This free streaming program requires registration.
Chef Janet Yu, owner of Hollywood East Café in Wheaton, Maryland, shares stories and prepares recipes from her home kitchen that draw upon her family’s heritage from Taishan, a village in the Guangdong Province of China. Yu talks about her work preserving and sharing Chinese food culture in the Greater Washington, D.C., area and how doing so is a vital form of advocacy. She also discusses her role as a mentor and the ways mentorship can maintain cultural bonds and identities as well as empower a new generation of chefs, cooks, and food entrepreneurs.
Additional Programs with the Food for the People: Eating and Activism in Greater Washington series
About the Food for the People Program Series
This spring series of virtual cooking demonstrations and conversations features women chefs in the greater Washington, D.C., area. The programs highlight their work to achieve food justice and community empowerment. Drawing from the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum’s new exhibition, Food for the People: Eating and Activism in Greater Washington, the focus is on women’s roles as changemakers and community leaders in the past—and during recent challenges.
The collaboration among two Smithsonian museums and Smithsonian Associates offers fresh insights into American culture, past and present, through the lens of food. Each program is hosted by Smithsonian moderators and features a guest chef who prepares a recipe and explores the history and tradition behind its ingredients, culinary techniques, and community meaning. The chefs also shed light on their personal stories and their activism and advocacy in and around the Washington area.
Discover how food lies at the heart of cultural identities and can be used to communicate fundamental values of racial and social justice.
Programs are presented with support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative.
Patron Information
- If you register multiple individuals, you will be asked to supply individual names and email addresses so they can receive a Zoom link email. Please note that if there is a change in program schedule or a cancellation, we will notify you via email, and it will be your responsibility to notify other registrants in your group.
- Unless otherwise noted, registration for streaming programs typically closes two hours prior to the start time on the date of the program.
- Once registered, patrons should receive an automatic email confirmation from CustomerService@SmithsonianAssociates.org.
- Separate Zoom link information will be emailed closer to the date of the program. If you do not receive your Zoom link information 24 hours prior to the start of the program, please email Customer Service for assistance.
- View Common FAQs about our Streaming Programs on Zoom.
