by Caiwu Chen
In traditional Asian families, parental figures define the family. We can all think about poems, songs and essays that praise great mothers. Most literature depicts mothers as tender, dedicated and willing to sacrifice their own needs or well-being for their family. But in Chinese literature and films, fathers are often in the center of controversy. Many argue that Chinese fathers have no difference with mothers because they also show their care and tenderness to children. For instance, David W. Shwalb, a psychology professor at Southern Utah University, depicts the Chinese father’s behavior as a combination of strictness and kindness, “blend[ing] a ‘maternal love’ based on benevolent affection with a ‘paternal love’ based on dignity and respect” (353). Yet other people insist that traditional Chinese families are patriarchal. The Chinese father is portrayed as serious, authoritative, even selfish in Chinese movies or television shows. For example, “Su Daqiang” is depicted as a “typical” selfish and irresponsible father in the topical TV series “All is Well.” Traditional Chinese father figures are presented as authority figures and irrefutable decision makers. The traditional Chinese father expects his children to be loyal and obedient, abiding by the concept of filial piety (Li and Jankowiak 189). For most children, fathers seemed to be severe and without compassion, which may result in a lack of communication and boundaries between two generations.
"The value systems of Taiwanese citizens were reshaped. Therefore, the authority of the traditional Chinese father was challenged in an unprecedented way."
Eat Drink Man Woman, released in 1994 and directed by Ang Lee, focuses on Father Chu, a head chef at The Grand Hotel in Taiwan, and his three daughters, presenting the relationship between two generations of a Chinese family. In the 1990s, Taiwan was undergoing democratic reforms. By trading with developed countries, such as Japan and the U.S., Taiwan expedited cultural communication with western society. The value systems of Taiwanese citizens were reshaped. Therefore, the authority of the traditional Chinese father was challenged in an unprecedented way. It was no longer as respectable to be seen as cold and authoritative. Chinese fathers started to show their emotion and their vulnerability. Li-Young Lee, a poet of Chinese descent born in Indonesia, also addresses the transitional space between Chinese culture and the western values of the Chinese American community. Lee, a child of the Asian diaspora, finally settled with his family in the U.S. where his father was actively involved in his childhood and played a significant role in his development. In this essay, I will discuss the film, Eat Drink Man Woman next to Li-Young Lee’s poems to make a bold conjecture that these works challenge popular stereotypes about Chinese fathers, showing their humanity and tenderness for the family.
Stereotypes about Asian fathers would suggest that because of the fathers’ authority and life experience, they would ignore younger generations’ suggestions and make decisions for their children. Eat Drink Man Woman presents the perspective of Father Chu’s family in Taiwan. Father Chu’s family is not a totally traditional family due to the passing of Chu’s wife, who worked as a housewife taking care of their three daughters. As a widower, Father Chu has a hard time finding a balance between work and family. He is hardly able to play the role of a heavily involved father. Through viewing his and his three daughters’ stories, we can witness the Chinese family’s separation and union. The movie makes use of food to present traditional Chinese values and culture through highlighting Father Chu’s excellent cooking skills. In this film, the second daughter, Jia-Chien, had fun with the father in the kitchen during her childhood. Her father would make her small bracelets and rings out of dough. This little game between father and daughter in the kitchen unconsciously left a warm and fun impression for Jia-Chien. However, her father banished her from the kitchen and claimed, “It was for your (Jia-Chien’s) own good” and “learn something useful”. In Jia-Chien’s understanding, her father “just can’t accept a woman being a good chef” because when she cooked in her family kitchen, her father would come and stop her. She could not understand why his father forbade her cooking even though she enjoys cooking. When Father Chu’s friend said her current achievements (becoming an executive for a Taiwanese airline, which was expanding to the international market) were thanks to her father’s decision to throw her out of the kitchen, Jia-Chien refuted that no one asked her if she appreciated it, which emphasizes their lack of communication. I think the lack of communication is the primary reason for the tension in their relationship. Reflecting on his relationship with his daughters, Father Chu admitted to his friend, “I don't understand any of them and I don’t want to know their inner world”
In a modern society, Chinese young people start to value personal pleasure instead of the whole family. Jia-Chien ultimately violates her father’s decision and chases her own happiness. In the film, she had intended to move to Amsterdam but finally stayed and took care of the old vacant house. In the end, we found out Jia-Chien is the one to host the family dinner meeting. The transformation of Jia-Chien from businesswoman to traditional Chinese chef reflects a conclusion of this film, “that of returning to roots or basic nature” (Dilley 74). Jia-Chien told her ex-boyfriend that she didn't have any childhood memories unless she cooked them, conveying the pain of repressing one’s interests and hobbies. In the film, Jia-Chien is fortunate to be able to relieve her stress by cooking secretly. Apparently, she returns to the kitchen and returns to the roots of the traditional Chinese family. Ultimately, she finds her true self and breaks the chain of her father’s limitation. At the same time, in the film, the father figure also overturns conventional Chinese father stereotypes. He defies conventions of age and marries his daughter’s student, which is totally unacceptable in traditional Chinese culture. I think Ang Lee’s plot highlights the changing attitudes and choices of the Chinese father in recent decades.
"In Chinese culture food is regarded as a source of connection between family members. Chinese people value the atmosphere and who is eating together more than the content of the dishes."
Worldwide fathers devote themselves to supporting their family and they suffer a lot. In Eat Drink Man Woman, the father always hosts Sunday dinner meetings to keep connection with his daughters. As a chef, serving a table of choice dishes is his implicit way of expressing a father’s love. In Chinese culture food is regarded as a source of connection between family members. Chinese people value the atmosphere and who is eating together more than the content of the dishes. Catching and dealing with fish, cutting and shredding ingredients, frying and steaming pork, every Sunday afternoon Father Chu put his excellent cooking skills and time into weekly Sunday dinner meetings, emphasizing the importance of this gathering.
Similarly, in the work of Chinese American poet Li-Young Lee, sharing meals reinforces his family values and recalls the memory of his absent father. In Lee’s poem, “Eating Together”, even though Lee is eating lunch together with his siblings and mother as usual, he still misses his father who passed away weeks ago.
We shall eat it with rice for lunch/ brothers, sister, my mother who will
taste the sweetest meat of the head,
holding it between her fingers
deftly, the way my father did
weeks ago. Then he lay down
to sleep like a snow-covered road
winding through pines older than him (lines 4-11)
He was pained by his father’s absence. Lee regarded his father as his guide on his career path. Lee's father and his family moved to Indonesia due to political turmoil in China. But because of the Anti-Chinese Movement, he got arrested and was in jail for nine months before he finally moved to the U.S. with his family. However, the U.S. had fallen into the Vietnam War, which made it a difficult place for Asian immigrants to settle. With constant exile to a new place, depression often followed. In “Diaspora, Transcendentalism, and Ethnic Gastronomy in the Works of Li-Young Lee,” Wenying Xu briefly talks about the influence of Lee’s childhood on his literary style. In the middle of the 20th Century, China and Chinese people had not yet been so frequently exposed to the mainstream media. Therefore, ordinary citizens of the U.S. had no familiarity with Chinese people. In western mainstream society, people could not fully accept traditional Chinese culture, including food culture. Therefore, Li-Young Lee’s poems contain great “emotional intensity and imagination” that reflect his background as an “exile” background and his confusion over his cultural identity (Xu 94). Lee recorded these feelings in “Self-Help for Fellow Refugees”:
If your name
suggests a country where bells
might have been used for entertainment,
or to announce
the entrances and exits of the seasons
and the birthdays of gods and demons,
it's probably best to dress in plain clothes
when you arrive in the United States.
And try not to talk too loud (lines 1-9)
Going through exile and suffering, Lee was able to understand his parents’ love more easily.
"Lee’s father shows the communication and cultural inheritance between two generations."
Fathers' behavior and customs will affect their children’s development. As parents, educating children is also their responsibility. Lee’s father was a “physician to a philosopher, a doctor, a vice president of a university in Indonesia, an evangelical preacher in Hong Kong, and finally a Presbyterian minister in Pennsylvania”, so he also had great expectations for his children’s education (Xu 99). With his professional background, Lee’s father was not only a father, but also played the role of “a teacher”. He asked Lee to read not only Tang poetry, but also the Bible. Tang poetry, written around the time of China’s Tang Dynasty, is seen as the representation of Chinese traditional culture and has great influence on world literature. This varied educational method could also demonstrate that Lee’s father, a non-traditional Chinese father, who valued traditional Chinese culture and experienced unordinary suffering, gradually accepted western culture and mixed it in his daily life. This Chinese father depicted in Lee’s poems is not as authoritative and severe as other traditional Chinese fathers. Instead, Lee’s father shows the communication and cultural inheritance between two generations. In this father and son, I see tenderness and tacit understanding, which Lee describes in “The Weight of Sweetness”. In the poem, Lee describes a father and son who are picking peaches. “Hold the peach, try the weight, sweetness/ and death so round and snug/ in your palm.” (line 7-9). Even though the father passed away, family value and family culture still exist and are passed down through generations. Lee writes, “The good boy hugs a bag of peaches/ his father has entrusted/ to him.” (lines 19-21) Therefore, in this poem, we feel more homage than pure sadness. In Li-Young Lee’s autobiographical collection, The Winged Seed, he depicts himself as “dandelion seeds” (Lee, 36). Critic Wenying Xu thinks the poet understands the seed “as a traveling and protean identity for himself” (Xu 99). Lee thought the seed was “born flying”, “to begin its longest journey to find its birthplace, that place of eternal unrest” (The Winged Seed 92). The seed stands for their family and carries the hope of living in the distant and strange land (Xu 96). After Lee lost his father, he also inherits his father’s “seed” and shoulders the responsibility of continuation of the family. I think Lee’s father’s passing had a great influence on him. He wrote poems in memory of him. Even though Lee didn’t grow up in typical traditional Chinese culture, his father, “the seed holder,” inherits the seeds of culture and Lee plants them by himself.
Through comparison, some similarities and differences are found between Father Chu in Eat Drink Men Women and Li-Young Lee’s father as Chinese fathers. Father Chu promotes and develops Chinese traditional cooking skills but refuses to allow his daughters to continue on his career path. Lee’s father had strong hopes for his children to continue the legacy established by traditional Chinese culture, but Lee could not satisfy his father’s expectations. Both fathers express their love and care implicitly. Father Chu places his love into his dishes, while Lee’s father shows his love through his educational method. Lee's father welcomed and accepted the diverse cultural education yet refused to abandon “the Chinese root”, while Father Chu maintains Chinese traditions but also chases his happiness regardless of others' opinions.
"The author regarded the peach as the bridge of interaction of a father and a son. The son received the spiritual heritage, which presents his father’s love and education."
In Chinese culture, people value the connection of the family. Parents hope their children can inherit traditional culture and family values. In an interview with Xun Xie, Li-Young Lee said that his father often read traditional Chinese poems during his childhood; Lee came to feel a sense of “supreme mind and wisdom” and “deep clear experience” from poetry. (122) With more frequent communication among multiple cultures, the traditional Chinese culture may be threatened. The older generation hopes these cultural things will not disappear so they will require their children to learn. However, Lee never stepped into mainland China. As a Chinese American, he felt the stressful weight of tradition that his father placed on him. In the poem “The Weight of Sweetness”, the son felt the same pressure came from his father. “Hold the peach, try the weight, sweetness /and death so round and snug /in your palm. /And, so, there is /the weight of memory” (lines 7-11). The author regarded the peach as the bridge of interaction of a father and a son. The son received the spiritual heritage, which presents his father’s love and education. When the son is facing the death of a family member, those sweet memories come to his mind to make it more sorrowful. However, the son keeps those beautiful memories and keeps the connection with his father (Liu 231-232). Lee, through the son in the poem, reflects on his relationship with his father. “See the look on the boy’s face/ as his father moves/ faster and farther ahead, while his own steps/ flag, and his arms grow weak, as he labors/ under the weight/ of peaches” (lines 24-29). Liu thinks the ending of the poem metaphorizes the existing cultural gap between Chinese migrants and their future generations. The son tries to satisfy the expectation his father left; however, the son is too “weak” to fulfill the expectation. I think Lee also feels regretful that he could not find a clearer identity before his father’s passing. Lee’s father shows his hope that his children will enjoy and develop familiarity with Chinese culture. He didn’t totally abandon his roots. Moreover, he insisted on exposing his children to traditional culture education while also conforming with western thought. Compared with Lee’s father’s pioneering educational method, in the film, Eat Drink Man Woman, Father Chu takes an opposite approach. He comments on his daughters, “They are adults. Let them go.” Facing the third daughter’s pregnancy and first daughter’s flash marriage, Father Chu accepts them secretly but also “let[s] them go”. Through the whole film, we find that Father Chu’s understanding for his daughters is missing. He admits that he does not know his daughters and previously had no interest in knowing them. While the passing of his wife forced him to be a modern father in some ways, he still prioritized his career and housework instead of education and communication.
"He found that positive interactions with fathers are beneficial for children’s development and the harmony of the family."
Studies document that in recent times, fathers in mainland China depart from rigidity and coldness toward being communicative, and emotionally engaged. At the same time, fathers also participate in the roles of childcare and education, which was mainly a mother’s job in the past. According to “The Chinese Father: Masculinity, Conjugal Love, and Parental Involvement,” Kam Louie, a professor at the School of Chinese at The University of Hong Kong who researches Chinese masculinity and classical Chinese philosophy, concludes that “Chinese children show a clear preference for the warm, affectionate fathering style” (Li and Jankowiak 198). He found that positive interactions with fathers are beneficial for children’s development and the harmony of the family. However, the transformation of the fatherly role is still not accepted by the whole society. Some mothers express concerns that an over-caring father is not helpful for building an independent personality.
In both mainland Chinese families and immigrant Chinese families, the father figure has become different from what was traditionally defined. I think this change can be attributed to the rise of new media in modern society so Chinese people can reflect on their relationships with fathers or children. Studies show that people tend to believe that parents’ generous love shapes a competitive and high-quality child, an idea that is also repeated in the media (Li and Jankowiak 188-189). With the building of systemized education and psychology, Chinese experts compare the better way to educate future generations. However, while traditional fatherly positions have been challenged, the debate continues over if and how Chinese fathers will find a balance between insisting on tradition and accepting a new future.
Works Cited
Dilley, Whitney Crothers. “Globalization and Cultural Identity in Eat Drink Man Woman.” The Cinema of Ang Lee: The Other Side of the Screen, Columbia University Press, Vol. 43 No.2 (2015), pp. 69-80, JSTOR, doi. 10.7312/dill16772. Accessed 12 May 2021.
Eat Drink Man Woman, Directed by Ang Lee, performances by Sihung Lung, Yu-wen Wang, Chien-lien Wu, and Kuei-mei Yang, Central Motion Pictures/Good Machine, 1994.
Lee, Li-Young, “Eating Together.” Poetry Foundation, 1986, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43015/eating-together-56d221af2bf26. Accessed 12 May 2021.
Lee, Li-Young, “Self-Help for Fellow Refugees.”Poetry Society, 2008, https://poetrysociety.org/features/red-white-blue/li-young-lee. Accessed 12 May 2021..
Lee, Li-Young, “The Weight of Sweetness.” Poets.org.1986, https://poets.org/poem/weight-sweetness. Accessed 12 May 2021.
Lee, Li-Young. The Winged Seed: A Remembrance. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Li, Xuan and William Jankowiak. “The Chinese Father: Masculinity, Conjugal Love, and Parental Involvement.” Changing Chinese Masculinities: From Imperial Pillars of State to Global Real Men, Hong Kong University Press, Vol. 1, NO. 1 (2016) pp. 186-203, JSTOR, doi: 10.1163/15685268-00182p07.
Liu, Wen. A Study on the Contemporary American Poetry 1980 — 2010. E-book, Zhe Jiang University Press 2013, pp. 230-241, http://www.wenqujingdian.com/Public/editor/attached/file/20180224/20180224124839_52717.pdf
Shwalb, David W. “Fathering in Japan, China and Korea: Changing contexts, images, and Roles.” The Role of the Father in Child Development 5th ed., John Wiley, 2010, pp. 341-376.
Xu, Wenying. “Diaspora, Transcendentalism, and Ethnic Gastronomy in the Works of Li-Young Lee.” Eating Identities: Reading Food in Asian American Literature, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2008, pp. 94-126. JSTOR, doi: 10.2307/j.ctt6wqwpv.8. Accessed 12 May 2021.
Xie, Xun. “Li-Young Lee.” Sketches of Contemporary American Poetry, Google Books, Chiushui Poetry Quarterly, July 1, 2014, pp 119-131.