Why is there a Chinese museum in the middle of Mississippi?
That’s the question Baldwin Chiu and Larissa Lam asked when they visited his grandfather’s home in Mississippi—yes, Mississippi. It turns out there was a whole community of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans who made their home in the American South.
The history they uncovered during their journeys turned into Far East Deep South, an award-winning documentary feature film that followed the Chiu family as they uncovered their lost family history. The film, directed by Larissa, interviews local residents, historians, and of course, Baldwin’s own family. It also shows the racially complex history of the early Chinese in the segregated South, including the effects of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
In this interview with SOLA Network, Baldwin and Larissa share how they discovered this amazing story, and how it has helped them to redefine what “American” and “American Christianity” means. They also challenge Asian Americans to ask questions of previous generations to learn their stories.
Our “Artists in Motion” series hopes to platform Asian American Christian artists, as well as encourage all artists to root their identities in Christ and use their callings to share art and truth with the world. Find the other installments of our “Artists in Motion” series here.
Watch the trailer for Far East Deep South below, and check out their website FarEastDeepSouth.com for how to watch their documentary and to schedule a screening at your church or other organization.
Editor’s Note: Below is an automated transcript of their conversation with very light editing. There may be typos and other discrepancies from the video. You can listen to the audio here.
SOLA Network: Welcome to SOLA Network. I’m sitting down with Larissa and Baldwin, who are the one of the subjects and the Writer Director for Far East Deep South, a documentary that explores your grandfather’s origin or your grandfather’s life in Mississippi.
For those of you who are watching, haven’t seen the film yet, we will probably be spoiling some things. So I encourage you to go and watch it first. And then enjoy this amazing conversation.
So first of all, I just want to say the movie is fantastic. I cried like seven times. I did not have tissues nearby. I want to know, you know, what was that first moment where you’re like, hey, let’s explore this origin story?
Baldwin Chiu: Yeah, I don’t think we, I mean, my brother wanted to go out and just figure out where to take a trip to Mississippi. And that was like kind of a 40th anniversary gift or idea for my parents. But the idea really didn’t come until we rediscovered this grave site, which we never knew about.
Going back a little further. My dad never talked about his father. I never had a grandfather. And it really wasn’t until my daughter was born that I kind of saw that relationship between a grandfather and a grandchild. So we weren’t making, we had no intention of making a documentary. We were just going out there just to see what we could discover.
Larissa Lam: Or really, we just we went out there to go pay respects to a gravesite, we thought Oh, would be lucky if we find the grave site. And if we find anything else, that’s just, you know, icing on top.
And we ended up finding a whole lot more as people who watch the film, that’s that’s why we made the film. They’re watching our journey with us, as it happens. And especially walking into the Chinese museum there The Mississippi Delta Heritage…
Baldwin Chiu: Chinese Heritage Museum.
Larissa Lam: Yes, it’s very long.
I was thinking Why is there a Chinese Museum in the middle of Mississippi? when we walked in. And then we see all these photos and all these artifacts from all these Chinese families and the history over generations. And like, wait a second, there’s a significant population here to warrant a museum. How come we didn’t learn about this?
You know, when I learned that Chinese kids had to be segregated, had to attend their own school, because they weren’t White. I was like, Whoa, that’s crazy. We all learned about segregation. And we all learned about the American South and nowhere did I know Asians were part of this equation.
And that really, in my mind recast kind of history, the way we learned it differently. And I was like, there’s a lot that’s left out, isn’t there? And so we started to plunge forward and realized the personal story. And the historical significance of what we discovered was important to tell more of the world.
Baldwin Chiu: I like how you said, Asians weren’t part of that equation. Because usually they, you know, correlate that with math, but we’re not, we’re not.
Larissa Lam: Oh, I wasn’t saying…
Baldwin Chiu: I thought you were trying to rap.
Larissa Lam: No I wasn’t trying to rap, because you’re the rapper, I’m a singer. But I also wasn’t trying to make a ..
Baldwin Chiu: An Asian persuasion equation…
Larissa Lam: An Asian persuasion equation.
Baldwin Chiu: All across this Nation.
Larissa Lam: I didn’t want to stereotype our people. We’re not just about equations
SOLA Network: We’re doing all kinds of stereotype breaking there. And the film takes so many twists and turns, which are incredible and powerful. And again, encourage you to watch.
I want to know like for you, because it took place over you know, it wasn’t just one weekend you guys went.
Baldwin Chiu: Right.
SOLA Network: Emotionally as you were learning these things. How did it kind of change your understanding of your own family or your own identity?
Baldwin Chiu: Yeah, I mean, certainly, like the film starts off with, with the line says, like, hey, when people start meeting me, when they meet me for the first time, they ask me, where are you from? Right. And I’m, like, born in San Francisco, raised in Sacramento. And of course, then we always get the question, Where are you really from? And I think most of my life, I was always grappling with that. With that comment, because where am I really from? I’m not really from China. I think I’m from San Francisco.
But as we got older, and once we discovered this, we’re like, well, maybe I’m not the first one in my family to really be here. Well, how did these people end up in Mississippi for multiple generations ago? And what does that do to me now? What does it do to our family? Does it redefine what our identity is here in America? And I think that how we felt about ourselves just kind of evolved and changed throughout this entire process.
Because it didn’t take a week. It’s like, five, six years of discovery.
Larissa Lam: I mean, there was the first trip to Mississippi, things happened. Like there’s so many things that happened in the span of just like a day.
And that’s kind of what the catalyst was, was like, Oh my gosh, we were just so happy to find everything. And that was amazing in and of itself. But then as you see what the rest of the film was, like, there were even more surprises and more discoveries that you know, it really and even for me I’m not even the family member, but as an Asian American, to see myself in history.
I think growing up, you know, I took AP history, you know, learn about all the things that happened in this country, and I never felt a connection to it. And knowing that, in my mind, I thought the American South, you can’t get more American than that. And I was like, wait, we were there. You know, we were not just there, we were a significant part of it.
And so, you know, it’s been very eye opening for me as an Asian American to also learn that not just the Mississippi Delta, but Asians have been throughout the country, you know, not just Chinese, you know, Korean, Japanese, Filipinos, you know, Indians, I mean, but we’ve been a part of the fabric of this country for so long. But yet our histories have been excluded.
And so, for me, it was really important to start to see myself as belonging, knowing that I have deep history or not even just me, but other people, you know that our ancestors had deep history in this country.
SOLA Network: And that history is so important in a Christian context, right? Our most of the Bible is history, right? Is, is learning about our history as a faith people.
And the film isn’t explicitly Christian, but there are so many glimmers in it that anybody who’s a Christian, you know, is going to be blessed by it.
But for you personally, how did that journey of discovering things, these things? How did that kind of resonate with your faith, grow your faith or vice versa?
Baldwin Chiu: You know, for me, I think it was learning about my dad more, because in the film, you’ll see interviews with my father. The truth of the matter is, I was not there for those interviews, because growing up he would never talk to me about he didn’t even really explain to me how he became a believer. So I just had some makeshift story about him trying to get out of chores during the Air Force, and he just didn’t want to do his chores. He went to the chaplain service. Instead, he eventually became a Christian, right.
But in the film, it kind of explains how he really wrestled with being fatherless. And I think that resonates so much. With a lot of people. You don’t have to be in the church to wrestle with fatherlessness. Right? So many people, unfortunately, in this world, don’t have a strong relationship with the Father, or may not even have a relationship with the Father.
So I think that story of God, being his father, when he didn’t have a father his entire life that has impacted the way we look, I look at my father, now you have to look at him to better understand, you know, like, what he had to go through why he did certain things, and it gave me a better understanding of our entire family.
Larissa Lam: I think for me, you know, if I didn’t already have a strong belief in God, which I already did, I think the events that happened, fortified my belief that God was a providential God. And that was the God the God is really the author of all our histories.
And, you know, you just don’t find, spoiler alert, you don’t find a Bible in the middle of Mississippi, and the Chinese Bible, a Chinese Bible, and you know, we always say it’s like, it could have been some other random book, but it was a Bible. And that was, you know, the first tip off, it was like, Okay, this is more than just a family vacation. And then all these other things start happening in the sequence of things that started happening. If I had written this as a fictional narrative film, nobody would believe me, like people would think everything was contrived. It’s so melodramatic, and you know, I like the things that happen, because it’s a documentary, it really happened to our family, all the discoveries.
And in some sense, like in that sequential order, it’s like, just when you think you found something like, wait, there’s more and, and there’s even stuff we didn’t even include in the film that we discovered that was pretty amazing. But we figured it was enough discoveries to like, give the audience that started to become like, okay, really like. So behind the scenes, there were even more discoveries that we found that were pretty awesome.
SOLA Network: I can’t wait for that featurette, right? I think for me, like, right after I watched it, I had so many questions about my dad’s life growing up, my mom was a little bit more vocal, but even then, I had so many questions about my grandfather. As you started to roll the film out and showing people what is the response that you’ve gotten in terms of the movement of people after watching it?
Baldwin Chiu: I think, you know, we really wanted to start this when we made our short film, “Finding Cleveland”, which was just based on the first day’s experience in Mississippi.
And when we started touring the country with “Finding Cleveland” as we were continuing making “Far East Deep South” we found that there were more people that are willing to talk to each other. One of the things that we really advocated was that the generational that the generations spoke with each other, we tried to make a multi generational event, doing a little bit of music and hip hop concert and with band sometimes with a short film about history.
So we could bring both communities together and then hopefully have this discussion about talking to your grandparents talking to you and bother talking to children and grandkids. And we really hope that with “Far East Deep South” that expands that story and encourages people to see like, wow, we just talk to each other and talk to our family members. Look how much more information we could possibly find about our own families. How many significant items or, or discoveries could we find? And especially here in America, like, what if more Asian Americans found out how American they really are? I think that’d be really amazing.
Larissa Lam: I think the other thing that was really amazing about this journey is the fact that, you know, I think the Asian American church too a lot of times, we’re very fragmented. You know, you’ve got your Korean or Chinese service, and then you got your English ministry. And, you know, it’s youth ministry. And there’s been so many times where, you know, we go and do a screening of our film, and people are like, oh, we’re just gonna invite the youth. Oh, but I think the parents need to watch this too. Or vice versa. It’s like, Oh, this is just for the adults, we’re not going to invite the youth, right? Well, no, I think they should come or this is really something to bring the generations together.
And I think a lot of times in the context of the Asian American church, we don’t see ministry, as the whole church, we see them in fragments, like youth, you know, adults and senior citizens, young adults, you know, an English speaking non English speaking, you know, and so, I think that’s something that that we hope inspires people to, again, think more holistically and multi generationally. Because all the issues with generation gaps and cultural gaps, like we hope this is we’ve heard stories of how this has opened up conversations for, you know, for Baldwin himself, like understanding his father better, you know, understand his father’s immigrant experience, and it’s an unusual immigrant experience, because it’s also laced with an American experience.
And the sense I think your father understands you a little bit better, because where you were like, I’m the American one, and he really, your father realizes, Oh, my gosh, I’m really American. And so there’s, there’s a, there’s a wonderful journey, I think, between the generations that we’ve you know, seen through the film that we’ve heard from other people, they’re like, you know, what, I’ve talked to my parents, I’ve been able to talk a little bit more about like our story.
And then the other thing that I think I realized in this journey, too, is the responses that we’ve had people say, like, oh, how’d you be able to become a Christian, and these are non believers, because we take for granted that Asians are Christians. I mean, we were we both grew up in the church
Baldwin Chiu: Asians can be Christian.
Larissa Lam: Asians can be Christian. Like, you know, those, those who are watching, like a lot of you might have grown up in church, right.
But there’s a whole section of the United States because all they see is like White Christians. And so their stereotype of a Christian is White person, or maybe they’ll think like Black church, but they never think like, oh, Asians can be Christians, or they’re Buddhists, you know, their ancestor worshippers, or they’re just not Christians.
And so it’s been able to open up a whole conversation with people who are not believers, that there is a strong historical presence of Asian Christians, not just in the world, but in America. And that also just leads to just the fact that we’ve encouraged the church and, you know, Asian American Christians, like tell your stories, because that’s as valid as your own personal testimony as as your family testimonies because, you know, we go to different museums or Asian, you know, museums, and we’re like, there’s not anything talking about the presence in the history of Asian American Christians.
And if we don’t tell those stories, and start documenting that, that history is going to be awesome, people are never going to know that Asian American Christians existed 100 years down the line.
So those are the types of things like the responses, like making our community think about the ways we can tell our stories and make it permanent, not just to each other in our personal family basis, but even as a community.
SOLA Network: And as you were crafting that story from all this footage, and as you mentioned, right, lots of other footage that isn’t cut in there. What was kind of your guiding light through line of saying this is the the theme of this story from start to finish, what we’re trying to cut down to?
Larissa Lam: It was the family story. I mean, that was the strongest element, especially when we did test screenings of the film. I mean, there were probably about 50 to 100 like different edited versions of the film.
Baldwin Chiu: Yes, again, this is a good reason that she’s the director, not me. I was really like history focused. For me, my fascination with the history, I just wanted to keep it all academic, you know, like bringing all the professors, bringing the talking heads rather than the authors. Right? Tell us more about what was going on this time. And you can just sprinkle in our family. But Larissa was like nah we gotta flip that.
Larissa Lam: Yeah. And part of it is, I think, what was the breakthrough for me, because, you know, when we first constructed the film, it was all about the events like oh, this is an amazing discovery. It’s about the discovery. And really it was the discovery that was part of it. But really, it was about his father, and almost like I joke about it’s like a therapy session. It was him reconnecting with his father.
And in a sense, like he said, Baldwin and his father on this kind of thing, a bit like a road trip. If you think about that trope of a film of like we send this father and son on this journey to discover their past together. And through that process, they grow in their relationship with you. They grow in their relationship with each other, and they’re better understanding one another. And you know, your father comes to know his father, through this history that we discovered. So that was the most important element in any history and anything else that we, you know, we discovered along the way had to connect to their family story.
SOLA Network: And it was very powerful. I know, in a lot of Asian American context, we’ve talked about this intergenerational divide, this gap, there can tend to be this kind of hopelessness regarding distant fathers, which I kind of felt, you know, was there in that film.
As you have, you know, experienced this? What is your encouragement to people who are there, Like, oh, my dad’s never going to share my Dad, I’m not never going to know these things about my dad?
Baldwin Chiu: Well, I mean, I would, I would say, the hope would be that you don’t have to be that dad. You know, first of all, we should try. We should let the older you know, let our older relatives understand that, hey, I want to know, right? If they’re still available, I want to know, and I realize that there’s a lot of things I don’t know, because I’m not you, I don’t have the same experiences as you. I would like to let you know that. I appreciate you. But I would like to know, what are those things that you have done? Tell me your story, right?
Hopefully, they’ll tell the stories. And hopefully, hopefully, a film like ours can be a catalyst for those stories to be told. But it’s not. I would say, understand that we at least have an opportunity to not be that way to our children, to be able to share our own stories. Okay, well, this is what I know of our past. This is what I know about my life, as we raise our children, be open with them. Let them know that hey, it’s okay. Sometimes to apologize. I mean, I try not to apologize all the time to my daughter, because I don’t want her to think that I’m always wrong. But when I am wrong, I say sorry.
But I try to explain things, you know, and I think I think we can still learn from our fathers and grandparents that may not have talked, just by our experience with them to understand what are the things that we wish we could have had different with them? And how can I change that today?
Larissa Lam: I think what we’ve learned too, is that, as parents, you know, we’ve asked our daughter, like, oh, how was your day? You know, how do you feel about this? We just really recognize like growing up, our parents never asked us like how we felt right? They just told us like what to do or like, what did you do? You know, did you finish your homework? And then we don’t in turn ask our parents how they feel.
You know, we’re asking even the way Baldwin phrases it like, oh, what was what did you do? You know, how did you come here? You know, I think I was able to kind of unlock a little bit more. And Baldwin’s dad story is one, you know, I was an outside person, sometimes the trick is, you may need some outside help, or you know, to unlock those stories. But it’s like, I asked him, you know, what was it like, you know, you know, was it like, I asked him how he felt about it, as opposed to what happened.
And, and sometimes I think, you know, maybe our parents might be taken aback and going, like, asking me how I feel, you know, we have to stop. It’s like, we never got asked how we felt. And we never asked our parents how they feel. And because we’re Asian. That’s just not in our language.
But maybe that’s part of it is that we should start asking each other even though it might be weird and uncomfortable at first. It’s like, parents have feelings, too. And so it’s getting to the heart of like, how do they feel. And honestly, at the end of the day, I think all parents, especially immigrant ones, they want you to know that they sacrificed and they did go through a lot, so they could provide a better life, and that they love you because of everything that they’ve done.
SOLA Network: And I think that’s one of the powers of being the in law. I discovered with my wife’s parents, like they will tell me so much more than she’s ever known. And my parents tell her stuff. I think that’s also one of the powers of the church, right? That the church can be this place where someone other than your child, or your dad is asking you about your story.
I would love to kind of hear, you know, as this film has been rolling out, what is your struggles and triumphs with trying to get churches and a lot of Asian Americans are not used to using films as part of their ministries? What’s that journey been like, of trying to get Asian American churches to see the value of this film?
Baldwin Chiu: I guess the first struggle right now, since we’re in this pandemic, the last, you know, 15 months have been we couldn’t do anything really with the churches. But the good thing was that some of the churches found ways to go virtual. And since lot of churches were doing that, it actually gave a little bit more accessibility. We’ve been able to get churches to understand like, Hey, why don’t we do a screening event, and maybe we can watch the film. And we can zoom in and do a discussion. And it could be one of your, it doesn’t have to be a service, but it could be one of these, you know, side, you know, events that maybe like a fellowship type of thing.
So I think those are opportunities that we would like to see more of, and I think churches might feel more comfortable with that. Hopefully once the, you know, things are reopening, you know, what we did with “Finding Cleveland” was we were able to finally get the churches to understand like, hey, these are community events, let’s open up the church and bring the community in. And you know a lot, most churches have a great sound system, great AV system, right? If you got big words and graphics on the screen, you’re set up to run a movie, right? You don’t have to go to a movie theater, you just go into a church, and you can have a really nice sound. Really nice movie. So, you know, getting churches to better understand that. I mean, we had some experiences with that too right?
Larissa Lam: And I would say so we did a 14-minute short film “Finding Cleveland”, you know, as we’ve mentioned, that is about the first trip that we took to Mississippi. And this was done like four or five years ago. We were touring the country, and we had a lot of interest from Asian American groups and advocacy groups, did a lot of screenings. And we did work with a few churches.
But it was a challenge, because one of the things that people kept saying in the church was your films, not Christian enough. We have never in the history of doing either the first film or “Far East Deep South” had any non Christians and we’ve aired on PBS like, no your films are too Christian. No one’s ever said that to us.
And so, you know, we find a Bible in the middle of Mississippi. And in our film “Far East Deep South”, there’s, there’s, you know, his father’s testimony. And there’s like, you know, people need to find a lot of churches want to, like, call to Jesus gospel message. And that’s not our film. You know, we wanted to make a film that everyone regardless of your faith background, and your ethnicity could watch.
But the interesting thing is because “Finding Cleveland” happened in a pre COVID world, all of a sudden, after COVID happened, and there was this anti Asian sentiment starting to creep up with the the Coronavirus, being blamed on our community or the Chinese community and everybody Asian that they’ve confused with the Chinese. And then we have the civil unrest that happened with George Floyd where even though a lot of this, the issues in the Black community had been happening, it just all of a sudden the spotlight was on it during COVID.
And now we started having Asian churches approaching us because in our new film “Far East Deep South” we show the intersection between the Chinese and the Black community, and the very respectful relationship that they had in the Mississippi Delta. And also the fact that they were all in the same boat, they both couldn’t live in White neighborhoods, they both were subject to Jim Crow laws, there was a shared history there, that all of a sudden, we are seeing a little bit of a change, like some of the struggles before where churches were like, oh, we’re not interested in learning about discrimination against Asians, you know, or even the Black community, you know, but now in this in this post COVID world, we’ve actually had churches go like, Can you help us figure this out? Like, what does this mean? Our congregation is asking and trying to make sense of the anti Asian sentiment.
And so because we didn’t learn about us in our history books, like, you know, now we have an opportunity with a film like ours, that’s a safe for, you know, a church knowing that Christians are behind it. It’s like, Look, we can have these conversations, you can, you know, navigate this because I know this is like new territory.
SOLA Network: So yeah, as it’s been rolling out in churches in this way of talking about in terms of finding that Asian American identity. What are those revelations? How do you think like this story, and as this particular moment in our current history? How is Asian American identity being shaped within and outside of the church?
Larissa Lam: Yeah, well, I think one of the things is I think our community hasn’t had very strong discussion of what that means. You know, I think a lot of times we end up thinking about the immigrant identity, right, especially if you’re talking about Asian American churches, which really were mission churches, right? If you think about the historical, you know, these, whether it’s the Korean American church, or the Chinese American church, they were started as mission churches to reach new immigrants that came to this country.
And so where a lot of them are wrestling with that identity is now that our kids have been born in America and grow up, you know, some of them are leaving, or some of them are still in the church. But what does that mean?
And so I think that as a community, there is kind of going back to the original roots and and some churches are doing and I’m not saying there are no you know, Asian American churches that are, are reaching the community. But it’s relatively insular. It’s like thinking about what’s happened in the news today. How do we as a community address this anti Asian racism? How do we change that? How can we be part of informing the community at large, and I think that’s where it is, we have to educate ourselves about our history, about our communities, and how to translate that for non Asians and maybe engaging because I think part of the problem is that when we’ve been so insular, or even sense where we sometimes use language, where we don’t feel like we belong, and so if we use language, when we feel like we don’t belong, how can we expect others to accept us that we belong, you know,
Like, for instance, my parents would always say like, oh, the Americans, this Americans that like and I always knew they meant, you know, non Asians, right? They went to mass but I’m like, all of us are American citizens. I was born here. How can we keep referring to other people as Americans.
And so I think as a community, we have to start making sure we’re like, we recognize that yes, we are a part of the American community. And to make a better effort, I think as a church to do outreach and do partnerships with non Asian groups, and not just churches, but in the community. Because we’re talking about the people in the community, that are ones that are going to be having the attacks and the xenophobia. And we have to build those bridges. And so as church, I think this is the time for us to rise up and be more engaged.
Baldwin Chiu: Yeah, I think, you know, Asian American church can really take a lesson, learn a lesson from the Black church. If you look at the history of the Black church, a lot of the Black leaders that you see today, especially in politics, and advocacy came out of the Black church.
And basically, they said, we’re going to take the lead, we’re going to be the ones that are going to fight in, the church are going to be the ones that take leadership into fighting these injustices. And now we’re in the primaries, we’re in a, we’re in a situation right now, where the Asian American churches have an opportunity to take that lead to say, like, we need to lead this conversation, we need to let people know who we are, we need to do it in a loving way that God will, will be able to use and bless everyone with not just our community, and we need to bring out leaders within the API churches, right? And say, Okay, let’s lead the conversation, now.
We are professional Asian Americans, we know what it’s like to be Asian American, we know what our struggles are, we know where we need to be at. So let’s lead this conversation with other people, other community groups, and take those leadership positions and start speaking out and saying, like, instead of being the ones answering questions, Whoa, what’s it like to be an Asian American in the church, right? Let us be the ones that are asking questions or directing the comments. This is what it’s like, this is how you can better understand us. This is what our community needs to do to better understand you. Right? And so let’s do this. And let’s, let’s let’s be the ones leading that charge. And we have an opportunity right now.
SOLA Network: Yeah. And I’d love to dive more into that, especially as your film does deal with the yellow, White, yellow, Black, right, like those different dynamics. What are some ways in which you’ve discovered or you’ve been thinking about that? What is it that the AAPI community has to that book that the rest of the American, the rest of the American community needs from us?
Baldwin Chiu: I think, what we have, that we have a full exposure, is our stories. There’s so much, so many stories, so much history within just our group alone. But most of the other groups don’t know about it.
And that’s why they don’t understand that’s why there’s this separation between us and the White community, there’s a separation between us and the Black community, because both those communities don’t really know us. And partly is because we’re not sharing it. We’re not, we’re not saying that whatever we have is significant. And so if we’re able to share it, if we can build relationships together, that’s going to help.
I think one of the biggest problems is we tend to self segregate. And so that’s why we have, you know, that’s why people move into most predominantly Asian areas when they live, right? And so we get into these comfort zone, where we now have an opportunity to America to choose where we live.
Whereas 200 years ago, they just put us where they didn’t want us to not be right. It’s like, Chinese people go over there, right. But now we can choose, but because there’s more of us, we choose to in that comfort zone to stay within ourselves. And then what that does is it closes off everyone else from understanding who we are. And the church has that same issue.
The church should be open to everyone, yet, we’ve already kind of segregated ourselves into these Asian churches, and we don’t know really what to do with our second and third generation kids. Right? Are we gonna still be catering to those immigrants? Or are we going to cater to the second or third generation kids who have a lot of non Asian friends? How do we care to that? And how do we let their stories be important to their non Asian friends?
Larissa Lam: Yeah, I mean, I think community building, I mean, if you can see the evidence in our film, where there, there was a lot of cross traffic, you know, between the communities, and in the Asian and Black case, you know, we were very much in the same neighborhoods. And, you know, even though we weren’t that, you know, some people have friends, I mean, just like today, you know, you have different groups of friends, like some people have friends, some people, you know, just just were hanging out, you know, only like at work or, you know, there there can be better, I think bonds formed in general because, you know, like, like Baldwin said, especially if we’re living in the suburbs, you know, we don’t have to talk to each other.
And I think that’s the one thing that you know, even as the Asian church, it’s like, yes, you have to take care of your flock and I understand that a lot of times, the pastors and the leadership in in an Asian American churches, they’re already taxed to even think about beyond the walls of our church to try and just keep and Shepherd the flock.
At the same time, I think there is this responsibility to engage with the rest of the community to engage with a, a, a multi ethnic, predominantly White church to engage with a Black church and do things together, you know. And I think there’s always this threat that people are gonna lose members to congregations, or they don’t know how to like, bring in people. But that doesn’t have to be your goal, your goal needs to just be to help one another, preach the gospel to whoever it is, and serve the community, love God, love people. And I think we can do a better job of doing that together as a collective church. And in some partnerships,
Baldwin Chiu: I think a lot of times the churches now they define themselves by their ethnicity. We’re the Asian church. That’s the White church, that’s the Black church. But really, our commonality isn’t in our communities, our commonality is our faith.
And but we’re not realizing that’s not that should be our priority. That’s the, you know, we believe God, you believe in God, you believe in God, let’s all come together and worship this God, right? And let’s learn how to love people the way God wants us to love. But we are very focused on, I need to serve my Asian community, I need to serve my White community, serve my Black community.
And we don’t realize that we all have had commonality and the most common commonality is our faith. And that shouldn’t be the driving force to bring us together rather than our race, being the driving force to separate us and keep us separate.
SOLA Network: And it’s funny, because I think the person that does it best in the film is your grandfather. He was the most reconciling person, right? And yet he was in Mississippi, right? And in that position, I would love to hear kind of your thoughts too, about, you know, as right now our country is struggling to reconcile a lot of racial conflicts. I think your film is so powerful in that it is showing that picture, right?
What have you guys been experiencing? And thinking? And how has it been discovering the story change your thought, in terms of the role of Asian Americans in the reconciling of racial tensions in our country as a whole?
Larissa Lam: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, this idea that Asians were in the middle in the south in terms between stuff between Black and White, I think that is somewhat key in the sense that we have an opportunity to actually bring people together and have, in a sense, I would like to see our role elevated to that.
And I think a lot of times, our community hasn’t seen us, you know, we’ve kind of stayed out of the way it’s like, okay, we’ll just, you know, duke it out, or, or, or let other people do get out, you know, whether it’s Black and White, or whoever, and like, we’re gonna stay out of it. You know, we keep quiet, we do our thing, we stay in our lane, we’re good.
And we’ve realized during this pandemic, if we stay in our lane, it hasn’t made a difference. People have now actually, there’s been more vitriol and there’s been more, you know, racism towards our community, because we haven’t shown people and interacted with other communities, about our history, and also just our humanity.
And so I think in this time, especially with the church, you know, just as Baldwin was saying, because faith unites us, I think, the Asian American church has a perfect opportunity to lead this conversation, to bring people together. And, you know, it’s a unique position, because I think also understanding the history that we show in our film, you know, it’s, it’s not just about the faith, but there’s other things that connect us.
There is a history in this country of discrimination. And I know that’s also like a difficult thing for our community, because we only want to spotlight the good things, right? Like, look at our successes. Look, we’ve overcome all this hardship, as Americans, we didn’t even speak English and look how successful we are.
But to actually look historically and say, like, there are systems in place, especially in the immigration system that have been against us, especially going back to the Chinese Exclusion Act, which has a bit of a misnomer, because by the early 1900s, the exclusion epics expanded to ban all Asian countries from coming into the United States.
And so that’s why you see the large surge after 1965 in this country of immigration. But there were people that were here, and yet we have our histories have been erased or sidelined.
And so I think as a church community, we can recover that, again, not just the history, as we think about in history books, we’re not just talking about elections or wars. But really, the history of Christian Asian families. Like, you know, as we’ve mentioned, there were Chinese Christian families in the Mississippi Delta, the church was instrumental in helping them build mission schools. That history hadn’t been told a whole lot before. So how many other stories of what the church did.
And when we heard this amazing story. We went up to Seattle, there’s a Chinese baptist church there, and there were riots. There were anti Asian riots in the 1870s. So there’s these angry that mob of White people that were literally dragging Chinese people out of their houses and putting them on boats to ship them back to China. And the White pastor of the Baptist Church in Seattle, this is this the story goes after Sunday service. He finished his sermon, grabbed a shotgun rounded, rounded up some congregants and said hey, let’s go down and help the Chinese.
Baldwin Chiu: At this point, the church was not an Asian church. It was not a Chinese church, it was a White church.
Larissa Lam: And so this White pastor went down to the docks and helped a bunch of Chinese. Gave them refuge. And they started a Chinese Mission church. That’s how the church started. Because the church was trying to fight back against the anti Asian racism.
So again, all this history is lost that the church has been the forefront of fighting racism and discrimination for a very, very long time. We just don’t know about it. So I’d love to see the church again, take up that mantle.
Even though we talked about the segregated south. And when we hear about, you know, obviously, there’s a lot of racists that were sitting in church pews that were plantation owners. At the same time, a lot of church leaders, like the ones that helped start the mission schools, were also at the forefront of fighting against segregation, trying to integrate schools.
And so again, we don’t hear about those stories. But a lot of church leaders have been at the forefront of trying to gain equality for people, because that’s the right thing to do. Because God sees us all as equal. Wow,
SOLA Network: Wow. I want to hear all of those stories. Like…
Larissa Lam: There’s so many more!
SOLA Network: I mean if there’s any that come to mind, right now, I would love to hear them because I never knew that story.
Larissa Lam: We didn’t know until we went and showed it in Seattle. And in fact, you know, there’s a major Asian American Museum, Luke Wing Museum. I’m sorry, the Wing Luke Museum, in Seattle. And it’s the only Asian American Museum, where the other museums are generally about the Japanese American or Chinese American.
And, you know, they have all these exhibits of like, Buddhists, and you know, Hinduism, and all these other, you know, Eastern religions. I’m like, how come there’s nothing in this museum about any of the Asian American churches that we know have a strong presence in the history of Seattle? And that is the important thing. It’s like, Oh, you know, we talked in class, we’re like, oh, we have some stuff in our church, like you have it in your church. But how come the rest of the people don’t know about this.
And there’s so many stories like that all around the different cities, and American, every state where there’s been a presence of agents and even Asian Christians that I think is important to contribute to the general knowledge of the public.
SOLA Network: Wow. I am now like, wanting to tell my head pastor, we should pay for historians. Like…
Larissa Lam: Yeah, we’re learning like, yeah, the local university, the archivist is a local museum, you know, that what the church is doing here, again, documenting, archiving, and sharing with local libraries, you know, like libraries become a local hub for as being a museum. Universities have archives, I mean,
Baldwin Chiu: Write an Op-ed for the newspaper, because once it goes in there, it’s forever.
Larissa Lam: Yeah, there’s so many ways to make our stories more permanent. And that’s another, you know, hope with what our film is that inspires other people, as we said, to tell their stories, but to tell it in a public manner.
You don’t have to make a fancy documentary, you know, not everyone’s filmmakers like us. But there are little ways like he said, writing a newspaper article contributing artifacts to local museums and universities and libraries.
And those are the little things that we can do as a community to make our presence known. So that again, we start to have the general public, not see us as foreign. That we’re part of the fabric of America that we do belong, and we have a long lineage here that they need to know about.
SOLA Network: Wow, I’m inspired, so inspired. And I hope that all of our viewers and our readers are going to be inspired too.
And so the last question is, for those viewers, and for those readers that are going to watch this film, and be like, I never knew this, hear this interview, and just like me, I never knew this. What’s your encouragement for those next steps? Right? You’ve got your average is a good word, right? But you got your average, right, Asian American Christian, and this is a whole new world for them. How do you encourage them, this is how God wants you to keep going?
Baldwin Chiu: First. And first of all, I would just invite people to you know, go to our website, FarEastDeepSouth.com. We have resources there to help lead people to kind of get to understand the genealogy and resources of learning about family history, and follow what we’re doing.
But of course, we have screening events listed on there, and you can find out how you can watch our film. If you’re in the university system, we’re on canopy. And so university students can generally get get access to the film. Of course contacting us directly to start maybe setting up some screening events, as we continue to work on getting a more national and international exposure to our film.
But I think that’s the first step is, you know, come to our website, look up our resources. They’re there for people to learn more about themselves. And of course, to learn more about our film and how to watch it. And then there’s some other steps we could do as well.
Larissa Lam: Yeah, I mean, there’s actually some kind of what I like to say, like plug and play opportunities for you to actually get your story out there. One of them is the Tenement Museum in New York. It has a digital exhibit called your story, Our Story, Your Story. And we actually have a couple of our artifacts. You know, we took a picture of Baldwin’s letterhead from his grandfather’s store. And another item, the Bible. Oh, yes, the Bible. So there’s a photo of the Bible and the story behind it sitting under the Digital Archive for everybody to see. That’s another way and you can submit your stories through their website as well.
I believe there’s a link on our website, but you can go to the Tenement Museum to also find those links.
And you know, there’s other opportunities like that, to just be able to kind of plug and play University of Minnesota also is collecting like immigrant stories, you know, of America. I mean, all of us are immigrants, except for the native, you know, indigenous people here.
And so no matter your no matter your work, regardless of your ethnic background, they want to collect the stories of people here in America. And so looking for those opportunities at various museums and universities and digital archives to again, just get it out there.
And just turn on your phone and push the voice recorder and just sit down and start talking to family members. And that you’re ready, you’re already like documenting that and what you do with that next, you know. There’s so many creative ways you can do that. If you’re if you’re student, you can start writing your next paper or next assignment, maybe centered around your family story. I mean, there’s a lot of ways that you can start putting some of this into practice.
SOLA Network: Wow, I look forward to the world in which we are going into, and I’m so inspired by your film. Thank you so much for coming.
Again, FarEastDeepSouth.com for all of those resources, and we’ll link to it on SOLA Network.
Thank you again, Larissa and Baldwin, for sharing your stories and for sharing your film. And I hope that many of our viewers will be blessed by it.