chinese restaurants. each is archived in a spreadsheet that he has maintained for four decades, along with thousands of restaurant business cards and menus. here s mr chan explaining me a little earlier why he decided to start visiting chinese restaurants across the country. well, when i was a kid, there were not a lot of chinese here in los angeles or the united states because of the chinese exclusion laws. most chinese my age back then were american born and highly americanized. and it wasn t until i went to college there was the beginnings of the ethnic pride movement, and i was fascinated to learn that chinese americans had their own history in the united states. at the same time, the chinese exclusion acts were being repealed, and you started to see the first migration of immigrants from china