Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

Family dinner is one of the rituals of Chinese culture and it is often seemed as a time of reunion, a bonding session while everyone is having meal together. However, in the movie, it became the only source of communication between Chu and three of his daughters. Worse case, they only "make announcement" during dinner time, but not communicating. Chu is a single father, who is also a master Chinese chef. In the movie, he is portrayed as a father who isn't good at expressing himself in words but has been trying to shower his daughters with his love in his own way, which is through action and food. On a side note, art is often seemed as a way of expressing emotions and it is often used as a communication tool between a therapist and his patient, especially someone is not used to put things in words. In this case, I would suggest that Mr Chu is using food, which is his strength, as a tool, trying to pull his daughters together. However, his efforts is not seen and appreciated by his daughters, which can be seen from their facial expression at the beginning of the film when they felt like being forced to attend the dinner.

The culinary art performed by Chu is another important element of the background of the film. He insists of taking his time to make sure the dishes are bound with the Chinese traditional culture in culinary art, which has created a lot of scenes of numerous mouth-watering dishes in the movie. However, the distance among them could not be taken away even with the food. From how they are seated apart from each other, to the formal and less intimate conversation, it is obvious that they do not have much connection among them.

Based on the family structure, it is well known to many people that single parent family would face a lot of challenges. It would be even harder for single father as father usually does not communicate well with children due to some gender stereotypes whereas they are lack of the caregiver's characteristics even though they are unlikely to face economic issues because fathers are more likely to be the breadwinner, according to a research. This explains the conflicts in Chu's family.

Talking about the relationship among the family, it’s interesting to see the eldest daughter, Jia Chen who picked up the nurturing role after her mum was dead. She intended to help her dad to support the family. With her strong belief and loyalty as a Christian, she has her own moral system and conscientiousness. That’s why she is quite against how the second daughter, Jia Chien managed her relationship. According to the birth order theory proposed by Adler, the first child will be more socially dominant, independent and perfectionist. This could be seen on Jia Chen when she said that she would be taking care of Mr Chu in future as her two sisters will be married one day. On the other side, she is so stressed when facing questions that surround her (e.g. when she is going to get married) that she even scolded her sister, Jia Chien who intended to concern about her life. It seems like Jia Chen picked up repression as her self-defense mechanism to face her past relationship problem which had left an impact in her life. However, she announced her marriage surprisingly after being chased by a volleyball coach who truly loves her.

When it comes to the fast-paced developed relationship between the youngest daughter, Jia Ning with Jia Ning’s ex-boyfriend, Guo Lun, we can see clearly how their relationship grows day by day. Jia Ning always approached Guo Lun when Guo Lun was waiting for her friend. Jia Ning’s friend always pretended that she had no interest in Guo Lun who put great effort in chasing her. Jia Ning questioned the intention of Guo Lun chasing her friend who didn't seem to have feelings for him and Guo Lun replied that he was addicted to her without a valid reason. While having lunch with Guo Lun, Jia Ning pointed out that love is about the concerns and interaction between two people. Psychologically, this is what we called “Vulnerability”. The more vulnerable you are with someone, the higher chance you are likely to develop a good connection with him. Jia Ning’s friend is a good example who avoid vulnerability, she tried to play cool with Guo Lun, while in fact she confessed that she liked him a lot. Unfortunately, when she voiced this out, Jia Ning had already been in a relationship with Guo Lun. Of course, proximity effect is also one of the factors that blooms the relationship between Jia Ning and Guo Lun.

Besides, we can also see the Westernization of the three daughters. The eldest child, Jia Chen, converted herself into a Christian while Jia Chian, who is the on-the-rise Airline consecutive develops sex-based relationship with her “boyfriend”. In one scene, her boyfriend also revealed that he enjoys with this kind of sexual relationship instead of being couple. As for the youngest child, Jia Ning, worked at the fast-food restaurant even though his father is the Master Chef in Taipei. The cross-cultural influences are salient within the family dynamic in which three daughters are striving their own way to live while their father is still insisting the traditional ritual in the family. However, in the end of the movie, he also revealed that Chinese traditional cuisine was no longer appreciated in Taiwan due to the Western modernization in Taipei. 

When the film progresses, it’s hard to believe that Jia Ning, whose personality was perceived as the cynical and obedient daughter announced that she wanted to move out with her boyfriend because she was pregnant. This announcement has given a great knock to Chu’s family because it gave a head knock to the Chinese conservative culture. And this is followed by the surprise given by Jia Chen who announced that she is married to her boyfriend, Ming Dao in the church. These few examples have clearly indicated the evidence of cross-cultural influence and how it impacts the family with Chinese culture. This impact has generated a gap between Chu and his daughters. It’s also ironic when Chu  declared that he will be living with the woman he likes, Jin Rong and her daughter. Initially, all of his daughters treated it as a joke, which showed that they couldn't really accept the fact that his father likes Jin Rong instead of Mrs Liang. The reason anticipated is probably due to the age differences since Mrs Liang has smaller age differences with Chu. I like the way how this film managed to feature the conflict between the cultural differences and acceptance when it is blended in living style and marriage. 

Despite the life differences between the family members, I like the message delivered by Chu in the last family gathering with Mrs Liang and her daughters. He said that, even though family members are having their own life, but the concerns about each others are the main elements which define the family connections and structure. He also reveals that home is no longer a home when family members left one by one.

Yes, the family togetherness is everything for most, the acceptance in term of cultural differences and generation gap is still one of the important issues that had been addressed in the film, and still need to be addressed in the future. Just like the common issue that is embodied in our community nowadays, the interracial marriage between Chinese and Malay in Malaysia. We still have a lot of parents who disagree with interracial marriage due to the cultural differences and life practices.

We can’t deny that there might be a day where we can accept and embrace cultural differences, that we can live peacefully with everyone else, but we can’t help but to say that it needs a lot of psychological adaptations and acceptance.