Blog Post 2 - Eat a Bowl of Tea

The movie Eat a Bowl of Tea was an excellent film on the ways of the Asian-American lifestyle in the 1940s.  This film showcases what life was like for those living in Chinatown during what would be considered the Second Wave of Chinese immigrants to America. While this film can be related to many of the Critical Race Theory tenets, the one that can be seen most clearly throughout the film is Critical Race Theory number 4: Dominant Society will always racialize different groups at different times. This tenet can be seen in two different scenes throughout the movie.


One of the first things that one may notice while watching this film is the number of Chinese men, or even more shocking the lack of women throughout the film. That is because of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act that prevented Chinese from immigrating to the U.S. especially women were prevented from entering the mainland because they didn't want them to settle there. The lack of women is very clear in the "Slow Boat to China" scene. In this scene you see a beautifully dressed Chinese woman singing the popular song Slow Boat to China and all of the men in the bar are staring at her, admiring her, longing for her because she is one of few Chinese women in America at the time. This is directly correlated to CRT number 4 because at the time it was beneficial for the U.S. government to keep Chinese women out because it would prevent the Chinese from having families in America, and it would let the government tax the Chinese workers because they couldn't become citizens.


This same point can also be seen in the beginning of the movie when Mr.Wong goes to see a prostitute and as he is leaving the apartment there are several other Chinese men lined up for the same prostitute. These men don't have a companion with whom to share their lives with, and so they go to the only means they can find. That is again because of U.S. government using their dominance over the Chinese minority. Overall this film was a representation of how the U.S. governments discrimination of Chinese had a lasting effect even after the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1946.