TABLE STORIES: FROM THE FAREWELL TO EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN
Illustration: Meng Ke
For most Chinese families, the important things happen at the dining table. It doesn’t matter if it is a square, a rectangle, a circle or a more traditional octagon: The table brings people together, face to face. In the 2019 film The Farewell by Chinese-American director Lulu Wang, there is a round table like this, filled with flavours from Changchun, where the story takes place. Through different dinners, Wang invites us to take a glimpse at a traditional Chinese family value: harmony first.
“Big bite!” (via GIPHY @A24)
In the beginning of the film, Billi, an American-Chinese girl played by Awkwafina, comes to Changchun from New York to visit her Nai Nai — grandmother in Mandarin — against her parents’ will. Nai Nai has been diagnosed with cancer and the family has decided not to tell her. She enters the room awkwardly, interrupting a family lunch. Everybody turns to her in surprise, immediately worrying that she will reveal the secret. On the table are different noodles and pancakes of north-eastern Chinese style, with a variety of meats and vegetables. Nai Nai lifts a spring onion pancake to Billi’s mouth and says “Big bite!” — an expression most younger people in China are familiar with, exclaimed by older generations when they use food to show their love and care. Later, we follow Billi to a restaurant for dinner. Different dishes pass by on a lazy Susan, food like a merry-go-round, this time fancier than the homemade food before. Among them an eye-catcher and indispensable dish: a phoenix sculpted from a carrot. At dinners like these in restaurants, vegetable or fruit sculptures shaped like dragons, phoenixes, flowers and birds, whether they are standing alone or accompanying other dishes, are important. This is food exclusively for the eyes, a fine art that showcases the chef’s exquisite knife techniques — while helping dinner guests ‘gain face’.
First course, harmony
The family dinner in a restaurant. (via A24)
At different sides of this table, Billi’s mom and aunt are caught up in a heated discussion over a question which Chinese millennials, growing up in a time of globalization, find hard to escape: Is the moon rounder abroad than in China? Below the surface, stressed modern parents are putting an excessive amount of expectations on their children. Showing off a child’s accomplishments — like going abroad for studies — can result in small moments of victory at the dinner table. For the older generation Nai Nai is part of, the traditional ‚harmony first‘-spirit is far more important than petty competition, and this endless discussion is not contributing to it. As the head of the family, she decides to end the conversation: “That’s enough, let’s talk about something happy!”
“People learn to use metaphors and sarcasm, leaving sentences open and each other guessing for their real meanings.”
Harmony, in China, is treated almost like a table manner — especially on a special dinner occasion like Chinese New Year. (To learn more about how people in China spent Lunar New Year in the time of corona, click here.) Whoever destroys the harmony ruins precious and rare family time, and will be considered the ‚guilty’ person of the evening. Nobody wants to be this person, but that doesn’t mean conflicts can be washed away by manners. Much like in the film, people learn to use metaphors and sarcasm, leaving sentences open and each other guessing for their real meanings. These dinner table get-togethers of generations bring to light the huge educational and cultural differences between them, as well as how a changing society influences our different ways of thinking.
At the wedding banquet of Billi’s cousin, the film’s climax, the whole family sits down with Nai Nai to enjoy a simple and happy time together, despite everything that’s going on. On the table, the most luscious feast one can imagine — except that the lobster Nai Nai requested has been replaced by crab. It is at this table that Billi starts to understand the reason why her family has been trying to hide the truth about Nai Nai’s illness, and she decides to join them. At the end of the film, at the same full dining table we saw in the beginning, Nai Nai takes a look at a fake medical report Billi took home — and smiles. Here, a Chinese-American girl finds her own answer to traditional Chinese culture.
Lobster, on the face of it
A phoenix sculpted from vegetables. (via Zhiwei Yang on Kuaishou)
In The Farewell, the dinner scenes give us a simple and direct look at Chinese family culture. The table is the face of a family, which is why it does matter whether one serves lobster or crab at a wedding banquet, or why at the dining table one only wants to talk about happy things. Lulu Wang shows the audience, especially a western one, a simple and real Chinese family sharing food and moving through the lively streets of Changchun. Compared to most Chinese produced films, which often have the habit of decorating or ‚face-lifting‘ darker sides of society before showing them to the audience, Wang’s portrayal is personal and brave. However, there are also voices in China arguing that some of the discussions in the film point towards Lulu Wang coming from a place of ‚outsider superiority‘. For example, when Billi says “life is not only about money”, she fails to understand the hardship and trauma behind her aunt’s “studying abroad makes you more money”-mentality. In a time of rapid economic growth, most people have mixed feelings towards a cultural system that both serves them and holds them back. Wang, comes from the perspective of a Chinese-American, but this perspective is not accessible to many people living in China. So as much as the film tries to capture the cultural and generational differences within a family, the discussion about the film itself in China and the United States has shown that these differences also exist on a much larger scale.
Other voices, other tables
The Farewell was not the first time a film’s story was driven by family dinners: Ang Lee’s 1994 film Eat Drink Man Woman brought another family story set at the dinner table, this time in nineties Taiwan. In the first five minutes of the film, Lee shows us how a traditional professional chef prepares Sunday dinner for his daughters. From precise and artistic knife work to various cooking methods like sautéing, frying, steaming and boiling, it looks extremely complicated — but everything is under his control. These iconic scenes are not only a presentation of aesthetics —the film has long been a favourite among ‚foodies‘ the world over —, it is exactly through these cooking scenes that Lee shows us how much weight a father, who has difficulties expressing his emotions, puts into the ritual of Sunday dinners with his daughters. Mr. Chu answers to the needs of his family in a rather formal fashion, with a kind of restraint seemingly exclusive to fathers.
“Mr. Chu answers to the expectations of his family in a rather formal fashion, with a kind of restraint seemingly exclusive to fathers.”
At this dinner, few words are exchanged, but a huge tension is surfacing between the middle daughter Jia-Chien and Mr. Chu: Jia-Chien is a strong, independent working woman who carries on the culinary legacy of Mr. Chu. Respecting the table harmony, she tries to hide that she finds that the soup tastes weird, but fails immediately. Mr. Chu throughout the film refuses to admit that he is losing his taste in an attempt to keep his face, both in the restaurant and as as the master of the house. We see four people sitting around a table full of extremely well-prepared, beautiful dishes, yet everybody has something else on their minds.
The coming family dinners see the daughters’ departures: The little sister Jia-Ning leaves the nest first, then the big sister Jia-Jen, both because of love. It is Jia-Chien, who wanted out since the beginning, that ends up staying until the end. All these big decisions are declared at the dinner table. At the film’s last get-together, Mr. Chu blows up the table by sharing his love news. It leaves the daughters gasping, the neighbour Madame Liang to faint, and the audience with open mouths. Throughout the film, the Chu family makes every effort to upkeep the dinner table tradition of ‚harmony first‘ — but one by one, they lose the fight against their most human emotions. Jia-Ning falls in love with her best friend’s boyfriend and gets pregnant; the Christian Jia-Jen embraces her sexuality and rapidly marries her colleague; Jia-Chien is determined to be a single independent woman, but keeps a sexual relationship with her ex-boyfriend; and Mr. Chu shockingly falls in love with his daughter’s best friend. Each family member fights against tradition in their own way, and every time these secrets come to light at the dining table. Stories like these can happen at the table in the Chu family home in Taipei, but also at any other around the world.
The taste of the soup
At the end of the film, after the family home has been sold, it is Jia-Chien’s turn to cook a dinner. She invites everybody to reunite, but only Mr. Chu shows up. He tries a spoon of the soup she made following his recipe, and says: “Your soup, I can taste it.” Here, food is the beginning of an understanding between two generations, between men and women, tradition and modernity.
We can’t know what the lives of the Chu sisters are like now. Are they still having dinner with Mr. Chu? We also don’t know if Billi finally manages to find out where the moon is rounder. Some questions are difficult to answer, some secrets hard to keep. A harmonious atmosphere never actually reduces the impact of an explosive secret, and the formality of ritual can’t stop a family from expressing emotions with each other. But anyway, no matter what happens, just sit down at the table together, and let’s eat.
Original Text in Chinese: Yunting Zhang
English Translation: Junshen Wu
Illustration: Meng Ke
Original Text
餐桌上的故事
文：张云亭
对于大多数中国家庭来说，最重要的事都发生在餐桌上，不管它是正方形、长方形，圆形还是传统的八角形，重要的是，它让所有人可以围坐在一起，面对面。在2019年华裔导演王子逸（Lulu Wang）的电影《别告诉她》（The Farewell）里就有这样一张圆形餐桌，上面摆满了故事发生地长春的家乡美食。通过一次次的“家宴”，王子逸向我们展现了“以和为贵”的传统中国家庭价值观。
在电影的开头，由林家珍（Awkwafina）饰演的女主角，美籍华人女孩比莉不听父母的劝阻从纽约回到了长春奶奶家。奶奶罹患癌症，所剩下的日子不多，家人们决定不告诉她。比莉一进门，正在一起吃午饭的全家人都回头望着她，害怕她会说出这个秘密。大圆桌上摆放着琳琅满目的食物，有东北人热爱的面食，鸡肉鱼肉等等也是必不可少。奶奶夹起一个韭菜饼喂给她说：“大口咬”——一个很多中国年轻人都熟悉的长辈用食物表达疼爱的方式。
影片的中部，我们随比莉一家来到长春的某餐厅，桌上堆得高高的食物在转盘上像旋转木马一样经过每个人的面前，只是这一次的食物比起之前的家庭制作更为精美。其中有一道菜最为耀眼，也必不可少——一只用胡萝卜精心雕出的凤凰。在很多这样的餐厅聚会中，总会有单独，或摆在别的菜品旁，用蔬果雕出的龙凤花鸟等装饰。这种做给眼睛看的食物，在展示精湛刀工的同时，也是一种“有面子”的表示。
第一道菜：和气
在桌子两侧，Billi 的母亲和小姨在争论着一个许多在全球化背景下成长起来的80后都会被长辈问到的问题：国外的月亮是不是比中国圆？在和谐的表面之下，父母辈将过多的期望寄予在了孩子身上，孩子的任何成就，即使像出国上学这样的事，都成为了餐桌上炫耀的主要组成部分。而像奶奶这样老一辈的人，在餐桌上追求的是绝对的“合家欢”，这场没有结局的争论在她看来自然也是破坏了家庭的“和气”。因此作为家族核心的她说：“好了好了，今天聚咱们说点高兴的事儿”。
很多时候对我们来说，和气几乎成为了一种餐桌礼仪，尤其是像农历新年这样特别的餐桌上，谁破坏了和气，谁就破坏了一家人好不容易团聚的欢乐时光，谁就会成为整场家庭聚会的“罪人”。理所当然，谁都不想去当这个“罪人”，但这并不意味着冲突就此消失。就像电影中表现的那样，在饭桌上的只言片语之中，人们深谙隐喻和暗讽之道，话都只说一半，留着各自去体会“个中深意”。同时，这也让很多人意识到这些冲突背后几代人教育和文化的显著区别，并去思考和理解这些不同思维方式背后更大的社会原因。
在电影的高潮比莉表弟的喜宴上，全家人和奶奶坐在一起，享受暂时放下一切的家庭合睦。餐桌上的菜肴同样丰盛，只是奶奶原本要求的龙虾，被餐厅换成了螃蟹。在这里，比莉理解了家人对奶奶隐瞒病情的意图，并加入了他们。在最后，我们回到电影开头的那张摆着瓜果零食的大圆桌前，奶奶看着比莉带回来的假诊断书，露出了笑容。一个在美国文化中长大的中国女孩也找到了她自己对传统中国文化的答案。
面子上的龙虾
在《别告诉她》中，家宴很大程度上简单直接地表现了中国人的家庭文化。餐桌就像是是中国人的面子，因此婚礼宴请上是龙虾还是螃蟹很重要，也因此，餐桌上只能说点高兴的事儿。通过家庭聚会，以及质朴的长春街区，王子逸给观众（尤其是西方观众）展示了一个更平凡真实的中国家庭。相对于许多仍然认为需要经过粉饰才能给西方观众看的国产片来说，《别告诉她》既有着个人视角，同时也有着诚实的勇气。
然而，一部分在中国的观众也认为，这部电影让他们感受到了一种“外来者的优越感”。比如饭桌上所讨论的金钱观，当比莉说出“生活不仅仅是为了钱”的时候，她没有试图深入去理解小姨”让儿子去美国读书就能赚更多钱“这个观念的来源。在经济快速发展的状态下，人们虽从中得利，但却很难忽视得不到任何保障的不安全感。这样的金钱观也许就体现了许多中国中产阶级家庭的感受。导演通过一个海外华人的视角，真实而诚恳地讲述了一个个人化的故事，但是这个视角对于许多生活在中国的观众来说是非常陌生的。在电影中，王子逸捕捉到一个家庭里的文化差异，而这部电影在中国和美国获得的不同回应，正是说明不仅在一个家庭中，这样的文化差异也存在于更大的层面之上。
别的故事，别的餐桌
《别告诉她》并不是第一部用家宴来推动故事情节的电影，李安在1994年导演的《饮食男女》讲述了在90年代的台湾，另一张餐桌上的家庭故事。
从开篇长达5分钟的时间里，电影展示了一个传统的专业厨师是如何烹饪出一桌美味食物的：不管是他精湛花哨的刀工，还是煎炒蒸炸煮等多样的烹饪手法，所有的一切都有条不紊地进行着。这一连串的镜头，并非只是对剧情毫无意义的美学展示。正是通过这些餐桌背后的厨房故事，李安向我们展示了一个不懂表达的父亲对每周日家庭聚餐这场仪式的重视。朱父用一个“正式的”方式，以父亲专属的克制，回应家人的期待。
在这第一场家宴上，寥寥数语，能感受到二女儿家倩与父亲之间的冲突。家倩非常独立能干，她也继承了朱父的厨艺。她非常努力地守着餐桌上的和气，试图隐藏自己觉得父亲做的汤有问题，却在父亲的再三逼问下功亏一篑。爱面子的朱父也拒绝承认自己的味觉出了问题，维护着自己“一家之主”的“尊严”。
一桌耗时制作的精致饭菜摆在面前，但每个人都各怀心事。
接下来的每一次家宴上都有一个家庭成员宣布离开：为了追求自己的爱情，最先是小女儿家宁，然后是大女儿家珍，反而是一开始就想要离开的家倩留到了最后。餐桌见证了这家人所有重大的人生决定。故事的高潮则发生在朱父最终向家庭成员宣布自己恋爱了，相信它不但让家庭成员吃惊，邻居梁伯母晕厥，就连观众也被吓了一跳。
在整个电影中，朱家的每个人都在尽力尊重“以和为贵”的传统，却总是被自己的真实情感打败。不管是夺走朋友爱人、未婚先孕的家宁，还是作为基督徒却闪婚的家珍，以及仍然与前男友保持性关系，独立自主的家倩，再到父亲与女儿的朋友恋爱，整个朱家，每一个人都在挑战传统意义上的婚恋关系。一次次的家宴揭示了一个个的秘密，而这样的故事可以发生在台北朱家的餐桌上，也同样可以发生在世界任何一家人的桌上。
汤的味道
在电影的最后，朱家每个人各奔东西，家里的老房子也被卖了出去。家倩做出一桌佳肴，邀请全家人回家再次团聚，而父亲却成为唯一赴宴的人。父亲喝着女儿按照他的方子做的汤说：“你的汤，味道我尝到了。” 在这里，食物连接着两代人，男人和女人，传统和现代。
我们不知道朱家三姐妹之后过上了什么样的生活，她们还常和父亲一起吃饭吗？我们也不知道比莉有没有终于弄明白到底哪里的月亮比较圆。有些问题本来就说不清道不明，有些秘密从一开始就藏不住。和气的氛围不能减缓惊人秘密的冲击；再“正式”的仪式感也无法阻挡一家人的情感表达。但不管发生什么事，大家先坐在一起，吃个饭。
