Becoming American: The Chinese... on PBS

The conclusion charts what host Bill Moyers calls the “striking rise to the top rung of American life” by many Chinese-Americans since the late 1960s, when national immigration quotas were set aside. Moyers profiles eight successful Chinese-Americans, who describe their struggles. Some had external causes (journalist Helen Zia recalls a 1982 murder that galvanized Detroit's Asian community), but mostly the struggles were simply to succeed. And family pressure was intense. Slacking off, says medical student Jean Tang, “wasn't an option.”