film sets out to tackle those questions, in the process telling a larger story of Chinese immigration and assimilation in American society. The first puzzle is quickly solved, as the filmmaker travels to Hunan province, China, where information about the revered General Tso is very easily found, along with the curious tidbit that chicken was not among his favorite foods, and that the dish is unfamiliar in the country. That’s not really a surprise, as is borne out by the well-known history of another perennial American Chinese food favorite, chop suey, developed by Chinese immigrants to cater to Western tastes. In hunting for the origins of General Tso’s Chicken, the film makes stops in restaurants large and small, from the unlikely beginnings of cashew chicken in a Springfield MO Chinese restaurant to the upscale Shun Lee in NYC, which proves to play a major part in the dish’s popularity. Cheney’s survey is a light but crowdpleasing exploration of how a people adapted to a new country – and its consequent hardships – through their cuisine.