Saturday, September 2, 2023 was another great day at the DDTV studios. Over 100 Asian American leaders gathered on site for the Civic Leadership Forum featuring the premiere screening of “One Mile Walk”.
One Mile Walk is a poignant and moving documentary masterfully filmed and told by Min Zhou who met and befriended the late Gerry Low-Sabado, heroine of our story. Through pure circumstances, Gerry discovered that her great grandmother, Quock Mui, is the first documented Chinese woman born in Monterey and her family was among the first residents of a Chinese fishing village near Point Alones (near where the Monterey Aquarium stands today) that was suspiciously burned down in 1906.
As Gerry sets out to meticulously discover her family history, memories among close relatives were so bitter that they would rather forget than to tell her what had really happened. Through her persistence, she discovered that her great-grandfather, Quock Tuck Lee, was one of the last to leave the Chinese Fishermen village after it was burned down. Racially restricted real estate laws further prevented victims of the fire from settling in nearby Pacific Grove.
Retroactively, the Pacific Grove City Council voted 7-0 in May 2022 to approve a resolution to officially apologize for the burning of the Chinese fishing village, and for racism and discrimination faced by the Chinese over 170 years ago. The historic apology was read aloud on Saturday, May 14, 2022 at the Walk of Remembrance, an annual event created in 2011 by the fifth-generation descendent of the village, the late Gerry Low-Sabado.
The audience also viewed trailers of “My 58 Uncles” and “Born To Fly” produced by our talented Director and Filmmaker Min Zhou. The audience was so moved by the videos that many pledged to participate in this year’s Asian American Stories video Contest. The atmosphere and the camaraderie were so positive that many lingered on after the event, seemingly reluctant to leave.