This gentleman I filmed in Dallas, his parents were Chinese. Born in China. They built a successful business as communism rose through the country in the 1940s, and when it became clear which way things were heading, they did what smart people with means do. They left. Settled in Shanghai for a while, then got out entirely.
And where did they go? Cuba. Beautiful, free, capitalist Cuba. The Paris of the Caribbean. A place where a Chinese family with a work ethic and some capital could build something new.
You already know where this is going.
Out of the pot, into the frying pan. Or maybe out of the frying pan, into a different frying pan. Either way, your kitchen is on fire twice.
Castro came to power. Everything they’d built, again, was at risk. Again. A family that had already fled one communist revolution now found themselves standing inside another one. Different language, different continent, same nightmare.
They left Cuba.
By the time this family landed in America, they had been chased out of two countries by the same ideology. Two businesses built. Two businesses lost. Two sets of friends, communities, and lives left behind.
This man, the one I sat across from, grew up carrying all of that. The stories of Shanghai. The memories of Havana. The gratitude for DFW.
I’m going to tell you something about this interview. This man hated communism more than Ronald Reagan and Hulk Hogan combined. And I don’t mean that as a joke (okay, maybe a little). I mean that his opposition to it was not theoretical. It was not something he read about in a book or heard about from a podcast. It was the defining fact of his family’s existence across three countries and two generations.
When he talked about America, it was with the kind of love that most of us born here have never had to earn. He earned it. His parents earned it. They earned it by losing everything. Twice.
I’ve filmed immigrants from a lot of places. Cuba, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, Central America. The through line is always the same. The people who fought hardest to get here love it the most.
This man’s story is one of the wildest family journeys I’ve ever encountered. Shanghai to Havana to Houston. Three countries, two revolutions, one family that refused to stop building.
His grandkids know the story now. All of it. The parts that were too painful to bring up at dinner, the parts that got glossed over, the parts that nobody thought to ask about.
They know now.
Heritage Films produces personal documentary films across the United States and the world. If your family has a story that spans borders, we’d be glad to help tell it.