Bill Moyers is a very busy man. He hosts "NOW" which is television's smartest newsmagazine and continues to make documentaries. "Becoming American: The Chinese Experience" which airs on PBS tonight through Thursday is the latest. I've only seen excerpts, but Dwight Garner writes in the New York Times, "This is a model documentary that gets almost everything right: it crams nearly two centuries of tangled Chinese-American history into a few engrossing hours while remaining surprisingly light on its feet."

Garner credits this to the producers. Earlier this month, series producer Thomas Lennon and series editor Ruby Yang attended a press conference at KQED in San Francisco, and Moyers appeared on a HDTV screen above them. Writer Helen Zia who is featured in the series was also there.

Moyers said, "This is one of the great untold chapters of the American epic...that plays out across 200 years and yet has received too little attention in mainstream history, in mainstream broadcasting and in mainstream politics." He said he hired Lennon because of his work on "The Irish in America". Yang was originally hired for four months to work on one program and ended up devoting nearly two years to the project. She said they had just finished the last program, but Moyers informed her there were a few small changes he still wanted to make.

He said the series built on other documentaries (a list is on the website). He mentioned filmmaker Loni Ding who he said first talked to him about the growing political power of the Chinese American community when he was working on "Listening to America."

When he went to the signing ceremony for the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 which made it easier for people from Asia to come here, he didn't realize the impact it would have (a young Moyers can be seen next to LBJ at the Statue of Liberty in one scene).

The three 90 minute programs are followed by half hour interviews with Maya Lin, Gish Jen, David Ho, and others.

They viewed the broadcast as just the beginning of the the life of the series. It is one of programs for this month's PBS Program Club (sort of a book club for PBS programs which will feature "Avoiding Armageddon" and "Manor House" in April). More than 20,000 educational guides will be distributed and Chinese Americans will be able to share their stories on the website.