Post 2: Eat A Bowl of Tea

While watching the film Eat A Bowl of Tea there were a lot of things that were also described in Takaki’s book. The first thing that was shown throughout the film was the outcomes of The Chinese Exclusion Act and how it was hard to become citizens and that there weren't that many Chinese women in America especially on the East coast where the film was set. It showed this by how Ben Loy ended up going to China to see his mother but mainly to find a girl that ended up being arranged by his parents to hope to marry and bring back to America. It was interesting to see how at first when his dad brought up the idea of going to China to have an arranged marriage he wasn't completely for it, but in the end it worked out. It really showed that it was mostly all Chinese males in New York and on the East Coast when they had the wedding banquet and it was all men except Mei Oi. But it also showed that was the main way for Chinese Women to come to America. Another thing it showed was that Chinese Women didn't really have much of an opportunity for work which led to Mei Oi being left in the apartment alone everyday. 

Another big aspect of the movie was the division between the different generations of Chinese Americans with Henry Wang the dad who was a first generation and was more traditional with Chinese Culture but was complacent with living in the U.S. and didn't have any intentions of going back to China. Then there is the son Ben Loy who grew up in America and had adopted the American Culture but he also knew the Chinese culture and was bilingual. Which when he went to China caught people off guard since they didn't think he knew how to speak Chinese. It also showed the family relationships in that the wives back in China have been alone without there husbands for twenty years and haven't really seen there kids that much that grew up in America. But it also showed the pressure from the parents to start a family in getting married and having kids.