P.G.’s Chinese fishing village story is powerfully told by its descendants in a new interactive film.

The burning of a Chinese fishing village on the shores of Pacific Grove in 1906 continues to reverberate through the town’s history to the present – two years ago, P.G. City Council issued an official apology for the fire and racism endured by Chinese immigrants and their descendants. It’s a story known to locals, but it remains largely unknown beyond the Monterey Peninsula. A new film aims to change that.

“The fact that the story was not well known was an injustice,” says Chelsea Tu, executive director of the nonprofit Monterey Waterkeeper. The organization partnered with the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History to secure a $42,000 grant from Oakland-based foundation Coastal Quest to create an interactive film by Santa Cruz filmmaker David Waller, which is paired with a school curriculum. The film, Chinese Fishing Villages of Monterey Bay, features the three villages that were founded at Point Lobos, Point Alones in P.G. and in Monterey.

Monterey Waterkeeper works in part to protect the coastline with equity as an underlying value, Tu says. Amplifying the story of the economic and social contributions of the Chinese who pioneered the region’s fishing industry was a natural fit. Her own family immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan when she was 10. They came by plane, but she felt a kinship with the Chinese immigrants who traveled by boat to Point Lobos around 1850. Like them, Tu’s family faced economic challenges as well as instances of racism.

Museum staff were already developing a program with Greenfield Unified School District to bring students from inland Monterey County – many of them the children of immigrants themselves – to learn about the Chinese immigrants. Waller contacted Liese Murphree, the museum’s director of education and outreach, about making a film about the museum itself. Murphree suggested he make one about the fishing villages instead. Waller had never heard their stories, but a visit to the museum’s exhibit sparked his interest.

“This, for me, is the story of a lifetime,” Waller says. “It is an important story not only of people from China, not only of California, America and the past, but the present and the future.”

Waller worked with museum staff and direct descendants of the village, as well as other experts, to tell the story in a way easily understandable to classrooms of different levels.

Using historical photographs, art and interviews, the film is broken into sections covering history and sharing stories of the immigrants as told by descendants. Short chapters explain why the immigrants made the harrowing journey by boat from China, the challenges they faced once in the U.S. and how they are remembered through the annual Walk of Remembrance, founded by the late Gerry Low-Sabado, a fifth-generation descendant who died in 2021. Low-Sabado’s legacy looms large in the film – her husband, Randy Sabado, speaks on her behalf.

In addition, the film highlights the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, P.G.’s Feast of Lanterns and the contributions by Chinese immigrants to the fishing industry and science.

A free screening of Chinese Fishing Villages of Monterey Bay takes place at 5:30pm Thursday, Nov. 21 at the P.G. Museum of Natural History, 165 Forest Ave., Pacific Grove. 648-5716, pgmuseum.org. It's now available on the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History website. Click here to view it.