Cheuk Kwan

Born in Hong Kong in 1950, Cheuk Kwan grew up in such multicultural environments as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. After obtaining his Masters in systems engineering from the United States, he immigrated to Canada in 1976 to pursue a career in information technology and project management. In 1978, he co-founded The Asianadian, a magazine dedicated to promoting Asian-Canadian arts and cultural activism. The next year, he participated in a national movement to fight for equality and social justice of Chinese Canadians.

As a result of his upbringing and his work as an engineer, Kwan is well-travelled and interacts well with people of all backgrounds and cultures, from the Arabian Peninsula to the Japanese Archipelago.

After twenty years as an engineer, Kwan decided to radically change his career path and enroll in a film workshop at New York University and started Tissa Films. In 2000, he started his long trek around the world with his director of photography in what would become his documentary series, Chinese Restaurants. His journey lasted four years, during which he was able to combine his passion for food and travel along with his natural talent for languages to document stories from the Chinese diaspora.

Kwan's knowledge of English, Japanese, French, and several Chinese dialects allowed him to meet and easily engage with the microsocieties that are Chinese restaurants peppered throughout the “four corners” of the globe. He invites viewers to join him in his thirteen-country voyage, divided into five vignettes: Songs of Exile, On the Islands, Three Continents, Latin Passions, and Beyond Frontiers. Each of his fifteen stops presents an occasion of discovery of how the immigrants have integrated their culinary traditions with the local products to develop a unique Chinese cuisine exemplary of the region.

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