The Search for General Tso (2014)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

The General Tso dish is one of the most popular Chinese dishes today. It is mouthwatering and the most demanded in the Chinese Food Industry. This dish is blended to the American tastes, and will make you want to eat some General Tso chicken after you watch the movie. Just like it did to me. Before General Tso everybody loved Cashew Chicken. In the documentary it talks about who made that dish and the back story behind that. It was very lucky to how Cashew Chicken became popular and without his luck he might have never been famous for his widely known dish. Who is General Tso? General Tso was a man of Great Power long ago.The interviews with the Chinese people was very hysterical. I didn't know we would do something like that but it never fails me. Us Americans always try to make everything our own. This documentary is a good detective story and they keep hunting till they find the truth. They went all the way from New York to China to find answers. The truth is buried in layers of Chinese history. General Tso was a general in the 1800's for the Hunan province during the late Qing dynasty. It is unknown why the dish was named after him because he did not name the meal himself and it isn't known that he liked chicken as well. During the Gold Rush in the 1800's the Chinese poured into America and into different big cities. In despite of all the immigrants the Americans created the Chinese Exclusion Act after the rise of Immigrants due to the Gold Rush. Basically attempted to get rid of all the Chinese out of the country. They lost their jobs and had no way of making money due to the discrimination and hatred from Americans. So they turned to owning their own business, and they discovered that if they tend to American taste with Chinese food then they can make money. In China they interviewed a few people about who General Tso is and what they think of the dish. When asked it was comical what their reaction was to the dish and what it was named. General Tso chicken never was heard of, until it became available in Chinese restaurants in the 1970's. One person they interviewed was a collector of Chinese restaurant menus. He had them dated back to the 40's. He held the Guinness World Record for the most number of Chinese menus. He also had a very interesting item which you don't see very often. So old that he had to make a copy of it to preserve it. General Tso has a Museum in China that most people don't know about. They took a tour of it, and they have a portrait of the famous General that everybody has been wanting to see. Nobody knows what he looks like and everyone just knows the name. This documentary definitely explained the whole back story behind the famous dish. It was very interesting and I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in documentaries.

I'm not sure what I expected from The Search for General Tso, but I really got a lot out of it. Being a documentary, I suppose one of its main purposes is to inform and teach the viewer. A few things I learned:1. There really was a General Tso. He seems to have been a very proud man, intent on preserving Chinese culture. And, he never ate the chicken dish bearing his name.2. President Nixon's trip to China not only opened the doors for trade with China, but led to an explosion in Chinese restaurants across the U.S.3. General Tso's Chicken was not created in either China or the U.S. It made it's first appearance in 1955 in Taiwan. And Chef Peng, the creator of General Tso's Chicken, seems unamused in what has happened to his original dish as it's spread across every corner of the U.S.4. Just as I suspected, there is no agreement on how to pronounce Tso. I believe I heard at least four, maybe five, different pronunciations in the film. Pretty funny.Informative and entertaining, The Search for General Tso is a winner.

Full disclosure - my wife's favorite Asian dish is General Tso's chicken. She always looks at the whole menu but more often than not she ends up ordering this. She has had it at any number of different restaurants over the years, it is always a bit different but always good. So when I came across this documentary on Netflix streaming movies I knew I had to see it. The film seeks to answer the question, "Where did this dish come from?" In the process, with contributions of many historians, chefs, and writers I believe the question was answered but we also get a great review of the history of Chinese in the USA, first lured here by the California gold rush.Chinese food was not always popular in the USA, and to help make it more popular many of the traditional Chinese recipes had to be modified to "Americanize" them. But in 1972 President Nixon made a historic trip to Communist China, and part of that telecast showed him eating Chinese food. That provided the spark that resulted in the boom of Chinese, and in general Asian, food in the USA.General Tso was a genuine 19th century military leader, very successful and well-known in China. There are parks, schools, museums, etc named after him. But the origin of General Tso's chicken was in Taipei when China's leader Deng Xiaoping was to visit, and a famous chef was asked to create something special for him. He came up with a chicken dish that he named General Tso's Chicken, just to play off a famous general from the Hunan Province. It was an immediate success and another Chinese chef borrowed the idea and the name and its first appearance on USA menus was in 1970s New York City. Now it is perhaps the best-known and most frequently ordered Chinese dish anywhere. And the way to prepare it is as varied as are the number of restaurants preparing it.Very good documentary, but only for those who enjoy eating.

This amusing film centers around the question "Where did General Tso's chicken come from?" but the movie is more than that. It uses this relatively silly question to frame Chinese mass emigration to the United States starting with the 1849 Gold Rush in California. This is ground that other sorts of live performances, plays, and movies have covered but "The Search for General Tso" has a particular focus on Chinese restaurants as a major force in spreading the Chinese population in the US out from San Francisco during the 20th century using a series of vignettes shot at Chinese restaurants across the country in the most unlikely (Flagstaff and Phoenix, Arizona; Tucumcarrie, New Mexico; Springfield, Missouri) and likely (San Francisco, New York City) places. Apparently, there were 50,000 Chinese restaurants in the US to choose from.The movie discusses the origins of what's perhaps the most popular Chinese dish in America, General Tso. This dish is the seed crystal for the movie's existence. General Tso did exist. He was a 19th century general in China's Hunan province. He never ate General Tso's chicken, which is a 20th century dish that didn't make it to China until it became popular elsewhere. Part of this movie's charm is the step-by-step investigation into the origin and evolution of this dish to suit national palettes.I really enjoyed the light tone of this movie. It and the people interviewed in the movie don't take themselves too seriously. Everyone on screen is having fun and it shows. If the movie has one flaw, and the reason I marked it down from 10 stars, is that it seems to drag at points even with its short run time. But that should not stop you from seeing it. I heard about it on NBC News and quickly found it could be viewed on Amazon Prime for a few bucks. It's not likely to get a national run, so Amazon is a good distribution choice.