A Family's Farewell
Lulu Wang’s The Farewell captures the plight of a Chinese American in the life of a modern Chinese household. With so many families now split across countries and continents, many Chinese households find their own parents and siblings identifying in different ways. While all can trace a cultural and ethnic heritage to China, their newfound identities often dictate the way they think and act in the situation regarding their grandmother’s sickness. If Chinese people practice filial piety, it means the eldest is most respected; but what happens when the rest of the family must hide something from the eldest? Who should lead them through the collective guilt of being away for so long? The film points to the tension between immediate family that is abroad and the relatives who are in China.
The movie follows Billi, a New Yorker who was born in China but moved to the United States with her parents. At the same time, Billi’s cousin had been living in Japan along with his nuclear family, having moved nearly ten years ago. From the perspective of Billi’s grandparents, both their sons had left their homeland for new homes in the United States and Japan. The movie makes the tensions associated with these moves explicitly clear through the banter at the dinner table.
When the topic of discussion shifts to education, one of the aunties mentions the need to focus hard on studying Chinese as a way of indirectly stating China’s growing importance in the global economy. Billi’s mother counters and points to the need to send Chinese students to America for a college education, with many students choosing to stay in the US to enjoy their new freedoms. To diffuse the tension, Billi’s father makes the sly comment of being away so long that he ought to be considered American. This comment elicits Billi’s uncle to make the statement that regardless of where he lives or what he speaks, he will always be Chinese.
“What does it mean to identify as Chinese, and is that identity is exclusive? ”
The film poses a question at the center of this debate. What does it mean to identify as Chinese, and is that identity is exclusive? Each member at the table had a different interpretation of what it meant to be Chinese; and in this moment, each member held their viewpoints close and were uncompromising. The rigidity of each person’s definition of who can identify as Chinese becomes an uncompromising topic for all at the table; no one wants to willingly renounce their heritage, yet immigration seems to change the way one identifies. This issue is a consequence of tying cultural identity to the mother country.
Furthermore, the movie points out that culture itself is often messy and reliant on interpretation. When the family visits the grandfather’s burial site, the grandmother leads the prayers. During the offering of gifts, the relatives question what should be done with them. Are the oranges meant to be peeled? If so, then shouldn’t we also open the crackers for grandpa? Then we should also pull apart the flowers, right? The uncertainty of the situation only highlights the nuances of culture that is unique to many cultures around the world, yet it is the different interpretations of cultural actions that can define a culture. The confusion only highlights that no one truly knows this Chinese ritual for certain, even those who lived in China.
On the topic of cultural heritage, the film acknowledges the defining role that Chinese language provides in Chinese culture. In my experience, when I speak Chinese for the first time with someone, especially if they are of an older generation, people tend to comment on either how good or bad my Chinese is within the first ten minutes of conversation. Although Billi’s accent is pronounced, the movie makes little commentary of it, only mentioning it when she forgets a translation of an English word, such as “congratulations”. This very real experience can often be shunned or ridiculed, yet Billi saw little of these jeers, with a majority of other characters being extremely accommodating. Although many would advocate for increased cultural literacy, such as the aunt at the dinner table in the movie itself, the difficulty of learning a new language in America is often overshadowed by the lack of practice accessible to us in the states. At the same time, few Chinese native speakers are willing to provide as forgiving a learning environment to Chinese learners as described in the film; far too often their American accents are made fun of and they are described as “a disgrace”. It is no wonder that Awkwafina, the actor who plays Billi, mentioned that she was still insecure of her Chinese on a Vox interview. Thus, I consider the purposeful omission of these comments by Lulu Wang as a way of signaling to the audience of what an inclusive world between American-born-Chinese and native Chinese speakers could be like.
Ultimately, The Farewell was a continuation of the current increase in Asian representation in the American film industry. Celebrated by critics at Sundance and moviegoers across the nation, the film even surpassed the hit movie of the summer Avengers: Endgame in one measure: per-theater box office. Although TV shows like Fresh off the Boat and Crazy Rich Asians may have jump-started Asian representation in American media, The Farewell was able to successfully capture something the other comedic productions lacked: the serious and real conflicts in the lives of Asian American families.