Seeing the world of the Chinese diaspora through the restaurants they created is brilliant. The stories shared are about adaptiveness and resilience, but also about innovation and invention and the creation of new flavours and culinary experiences that have shaped the history of the world. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the kinds of restaurants that Kwan describes were the model for small family-run businesses as a portable technology of the Chinese migrant networks that transformed the globe. If who we are is a product of what we eat, then the invention of Chinese restaurants as a worldwide phenomenon that spanned every ocean and continent has shaped all of us.

In my many decades of traveling across continents and oceans, I’ve come across many enclaves of Chinese immigrants. “Have you eaten yet?” is a phrase I hear often in communities populated by those who came from Canton, the province of my family. More than a casual social greeting, the question conveys to me a sense of familiarity, of culture, history, tradition and of home. It took the keen eye of a great storyteller like Kwan to spin all that to a most enjoyable and meaningful book. Have you read the book yet? If not, what are you waiting for?

Kwan was ahead of his time in taking the form of the culinary travel documentary but merging it with a deep sense of community histories and the vast networks of diaspora. Chinese food may be everywhere yet through Kwan’s research and storytelling, we realize that in each niche it finds itself, it acquires something unique in its translation.

I just finished reading Have You Eaten Yet? and realized how rich, profound and immersive it all is. It is all very familiar to me. I identify with all the people, places and situations in these stories.

An intimate yet sweeping lens on the Chinese diaspora through the institution of the family-run restaurant all around the world. From the jungles of the Amazon, to the heights of the Himalayas, to tropical islands of the Caribbean, to the fjords of Scandinavia, Kwan explores how, as immigrants, all our stories are all different yet all our stories are the same.

A fantastic and important book. The social history and personal individual stories that Kwan shares brings to life what it means to be a Chinese immigrant navigating life in a foreign land. He highlights the strong sense of identity that so many Chinese immigrants possess, consciously or unconsciously, connecting them to their Chinese heritage, through food, so that no matter how disconnected or displaced, whether in Trinidad, Cuba or Madagascar, one can draw from it, be nourished by it and share it. Kwan brings us closer to understanding our human experience, whether Chinese or non-Chinese, immigrant or non-immigrant, so that we may take away the human stories that ultimately bind, connect, and inspire us all.