{"id":20712,"date":"2020-11-25T15:02:20","date_gmt":"2020-11-25T23:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=films&p=20712"},"modified":"2025-01-14T11:15:05","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T19:15:05","slug":"the-donut-king","status":"publish","type":"films","link":"https:\/\/dipsy.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/the-donut-king\/","title":{"rendered":"The Donut King"},"content":{"rendered":"

Co-Presented by Center For Asian American Media<\/a> (CAAM).<\/p>\n

An immigrant story with a (glazed) twist, <\/span>The Donut King<\/i><\/b> follows the journey of Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy, who arrived in California in the 1970s and, through a mixture of diligence and luck, built a multi-million dollar donut empire up and down the West Coast.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After Ngoy escaped the brutal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, he eventually was able to start his first donut shop in Orange County, California, and his Christy\u2019s Doughnuts became a rapidly expanding chain of success. Over the next decade, Ngoy also sponsored hundreds of visas for incoming Cambodian refugees and offered them steady employment in his donut shops. But after living his version of the American Dream, everything came crashing down for Ngoy.<\/span><\/p>\n

A story of immigration, assimilation, prejudice, and who gets access to the American Dream\u2014and what happens when you achieve it\u2014<\/span>The Donut King <\/span><\/i>is also about how the American Dream gets handed down and evolves from one generation to the next: the film includes the current generation of Cambodian donut shop owners and the ways they have been inspired by and diverged from their parents and grandparents before them.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Co-Presented by Center For Asian American Media (CAAM). An immigrant story with a (glazed) twist, The Donut King follows the journey of Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy, who arrived in California in the 1970s and, through a mixture of diligence and luck, built a multi-million dollar donut empire up and down the West Coast.\u00a0 After Ngoy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":21376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"topic":[1255,1239,1220],"class_list":["post-20712","films","type-films","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","topic-food","topic-identity","topic-immigration"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Donut King - Independent Lens<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Meet the Donut King, the Cambodian refugee who built a multi-million-dollar empire baking America\u2019s favorite pastry.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dipsy.pbs.org\/independentlens\/documentaries\/the-donut-king\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Donut King | Films | Cambodian Refugee's Donut Empire & American Dream | PBS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hard knocks, redemption, wealth, survival, risk, and donuts\u2014Ted Ngoy\u2019s life story has it all. 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