The Chinese Experience

We would like to commend to you an excellent, powerful Bill Moyers documentary titled Becoming American: The Chinese Experience.

This four-part series examines the dramatic experience of the Chinese in America and explores what it means to become American and what is lost and gained, both personally and culturally, when one sheds part of one's heritage to make way for a new self-identity.

Program 1, Gold Mountain Dreams, looks at the lure of making a fortune in America that captured the attention of young Chinese men amid civil war and famine in Southern China in the mid-19th century

Program 2, Between Two Worlds, addresses the hostile years when Chinese Americans were denied the rights of their new country yet no longer at home in their former one.

Program 3, No Turning Back, picks up with World War II, which ushered in sudden acceptance for Chinese Americans and began their rise to the pinnacle of U.S. life.

The series concludes with one-on-one interviews by Bill Moyers with author Gish Jen, Nobel prize-winning physicist Samuel Ting, AIDS researcher David Ho, businesswoman Shirley Young, and artist Maya Lin.

You can learn more or purchase the series by visiting www.pbs.org/becomingamerican.