Chinese War-Zone Restaurant Film Puts Real Baghdad Stories Back in Spotlight

A new Chinese film about a chef who opens a restaurant in the Middle East during wartime has revived public interest in the real Chinese restaurant owners who worked in Iraq after the 2003 war.

"Once Upon A Time in the Middle East," directed by Wen Muye and starring Shen Teng, was released across China on August 11. The film follows Xu Fu, a chef who travels to the Middle East to open a Chinese restaurant to repay debts, and later becomes involved in protecting local children amid war.

During roadshow events, Wen said the film was inspired by the experiences of Chinese people who opened restaurants in the Middle East. As the movie gained attention, Chinese viewers began asking whether Xu Fu was based on a real person.

Some social media users linked the story to Chen Xianzhong, a Chinese restaurant owner in Baghdad whose experience during the Iraq War has been reported by Chinese media.

Chen, from Jilin Province in northeastern China, served in the military before studying Arabic at Peking University. He first arrived in Iraq in 1984 as an interpreter. Over the next 35 years, he witnessed the country’s shift from relative prosperity to postwar instability.

After war broke out in 2003, Chen’s Chinese restaurant in Baghdad reportedly became a neutral refuge because of his Chinese nationality. Foreign journalists, local doctors and displaced children sought shelter there, and Chen allowed them in. He also gave food, accommodation and monthly pay to four Chinese workers from Fujian who had been unable to find jobs locally.

In April 2004, seven Chinese workers were detained by local armed men. According to earlier reports, Chen helped deliver the list of hostages to Sun Bigan, then head of China’s embassy reopening team in Iraq, helping the rescue effort.

Chen himself was later affected by the violence. In 2005, he was kidnapped in Baghdad by armed men who suspected him of helping US-linked operations. Chen said the suspicion was mistaken and that the Chinese workers he had helped were rebuilding a garment factory destroyed by US bombing.

Another Iraq restaurant story involved Liu Lei and Shuai Xuejun, two young men from Shenzhen who appeared on the talk show "A Date With Luyu" in July 2006.

Liu’s account on the talk show was not just about making money in postwar Iraq. He described Baghdad as physically and psychologically crushing: summer temperatures inside a car could reach 63 degrees Celsius, and even at 2 or 3am it could still be around 40 degrees, making sleep nearly impossible.

The violence was just as constant. Liu said a car bomb at the FBI headquarters in Baghdad exploded about 30 meters away and threw him from his bed to the floor. He also recalled that dozens of shells could fall within a 50-meter radius of the restaurant in a year.

Ironically, the restaurant’s best business came under those conditions. Liu said they could make up to US$3,500 a day, with US soldiers driving Humvees — and sometimes even arriving by helicopter — to buy alcohol.

Liu and Shuai said they earned 3.08 million yuan (US$456,764) in six months before returning to China after repeated warnings from the Chinese embassy over security risks.

Wen has said the idea for the movie came in 2017, when he read news about Chinese restaurants in the Middle East while working on post-production for "Dying to Survive." He said the film uses food and war to explore ordinary people’s survival, with the phrase “eat well” at its emotional center.