on Chinese food in America by my former colleague Lola Ogunnaike. Produced by the lovely Ethel Bass. We actually filmed at an Empire Szechuan, a descendent of the original restaurant that sparked the delivery revolution. I asked Lola what was different from print and television, and one of the things is how much logistics are involved. For a two-minute segment it took two guys with three cameras three hours to get all the footage.

My favorite story of the afternoon: one of the cameramen lives in Queens. A few years ago during the fall, his friendly next door neighbors (who were Chinese) gave him and his wife a winter melon, a popular Chinese vegetable. The camera man and his wife didn’t know what to do with it, so they hollowed it out, carved a face in it — a jack o-melon.

Because that is what Americans do with gourds:  make pie or a Halloween decoration. 

The Chinese neighbors were highly amused.