Hopewell resident Bryan Zhao grew up wondering why the history he learned in school rarely included people who looked like him.
That question eventually took Zhao, now a rising senior at the Peddie School in Hightstown, from advocating for Asian American history in New Jersey classrooms to researching Chinese immigrants in the Mississippi Delta. His work culminated in “Eighty Years at Young’s,” a 10-minute documentary that has already received awards at three film festivals.
On March 1, 1991, in the midst of a heated debate about how American history should be taught in public schools, the Organization of American Historians released a Statement on Multi-Cultural History Education. The defining message of the organization’s position came in this paragraph:
The history curricula of public schools should be constructed around the principle that all people have been significant actors in human events. [History] also encompasses the individual and collective quests of ordinary people for a meaningful place for themselves in their families, in their communities, and in the larger world.
Zhao said that principle resonated with him because, as a young student, he was frustrated that his history lessons never included the experiences of Chinese Americans. He set out to fill that gap on his own.
During a recent presentation at the Hopewell library, Zhao said he began his learning journey by watching the PBS special Asian Americans. In a 2022 op-ed he wrote for this paper, he noted what the special had taught him: I learned that the first wave of Asian immigrants arrived in the continental U.S. in the 1850s; Chinese Americans toiled in the transcontinental railroad, which built the foundation of U.S. industrialization; Filipino American labor groups helped Mexican-American civil rights activists in their protests for farmers rights; and people like Grace Lee Boggs and Yuri Kochiyama were frontrunners in causes such as abolition and liberation. These facts were never taught in school.
He also discovered that the New Jersey Legislature was considering a bill that would require the history of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to be included in the state’s public school history curriculum. He wrote letters to Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Deputy Speaker of the Assembly Pamela Lampitt. He went to the Statehouse in Trenton to testify before the Senate Education Committee. The legislation passed in both houses and was signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in September 2025.
Two summers ago, Zhao traveled to the Mississippi Delta area with his family. With a passion for writing and history, he decided to use the visit to learn about the rise of Chinese grocery stores in Delta towns.
Zhao visited the Mississippi Delta Chinese Heritage Museum, a museum connected to Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, where he learned that the first Chinese to arrive in the Delta worked as sharecroppers. He spoke with museum president Gilroy Chow, a native of Mississippi whose father traveled from China to New Orleans in 1916. Chow was born in Cleveland, Mississippi, but at the age of 5, his family moved to New York City, where his father ran an import-export business from the Empire State Building. Chow returned to Mississippi to attend Mississippi State University, graduating with an engineering degree. From 1966 to 1973, Chow worked as a contractor for NASA. He was one of many people working to get the Apollo 13 crew back home from space.
Zhao’s visit to the Mississippi Delta region lasted two months. Back in New Jersey, it took another 18 months before he had the “aha” moment of what to do with his research. He decided to make a short documentary.
He had recorded interviews using his iPhone and a wireless microphone. He started by transcribing his interviews; then, he wrote the script. He used DaVinci Resolve, a video-creation software program, to create the documentary.
“Eighty Years at Young’s” explores the history of Chinese immigrants coming to America to work as sharecroppers on Mississippi Delta farms. Those sharecroppers eventually became small business owners, many of them opening grocery stores. Interviews with shoppers highlight that these stores are more than shopping venues; they are the lifeblood of small Delta towns.
Zhao’s documentary has received awards at the Princeton Student Film Festival, the Commffest Global Community Film Festival in Toronto and the Documentary Without Borders International Film Festival. Zhao plans to submit the film to other festivals; it is not currently available for public viewing.
