“Have you eaten?” This common Chinese greeting is the title of the book, but for author and director Kwan Cheuk-chung — and nearly every restaurateur he interviewed on his Chinese restaurant tour of 15 countries on five continents — food is just the entry point. Because “running a Chinese restaurant is the easiest way for new Chinese immigrants to integrate into the host society,” Kwan writes in his memoir-cum-travelogue, “the best way to tell the stories of the overseas Chinese is to listen to the stories of Chinese restaurant owners.”

Born in Hong Kong, raised in Singapore and Japan, and now living in Canada, Kwan Cheuk-chung begins his journey on the vast plains of Saskatchewan. There, we meet Noycee King, a retired Chinese bar owner who was born in the coastal province where Kwan Cheuk-chung’s grandfather grew up. At the age of 12, Noycee King came to Vancouver as a “paper child” at the height of Canada’s Chinese Exclusion Act. To allow him entry, his father obtained the identification documents of the late Canadian resident Zhou Jinguo (sound), and Noycee King kept this name for the rest of his life. For years, he toiled in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant until he was called back to China to marry the bride his family had chosen for him. The couple returned to Canada, opened their own Chinese bar in a remote prairie town, raised seven children, and sold egg rolls and chop suey: neither of which are Canadian dishes, and Noycee King said,It’s not what “Chinese people would eat”.

Noisy King’s life trajectory bears striking resemblance to that of “Trinidadian Chinese entrepreneur” Morris Song, who worked as a helper in his father’s grocery store in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, and later opened a Chinese restaurant with his newlywed wife, who was sent from his hometown Longgang Village near Hong Kong.

From the Arctic to Africa to the Amazon, resilience, economic pragmatism and resourcefulness connect the lives of Chinese immigrant restaurateurs around the world and inspire their creations. Forged by the same powerful spirit of adaptation and endurance, chop suey is not so different from wontons in Madagascar or beef stir-fry in Peru, marrying local ingredients with Chinese cooking techniques.

What’s most fascinating about Kwan’s work is how Chinese restaurants have become a kind of test kitchen for immigrants, where they try out their own quest for a better life, no matter how murky the outcome of that quest may be. As in the case of Noisy Kim and Morris Song, many began their migration journey as children, unable to determine their own fate; adults often become children because of the uncertainty and insecurity that comes with displacement. Kwan’s subjects describe the lifestyles they seek to achieve through migration, which often become wrenching compromises amid economic hardship and racial discrimination. “We’ve always felt that we’re just staying here temporarily,” a South African restaurant owner tells him. “This place actually belongs to the white people. We’re just encroaching on their space. It was never supposed to be ours.”

Perhaps it’s his experience as a documentary filmmaker that has led Kwan to divide his story into chapters by location, but the more compelling plot is about the evolution of a multigenerational family over time. Opening a Chinese restaurant is hard work, and it’s often just the beginning of a fulfilling life. First-generation immigrants like Noisy Kim and Morris Song’s fathers charted a path so that the second generation would have the resources to maintain a solid, if not glamorous, livelihood. One of the painful paradoxes of running a family restaurant is that immigration can tear the nuclear family apart. “This is the story of many Chinese immigrants,” Kwan writes. “The wives left behind, the children they never knew, and the second marriages in distant places.”

Even when families are intact, the split can still be felt at the level of personal identity. Kwan describes the homesickness he felt during his peripatetic childhood, the loss of leaving a new home he barely knew, and the bits of himself he saw in his subjects. Wherever he went, Kwan couldn’t help asking the same question to everyone he met: As an overseas Chinese, are you defined by your ethnicity or race? Another way to phrase the question might be: Where is my home? For Kwan, there is more than one answer. “I have six homes,” he confesses: Gaogang Village, his grandfather’s hometown, which he has never visited; Hong Kong, where he was born; Singapore and Tokyo, where he spent his adolescence; Berkeley, California, where he understood his Asian American identity; and Toronto, where he found his voice.

Kwan’s book is a love letter to so many of his hometowns, and a commemoration of his journeys from these places, with these themes reflected through the lives of strangers from far away. “To me, home is where you feel you belong,” Kwan writes at the end of the book. Writing is also a form of self-control. Although the book describes the lives of many people who have to leave their own ambitions to future generations, it is driven by his control over one’s own identity and his assessment of the nature of belonging.

“Opening a restaurant was never my dream, but our generation had no choice,” said a Norwegian restaurateur born in Hong Kong, echoing Noisy King’s sentiment that he “never wants his children to be ‘wash and wash’ like him.” When Kwan Cheuk Chung told Noisy King that his children must be proud of him, his response could hardly conceal the pride the old man longed for: “They should be. I raised them. I gave them all an education.”

“Have you eaten? Stories from Chinese restaurants around the world”| Author: Guan Zhuozhong | 260 pages | Pegasus Publishing | US$27.95