 Song of the Exile, based on the 13-part documentary series Chinese Restaurants, tells the story of the Chinese diaspora through its most recognizable and enduring icon - the family-run Chinese restaurant. Filmmaker Cheuk Kwan takes us on a tour of restaurants in Israel, South Africa and Turkey, bringing us into the lives of three extraordinary families as they share moving stories of struggle, courage, displacement and belonging, and what it means to be "Chinese" today. In Haifa we find the Yan Yan Restaurant established by Chinese Vietnamese refugee Kien Wong. Kien is a devout Christian who evangelizes Chinese migrant workers and expatriates. His children, meanwhile, variously negotiate their complex identities as Christian Chinese Israelis in a Jewish homeland surrounded by Arab states, rocked by Palestinian uprisings and steeped in religious orthodoxy - in a country where religion and ethnic identity are powerful sources of tension as well as solace. The Golden Dragon, started by community activist Lam Al Ying, is Cape Town s first Chinese restaurant. Ying s widow Onkuen and his daughter Maylee now continues his legacy. Through the mother-daughter team from the restaurant we glimpse a country struggling to address the bitter injustices and betrayals of its apartheid past. Strangers in a strange land who kept to themselves, the divided Chinese community is only now shaking off its confusion to claim its place in the new South Africa. In Istanbul, we visit the China Restaurant, Turkey s oldest Chinese restaurant opened in 1957 by the late Wang Zhengshan, a Chinese Muslim. Wang was a high government official who fled with his family in a dramatic trek over the Himalayas in 1949 when Chinese Communists looked set to win the civil war, thereby earning a place in urban legend as the man who "walked from China". Wang died in 1961, leaving his widow Fatima and eight children struggling to survive. Now as Fatima contemplates retiring, the restaurant faces an uncertain future. Together these family histories illustrate the wider story of Chinese migration, settlement and integration, and celebrate the resilience and complexity of the Chinese diaspora. Set against events that have sparked some of the past century s most dramatic global migrations, Song of the Exile recounts histories that have remained in the margins of official records, showing us communities whose culture and identity are held together by a kinship that is stronger than mere nationalism, religion, language, geography or politics.