Tracing History

2023

13min

Tracing History follows a Chinese American mother and daughter on a road trip to reconnect with their ancestors and each other. They travel to locations in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Great Basin Desert where their Chinese ancestors worked to build the transcontinental railroad. From Montgomery Pass where 150 year old artifacts lay strewn across the ground, to catfish pond where catfish brought by Chinese laborers still survive a 7,000 feet elevation, to Paoha Island on Mono Lake where Chinese finally found refuge after a racist mob chased them out of town. As they travel and retrace their own history they find the space to open up about the present and deepen their relationship to each other.