We saw two Chinese movies recently that might be worth watching for the cross-cultural issues they bring up.

Pushing Hands / 推手 / tuī shǒu
Pushing Hands is a family drama in which a successful Chinese immigrant, along with his American wife and their young ABC son, bring the grandfather from Beijing to live with them in their New York suburb. This sparks family cross-cultural tensions as the main character struggles to balance his roles as husband, father, and son simultaneously across two different cultures. The viewer gets an introduction to the issues faced by Chinese-American cross-cultural households, imported Chinese grandparents, and the struggle of Chinese Americans to uphold Chinese family values (filial piety) in American society. There’s quite a bit of English dialogue, as the wife only speaks English, but you’ll still need subtitles.

The Gua Sha Treatment / 刮痧 / guā shā
Gua Sha is a family/courtroom drama about a successful, well-adjusted, Chinese immigrant couple in St. Louis with an ABC 5-year-old boy. One day the grandfather, who doesn’t speak any English, etc., gives the boy a harmless traditional Chinese medicine treatment that leaves terrible-looking red marks on his back. When a Western doctor in the hospital discovers the welts the couple loses custody of their son and ends up in a legal battle. The story highlights cultural differences, particularly where Americans misunderstand the Chinese.

About half the dialogue is in English, but you’ll still want subtitles.

Aside from one scene where, in their grief, the couple gets plastered and calls themselves obscene names in English, there’s not much offensive in the movie, if you don’t count some occasional over-the-top writing and acting.

A friend first recommended we watch the 1990 movie made of this book because it was full of examples of Chinese culture, but in a way that’s accessible to foreigners who know little about China. I barely remember the movie because we watched it in the wee hours of the night while working the night shift at a Hurricane Katrina shelter. But after reading the book, I can see our friend was right.

Iron & Silk is an effortless, PG-rated read that a junior high student could finish in just a couple hours. It’s really a collection of short stories that highlight various cultural differences the author experienced in the two years he spent teaching English in China in the early 1980′s, and this keeps the content varied and interesting. Iron & Silk doesn’t explain anything about Chinese culture, but it’s a clear window into entertaining and unique experiences among everyday Chinese people of that particular time and place. It’s also rather unique among the “I taught English in China” travel books.

Author Mark Salzman‘s experiences were pretty unique for a few reasons. First, Salzman could speak an exceptional amount of Chinese before he arrived, which he learned while completing an Ivy League degree in Chinese literature and doing some serious martial arts training. This means that, unlike the rest of us, he could hear and see what was going on around him starting the first day, and this opens up a whole new world of possibilities among locals that most of us only dream of. Second, he was already rather accomplished in 武术 by the time he arrived, and his experiences of training with some famous Chinese wǔshù masters certainly makes for unique reading material. Third, he taught in China for two years starting in 1982; he experienced a China that may not exist anymore (at least I hope it doesn’t… I don’t know if I could stand having to listen to and negotiate that much political-ese every day, never mind imagining masses forced to endure it). And forth, he sticks to narrating and almost completely refrains from commentary; aside from relating how he may have felt at a particular moment, he allows the people to speak for themselves and leaves the reader to decide what to think. Several reviews describe it as unpretentious.

As of today, this book can be delivered to your door for under $5. And in the movie, Salzman and his most famous wǔshù instructor play themselves.

We’ve reached the first rung on the long ladder of cultural understanding – the “make cheesy over-generalized anecdotes from movies like in a bad sermon” rung. The “actually know what we’re talking about” rung is somewhere in the upper atmosphere… we have a ways to go. But still – let the irresponsible illustrating begin!

In the movie Hero, the main character (who may or may not be the story’s true hero), is an assassin who allows a ruthless, oppressive warlord to kill him, rather than take revenge when he has the chance and kill the warlord, who had massacred the assassin’s family along with a whole lot of other people. This allows the not-assassinated warlord to eventually conquer all the other warlords and unify China, thus ending the interminable fighting between the Warring States. The assassin chooses peace and subjugation for his people and death for himself over giving this guy what he deserved. The movie ends with the usual death, suicide, bittersweet (mostly bitter) romance, sorrow, and generally amplified pathos that we’re coming to recognize in a lot of Chinese stories, as all the people who personally sacrificed so the assassin would have a chance eventually realize the superiority of peace and harmony through submission to authoritarianism over revenge, justice(?), and more war.

Now, imagine if Star Wars embraced this approach. Instead of a bunch of cocky, colourful space cowboys taking on an oppressive, British-accented galactic Empire through coordinated feats of individualistic heroism, not the least of which involve Luke Skywalker pursuing and fulfilling his very own special, personal destiny, they decide to just submit to the strong-arm overlords, go back to their own lives, mind their own business, keep their heads down, and each look after their own (assuming that they didn’t realize the wisdom of this approach too late and so end up dying anyway, but not before their unenlightened quest manages to tear all their romantic hopes to pieces, for good measure).

At the risk of peddling tired cultural stereotypes, the idea that individuals should give up their personal desires and ambitions (like vengeance and justice) and ultimate self-determination for the sake of peace and “harmony” is hardly a new one. And I imagine it has something to do with why things are the way they are in China, and why they’ve been that way for thousands of years.

(This more in-depth analysis puts it less cynically, and considers the movie’s interesting messages regarding violence.)

We’ve reached the first rung on the long ladder of cultural understanding – the “make cheesy over-generalized anecdotes from movies like in a bad sermon” rung. The “actually know what we’re talking about” rung is somewhere in the upper atmosphere… we have a ways to go. But still – let the irresponsible illustrating begin!

In the movie Hero, the main character (who may or may not be the story’s true hero), is an assassin who allows a ruthless, oppressive warlord to kill him, rather than take revenge when he has the chance and kill the warlord, who had massacred the assassin’s family along with a whole lot of other people. This allows the not-assassinated warlord to eventually conquer all the other warlords and unify China, thus ending the interminable fighting between the Warring States. The assassin chooses peace and subjugation for his people and death for himself over giving this guy what he deserved. The movie ends with the usual death, suicide, bittersweet (mostly bitter) romance, sorrow, and generally amplified pathos that we’re coming to recognize in a lot of Chinese stories, as all the people who personally sacrificed so the assassin would have a chance eventually realize the superiority of peace and harmony through submission to authoritarianism over revenge, justice(?), and more war.

Now, imagine if Star Wars embraced this approach. Instead of a bunch of cocky, colourful space cowboys taking on an oppressive, British-accented galactic Empire through coordinated feats of individualistic heroism, not the least of which involve Luke Skywalker pursuing and fulfilling his very own special, personal destiny, they decide to just submit to the strong-arm overlords, go back to their own lives, mind their own business, keep their heads down, and each look after their own (assuming that they didn’t realize the wisdom of this approach too late and so end up dying anyway, but not before their unenlightened quest manages to tear all their romantic hopes to pieces, for good measure).

At the risk of peddling tired cultural stereotypes, the idea that individuals should give up their personal desires and ambitions (like vengeance and justice) and ultimate self-determination for the sake of peace and “harmony” is hardly a new one. And I imagine it has something to do with why things are the way they are in China, and why they’ve been that way for thousands of years.

(This more in-depth analysis puts it less cynically, and considers the movie’s interesting messages regarding violence.)