{"id":3191,"date":"2011-01-07T07:48:46","date_gmt":"2011-01-07T12:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/?p=3191"},"modified":"2011-01-07T12:19:51","modified_gmt":"2011-01-07T17:19:51","slug":"donate-to-the-search-for-general-tso-and-get-on-imdb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/07\/donate-to-the-search-for-general-tso-and-get-on-imdb\/","title":{"rendered":"Donate to “The Search for General Tso!” (and get on IMDb)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Help bring General Tso<\/a> and his chickens to a theater near you! <\/p>\n

I am co-producing a feature-length documentary on American Chinese food with the Peabody-award winning team behind King Corn<\/a>, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, called “The Search for General Tso.”<\/a> We think it’s a great way to bring my research to a larger audience in an engaging and informative way.<\/p>\n

And it’s not just us who think that! We got a $40,000 matching developing grant<\/a> [pdf]\u00c2\u00a0from the extremely competitive<\/em> National Endowment for the Humanities. We need your help<\/a>. We have a few weeks to unlock\u00c2\u00a0$13,000+ of that grant. (All the paperwork is due in February). Your donations are tax deductible since it’s a non-profit. Our fiscal sponsor is Arts Engine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That NEH grant, along with generous seed donations, actually helped fund our trip to Taipei to interview the chef who invented General Tso’s chicken, C.K. Peng, last month<\/a>. Chef Peng is 93, so this was an extremely important interview to do ASAP. And it was hilarious. I just finished translating the interview with the editor this week.<\/p>\n

This picture below is a very intense filming of General Tso’s chicken at Chef Peng’s restaurant, Peng’s Agora Garden.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The NEH reviewers gave our proposal extremely high ratings. <\/p>\n

This initial development money will get us a long way to creating a trailer, which is then used to raise more serious funding \u00e2\u20ac\u201d ideally well into the six-figures (or beyond).<\/p>\n

Watch my talk on TED.com from Taste3<\/a> below to get a flavor of the quirky tone of our documentary, which is backed up with extensive research.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/object>
\nAnd yes, as you can see from my video\/research General Tso is a real guy. He’s a Qing Dynasty military hero from Hunan province whose Chinese name is Zuo Zongtang (\u00e5\u00b7\u00a6\u00e5\u00ae\u2014\u00e6\u00a3\u00a0). Zuo is roughly pronounced \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcjuoh.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Here is a picture of him below from a billboard outside his hometown.<\/p>\n

And yes, there were a lot of chicken in that town.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So to show our appreciation. If you donate $88 and above, you can join in on a walking tour of Chinatown street food I am doing in New York City<\/a> on March 5 and 6. If you donate $150 and above, I will send you a signed copy of my book along with a hand-selected Wonton Food fortune (this is where the famed winning Powerball fortunes came from<\/a>). At $500 and above, I’ll send you a book and a real authentic Japanese fortune cookie<\/a>, which I just brought back from Kyoto. If you donate over $2,000, I’ll come and do a talk anywhere in the United States, schedule permitting and travel costs covered. If you want any of these, you must email me at jenny8lee[at]fortunecookiechronicles[at]com<\/p>\n

And for the super-ambitious, at $10,000, you get an IMDb<\/a> listing as a producer! And if you want to be a executive producer (with names on posters and all that), you can donate $100,000 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but don’t do it through credit card, email curt[at]wickedelicate[dot]com (yes, that’s one ‘d’ in Wicked Delicate website. The one with two d’s is a Japanese puppy site<\/a>) <\/p>\n

Email me at jenny8lee[at]fortunecookiechronicles[dot]com for questions, comments, jokes.<\/p>\n

You can enter your donation below, which will take you to Arts Engine system (the fiscal sponsor). Or you can enter directly on the Arts Engine page<\/a>. The General and his chickens thank you!<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

Donation Amount (in $)<\/h2>\n


\n 6% coverage \"Arts <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/form>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Help bring General Tso and his chickens to a theater near you! I am co-producing a feature-length documentary on American Chinese food with the Peabody-award winning team behind King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, called “The Search for General Tso.” We think it’s a great way to bring my research to a larger audience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese-food"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2pydS-Pt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3191"}],"version-history":[{"count":51,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3252,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191\/revisions\/3252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}