Death in Cambodia, Life in America: A Donut Kid’s Podcast About Her Father
“I was 14 years old.”
“That’s when you knew your life was going to change?”
“Yes… in my mind, I think, my parents will be tortured — or killed — soon.”
Dorothy Chow is Vice President of Sales at B&H Bakery Distributors, the biggest distributor to independent donut shops in Northern California. Dorothy grew up in the Bay Area and attended college at UC San Diego, where she earned an Economics degree. In 2017, after two post-grad years working in digital marketing, Dorothy joined the business that her father started 30 years ago.
Last month, I spoke to Dorothy about her father Robert Chau, and the podcast which she has just produced, Death in Cambodia, Life in America. This English-language podcast is a recent series of conversations that Dorothy has had with her father about his life’s journey. The podcast launched on June 20, 2021 — Father’s Day.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jaspal: Can you tell us who you are and what you do?
Dorothy: My name is Dorothy Chow and I’m currently the operations manager and VP at B&H. And the CEO-in-training.
JS: And what does B&H do?
DC: B&H is a bakery donut supplier. We distribute all throughout Northern California from Sacramento to Bakersfield, supplying donut, mixes, icings, all the things that you would need to run a donut shop.
JS: Tell us about your podcast…
DC: This has been a lifelong goal of mine. Growing up, I had always heard about things that my father had lived through through dinner table conversations. We’d be at home and we’d be all sipping wine and little bits and pieces of tragedy that he’s lived through would slip out. Every time that happened, the room would go completely silent and all of us would be gripping onto this story that he’s telling about his past.
It always made me feel like, “Wow, what has this guy really lived through?”
I had always been interested in history. History was always my favorite subject in college. When moving back home, I realized we are not getting any younger. Dad’s not getting any younger. And sooner or later, if we don’t capture these stories, these stories will be lost.
The greatest lesson of COVID has been that life is short and that our time is not guaranteed. It pushed me to figure out a way to capture his story. I’m not very good at writing, but I can talk and I can press the record button. So over the past year I’ve been working hard on this, watching a bunch of YouTube videos, Googling whatever I can to put together some mics and put together the software or whatever I need to put together.
And here we are, ready to launch.
JS: What was that first conversation like with your dad — when you said you wanted to do a podcast?
DC: He didn’t really know what a podcast was. He asked, “What is that?” So I had to explain to him that it’s kind of like a radio show that you can listen to anytime. Anybody can follow along and subscribe to it and your story will be out there for people who want to listen. He was very, very excited. I don’t think it really, really hit him though, that I was actually going to follow through with this until he came over to our house and saw the setup that I had put up.
I remember that first day. He walked into the room and he said, “Oh, this looks so professional. Yeah, we’re actually doing this.” And that got him really, really excited.
In addition to the two episodes that you’ve listened to, on the launch date, there will be an Episode 0. And that episode will be the first time that I hit record. And the both of us, you can hear us. We’re both testing the mic. “Testing one, two, three testing.” And I say, “Ba, say something” and he says, “I’m nervous.” And that’s going to be our Episode 0.
He hasn’t gone back to these stories in 50 years, and for good reason. Because it hurts. He never had hesitation about telling his story, but I don’t think he thought we were ever going to go that deep.
JS: Did he ever have any hesitations about the podcast? Or times where he said, “I don’t want to share that part of the story”?
DC: That’s a really good question. He never had hesitations about wanting to share the story, but there were definitely episodes where I had to stop the recording once we start getting into the really deep dark stuff.
We will be covering torture, murder, rape, starvation — all the things that he’s witnessed. There had been times when we were in the middle of those episodes and I can tell that he has a shield up. He’s not going into it deep enough. He’s not allowing himself to go all the way. At those times, we’ve had to stop the recording and I said, “Hey Ba, I think you’re glazing over this. I don’t think you’re you’re, you’re transporting yourself back. We’re going to do this again.” And we’d do it a second time.
And he would be crying all the way through because he knows himself. He hasn’t gone back to these stories in 50 years, and for good reason. Because it hurts. He never had hesitation about telling his story, but I don’t think he thought we were ever going to go that deep.
JS: How important is it that it was you interviewing your dad?
DC: I think the only reason that we were able to go this deep was because at the end of the day, it was just me. It was him talking to his daughter about what he had lived through, not some fancy book writer or somebody who he doesn’t have a really good relationship with. I say to him quite often, “If somebody were to write your book, I don’t think it would have come out the same. I don’t think you would have allowed yourself to go to this point.”
My father is a very, very rigid … strong man. I mean, you’ve met him before. He’s very funny. He’s very nice, but I mean, I’ve never seen the man cry besides maybe four times in my life. And he wouldn’t have allowed himself to get to that point had it not been just me and him talking.
JS: What do you want to come out of this podcast?
DC: Worst case scenario, nobody listens to it. I’ve got a story to pass on to my great, great grandchildren. And so they can learn, have something, a piece of their heritage, a piece of their, of my dad’s legacy of all the lessons that he’s learned of the things that he’s lived through and that they can have something to remember him by.
I’m okay with that if that’s what it is. Another reason why I’m doing this too is that we take a lot of things for granted. I think it’s important to remind people that life is really, really precious. And it’s been so cool to listen to these stories that have really built my dad into the strong man that he is today. These things that he’s lived through have been the building blocks that have created such a strong person to be so successful in America. He always says, “If I can do it, anybody can do it.” He wants to be that inspiration for people. He wants to remind people, “if I can live through a genocide and be lucky enough to survive I’m not going to waste a minute of this life. I was given this. How come I got to live and they didn’t?”
So if anybody can listen to this podcast and feel inspiration or strength, that is, that is all he wants. And that is all that we want.
JS: So, what has Robert created since he’s come to America?
DC: The purpose of B&H has always been for my dad to help his own community. When he was building these donut shops, he realized that there was really only one or two big monopoly companies supplying the ingredients to these Cambodian donut shops who own 95% of the donut shops in California.
All of them have their own stories and have lived through tremendous trauma from their past. He wanted to figure out a way to help them. So B&H is a company that supplies the ingredients that donut shops, Cambodian donut shops need to help, you know, to, to keep on going. It gives them another option so that they don’t have to rely on the big bajillion dollar conglomerate.
It allows him to make peace with his past, which is something that he hasn’t really been able to do. The other day he said to me, “I don’t get any more nightmares. I used to get nightmares my whole life. And they were always about me in Cambodia. I was always in Cambodia, I was the Khmer Rouge soldier or another person who was watching a third person. It was always the Khmer Rouge.”
JS: It sounds like you’ve got a really particular ritual for recording the podcast. Can you walk us through one of these sessions?
DC: We do our episodes on Sunday mornings, first thing in the morning, 7:30. He comes over to my house and I have dedicated a guest room — that’s basically my recording room which is not very professional. We have taken these big blankets and then hammered them to the wall windows to block out some of the sounds. And we have these plastic chairs for the two of us.
We do it in the morning Sunday because we’re both very fresh, and it’s very quiet. It allows him to really get in the right mind space to talk about what we’re going to be talking about. I’ve got a tissue box right in front of him. And we always have a cup of tea or something to help us out.
But there’s no real process. I wanted the podcast to sound very much like you were invited over to our house and you were just listening to this guy tell his story. I wanted to really just feel like a fireside chat. Like you were watching us interact just as father and daughter. I press record and I don’t edit too much of the stuff out.
The coolest thing too has been, watching this process be a kind of therapy for him. Every Sunday, he tells me, “Wow, I’ve lived through a lot.”
It’s a reminder of the stuff that he has gone through and the kind of life that he’s lived. It allows him to make peace with his past, which is something that he hasn’t really been able to do. You know, the coolest thing is the other day he said to me, “I don’t get any more nightmares. I used to get nightmares my whole life. And they were always about me in Cambodia. I was always in Cambodia, I was the Khmer Rouge soldier or another person who was watching a third person. It was always the Khmer Rouge.”
He said he has had nightmares his entire life. As of recently he doesn’t get nightmares anymore. And I think that is. That is the greatest gift I can get.
JS: Who is the audience for your podcast?
DC: American-born Cambodian people, kids like me whose parents never allowed them to really ask these questions — all of us. And when I say all of us, I’m talking about the other donut kids like me who have always wanted to know.
But, I mean it’s hard. It’s hard for the parents if they’re not in the right mindset. For example, my mother would never have been open to doing this. It hurts way too much. She has already closed that door. She’s never told me one story of her past.
I can see how this can be interesting for us donut kids who know that something has happened, but we don’t know exactly what happened because we never had the opportunity to really sit down and have a platform to just say, “This is a space where you can just let go.”
I’ve only seen this man cry three or four times in my life. The first time was him visiting Cambodia and seeing where he grew up - and the second, third and fourth times were in my podcast room. So it goes to show really how, how deep we went, that we really did touch a cord in producing this.
JS: I remember when I first met you and your dad together a couple years ago at your headquarters. You seem like somebody who understands your dad really well. What did you learn about your dad from this project?
DC: I would say I’m the most like my father out of the four siblings. And I’m the youngest and I’m the only one that decided to come home and work with him.
He’s not an easy man. But I understand him because I think I have a lot of traits like him, so I can be patient with him because I get him. I understand him.
I learned that he’s human. My entire life he had always been such a strong figure, a really strong figure. He’s the eldest son of the family. So financially he has taken care of all of my aunties and uncles. Which you will learn when we get to America, how he continued to keep working, to pay off my auntie’s pharmacy school and then my uncle’s down payment for his first house. And he kept giving and giving and giving to just try to pull everyone up.
He’s always been such a strong figurehead of the family. Really, really … unemotional almost. And through this process, I realized that that had been built through what he has gone through. That he is a normal guy, just like other people, that he has just gone through so much. He has lived through so much.
I’ve only seen this man cry three or four times in my life. The first time was him visiting Cambodia and seeing where he grew up — and the second, third and fourth times were in my podcast room. So it goes to show really how, how deep we went, that we really did touch a cord in producing this.
JS: Did you learn anything about yourself from this experience?
DC: I guess I didn’t realize how passionate I would be about this. I didn’t know what to expect, really. But the more we got into the stories, the more I realized how important this was. And every episode, every Sunday, I just think to myself, “Oh my God, this is important.”
I need to continue this project. I had this growing sense of passion for sharing this story, more so than I ever had in my entire life,
Starting off this project, I didn’t realize how much it would mean to me. But now in the depths of it, I feel as if this is something that I was meant to do. Somehow it feels so right.
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