My Life In China

Due to my own Kurdish background, especially nowadays with all the political trouble in East Turkey, I get so caught up in trying to understand the Turkish and Kurdish society in Germany and my family’s story of immigration, that I’m thankful for having stumbled over this beautiful documentary by Chinese-American Kenneth Eng in order to see beyond my owns people’s identity struggle.

In this personal story Eng describes how every immigrant family has someone who leaves their native country behind in search for a better life.

Many times the young Chinese-American has listened to his father’s story about walking for seven days and six nights, before swimming for four hours to Macao to escape communism in 1966. This time he decides to return to China with his father.

I was very moved by Eng’s natural talent of capturing emotions, and moments.

In the documentary he does a splendid job in connecting the audience with his father and himself, even though he is mostly behind the camera, while telling not only his own family story but also the story of immigration as a whole.