Curtis Chin grew up in a Chinese restaurant. He’s on a 300-city tour to save others.

Curtis Chin learned about the world through the four walls of his family’s restaurant.

“Even though I worked in the family business for as much as 80 hours a week, I still felt like I saw the city, because the city came to our restaurant,” says Mr. Chin from a boba shop.

For six decades, Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine was a cultural crossroads. Its tables served everyone in Detroit, from the city’s first Black mayor to its drag queens to Jewish families seeking Christmas meals. For young Curtis, it was home. He did homework in the dining room, read newspapers at empty tables, and engaged with the many people from all walks of life who graced Chung’s. 

“I thought that’s what my life would be,” continues Mr. Chin. “I thought I’d just be a waiter because my dad had inherited it from his dad, who had inherited it from his dad.” Instead, he became a TV screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, and co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York. 

His 2023 memoir, “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant,” is a coming-of-age tale set in the 1980s against Detroit’s declining auto industry. Packed with humor, it chronicles Mr. Chin’s upbringing, from running food orders after school starting at age 10 to becoming a first-generation college student at the University of Michigan.  

Now on a 300-city book tour, he stops at historic eateries like China Pearl Restaurant in Boston. He hosts roundtable talks with family-owned businesses to raise awareness of the struggles of Chinese restaurants and Chinatowns. 

The Monitor’s Troy Aidan Sambajon caught up with Mr. Chin in Boston’s Chinatown to talk about his memoir and new project: a six-part docuseries on the history of Chinese restaurants in America. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q: In your memoir, you recount your experience growing up in Detroit’s Chinatown. What does Chinatown mean to you, and how has that changed over time?

Food and family – that’s what Chinatown means to me. I have great memories of my childhood, despite the fact that there were all these terrible things going on in Detroit. 

But now there’s this combination of feeling nostalgic in Chinatown, yet recognizing that so many family-owned businesses are under duress. You find a favorite restaurant, and then suddenly it’s gone. ...  

I see that happening everywhere. The Chinatowns are shrinking. They’re under pressure from gentrification. The population is moving out. So I’d like to help in any way to sort of preserve these spots, because they’re still necessary. 

Q: In the book, you portray your family’s restaurant as a vital community hub. How do restaurants function as anchors for their communities? [Chung’s closed in 2000, after the death of Mr. Chin’s father.]

I always grew up understanding that the restaurant was important to my family because we saw it as an opportunity. But I didn’t realize that what my parents were also doing was providing the community with a space – not just for the Chinese but also for the local Detroit community. 

Detroit through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s was really falling apart, and there were fewer and fewer places to build connections. One place you could always turn to was our restaurant. 

I’ve actually been really dismayed that we live in a world that’s very divided right now. We don’t talk to each other. Chinese restaurants are one of the few places where you can go and see people from different races, classes, or socioeconomic backgrounds. If we can just use that opportunity to start talking to each other again – even if it’s just leaning across the table and saying, “Hey, what are you eating?” 

These are the baby steps we need to take as a country to start getting along with each other again. 

Q: You’re on a 300-city book tour – including 14 stops at historic Chinese eateries – that you’ve called your crusade to save Chinese restaurants. What does a community like Chinatown lose when businesses like Chung’s close?

The building that housed our restaurant – which has been abandoned for 20 years – was recently renovated, and I was approached about reopening our family’s business. That’s how beloved the restaurant is 20 years later. People still ask, “Would you be reopening the restaurant?” These days, I still fantasize about it. 

[When a restaurant closes] it’s not just a loss for that family and that part of history, but think about all the customers that may have been going there for multiple generations.

If I can raise some awareness, maybe it can help a restaurant get through the month. ... I mean, having 10 extra customers every week might be the difference, right? 

That’s really the thrust of this tour. I’m trying to build those connections and allow the restaurant owners to tell their own stories. These restaurants are beloved in the community. But because they’ve been here so long, it’s very easy to forget they’re still struggling. 

That idea of an immigrant family, starting a family business and working their way up, and using education as an opportunity, is still very strong in America. It’s a vital link in the immigrant story.