8 Movies That Accurately Represent Chinese Americans

• Film buffs Nancy Wang Yuen, Jeff Yang, Valerie Soe, and Oliver Wang highlight the best examples of Chinese American representation in film.
• They break down The Joy Luck Club (1993), The Farewell (2019), Better Luck Tomorrow (2003), The Motel (2005), Chan is Missing (1982), A Great Wall (1986), The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Crazy Rich Asians (2019).

Wye Mun: Nice to meet you, too, Chu. Coo coo ca choo. Nah, I'm just kidding. I don't have an accent.

Nancy: It really eviscerates the idea of the stereotype accent, that fake Chinese accent that beleaguers, I think, the entire representation of Asian Americans throughout time.

Narrator: Hollywood doesn't have the greatest track record of portraying Asians.

[gong sounds]

Long Duk: What's happening, hot stuff?

Narrator: So we brought together four film buffs to show us the best representations of Chinese Americans in film, because depiction matters.

The Joy Luck Club (1993)

Lindo: This dish not salty enough. No flavor. It's too bad to eat, but please. You know, Lindo, all this needs is a little soy sauce. It just represents, obviously, cultural differences, but also, I think, microaggressions. I didn't have those vocabulary when I was watching it the first time, but now I think we can say, "Oh, that was a microaggression," in which he just didn't understand. And he insulted, Rich insulted Lindo's cooking.

Oliver: I think it's Asian American film bingo that there has to be a food scene.

Valerie: The awkward family meal. Oh, man.

Jeff: You know, the soy sauce is the dagger, right? I remember, I think my sister poured soy sauce on her rice once, and my parents basically sent her to her room. [laughs]

Oliver: What they needed was, he had to have a rice bowl, and at the end of that scene, he just sticks it in straight into the rice bowl. [everyone laughs]

Waverly: Nothing I do can ever, ever, please you.

Nancy: So, every time I watch this scene, I get tears. It's inevitable. It's the first time I ever saw myself on screen. I saw this movie in the theater in high school, and that scene pretty much encapsulated my relationship with my mother. Nothing I did was ever good enough for her.

Lindo: Now. Now you make me happy. [both laugh]

Nancy: The laughing at the end with her, having that power over her daughter. Oh, my gosh. It's so true, because my mother loved having influence over me. And so, she wouldn't pay for college unless I majored in pre-med, and I majored in English, creative writing. And it wasn't until I think that I became a professor, wrong kind of doctor, that she was like, "I think you made the right decision." But it took a really long time to get there.

Oliver: I'm still waiting for that acknowledgement, actually, so yeah.

Nancy: I actually met Tsai Chin for the "Abominable" premiere, and she did insult me. [everyone laughs]

Valerie: Did she ask you if you were married and/or if you had gained weight? [everyone laughs]

The Farewell (2019)

Uncle Haibin: We're not telling Nai Nai because it's our duty to carry this emotional burden for her.

Valerie: I really like this scene because it talks about the concept of, or rejects the idea of individualism, which is really kind of what the movie is trying to say about Chinese Americans, is that we're too individualistic, right? And, in fact, it's interesting when you watch the film, a lot of the family group scenes are shot in widescreen, so you can get almost -- they cram as many of the family members as possible into that frame. Whereas Billi, the Awkwafina character, is often shot like that, separately. But in this case, I feel like they've emphasized the positive aspect of that idea, that individualism is not as important, because the family is taking on the emotional burden for the grandma, which is kind of a really beautiful thought.

Nancy: When I saw "The Farewell," my mother had passed away from cancer, and she hadn't told nobody that she had cancer. We refused to talk about it. We never said anything about it. I thought she was just afraid of death, crazy, I don't know. And then when I saw this, I was like, "It's actually cultural!" Right? There's a cultural reason why she never told anybody she had cancer. She didn't want to talk about it. And that was such a relief for me, to see "The Farewell" and actually have it speak into my own lived experience.

Better Luck Tomorrow (2003)

Ben: Along with that power came greed. It just made sense to expand our business into drugs, putting the law of supply and demand into practice. It means so much more for Asian Americans, and maybe Chinese Americans specifically, although this is very clearly a multiethnic Asian American movie, because we are so consistently depicted as being part of a model minority. The character that's most intriguing for me is Virgil, because he's the one who in some ways embraces that toxic masculinity, but you see him also destroyed by it.

Virgil: Man, I'm going to juvie!

Valerie: So he's obviously cracking under the strain of trying to uphold this toxic masculinity, which is a response to Asian male emasculation.

Ben: It's literally a full-time job just to make people believe who you're supposed to be.

Jeff: Even as these guys are engaging in this crime ring and all these bad-behavior activities, they're still keeping up their schedules. They're still studying for the SATs. It's very much this breaking down of this duality between good and bad. There's a tendency to sometimes just say, "We want to disrupt stereotypes by simply showing the opposite." But the real way to destroy stereotypes is to bring them to life, to make them three-dimensional, and to show humanity behind them. Not simply to contradict them.

Ben: Rumors about us came and went fast and furious.

Jeff: What is going on? My mind blew. Justin Lin would go on to direct "Tokyo Drift. Sung Kang as Han is a character in "Fast and the Furious." "Better Luck Tomorrow" essentially is a prequel to that series.

Valerie: It's canon.

Jeff: It's canon, yeah.

Oliver: He knew. He knew.

Jeff: But, like, from the future. [laughs]

Oliver: Yeah. Yeah. He knew.

Jeff: The early investors behind the film lost confidence in the idea of doing a film with Asian Americans as the leads. And one of the options was, yes, finding a known Hollywood quantity like Macaulay Culkin to come in and be the leader.

Valerie: Well, isn't that ironic, knowing that he, Macaulay Culkin, is now breeding with Brenda Song. [laughs] Breeding with. You just caused my wall to fall apart.

The Motel (2005)

Sam: Thanks. Hey, give my best to Popa.

Valerie: So, speaking of working-class Asian Americans, I mean, this movie is sort of the quintessential "we are not model minorities" movie, right? [laughs] Ernest and his family are running this run-down motel on the edge of a highway somewhere on the East Coast. Sung Kang can't even get, like, 30 bucks to rent in the crummy motel because his credit card's being rejected. Ernest is a really interesting character because he also, you know, like I said, he's at this age where he's trying to figure out what it means to be a man. I think that, again, just showing a more complex view of what it means to be an Asian American kid or an Asian American male is really what this film was all about.

Jeff: I am Ernest. Like, I - [everyone laughs] For all intents and purposes. Looking at the world through these glasses and feeling a little bit, you know, sort of starry-eyed and inadequate.

Christine: Hey, I found a good one. Oh, yeah? "Oriental Women"? This is disgusting. Let's go check it out.

Valerie: She's not denying her sexuality. She drinks, and she's shown smoking constantly in this film. Like, chain-smoking, right? To me, she was just really super refreshing 'cause she didn't play violin, she didn't play the piano, she wasn't trying to get good grades. She was a waitress. She was, you know. So all of that is, again, for me, just really a great way to show that Asian Americans and Chinese Americans come in all different stripes. And that Asian girls can be empowered to define themselves in whatever way they want. They can smoke and drink and look at porn, and that's OK. The same thing with the Stephanie character. You know, she is suspected to be in a porn movie, but there's no shame.

Chan is Missing (1982)

Oliver: So, "Chan Is Missing" is one of my favorite films of all time, as evidenced by what's behind me. I also think it's the greatest Asian American film, certainly the greatest Chinese American film, that's ever been made. It is just this almost ethnographic slice of life of what San Francisco and Bay Area Asian American communities looked and sounded like in the early '80s. And there's a quiet, sublime beauty to it that, every time I watch that scene, it just hits me right here.

Valerie: The fact that there's three Chinese dialects in this movie that are spoken is awesome. Mandarin, Cantonese, and Toisanese. Even within the Chinese community, you have so many dialects, right? No Taiwanese. Sorry, Jeff. And that Manila town scene, which kind of to me is an homage to some of the social-issue documentaries that came out that maybe informed "Chan Is Missing."

Oliver: The title "Chan Is Missing" seems to be a pretty deliberate riff on the Charlie Chan films, which, this Honolulu detective, Chinese American Honolulu detective, were always played by white actors in yellowface. So they had, you know, taped eyelids and, I mean, just all manner of problematic depictions and whatnot. In a sense, "Chan Is Missing" is a way of killing off Charlie Chan.

A Great Wall (1986)

Paul: I have been going to Chinese class ever since I can remember - you know what? I never got to watch "Bugs Bunny."

Leo: Son, nobody should deny his own cultural background.

Jeff: "I never got a chance to watch 'Bugs Bunny'" isn't because his parents refused to let him watch "Bugs Bunny." It's because he had to go to Chinese school on Saturday mornings. And that's something which was kind of a ritual for -

Oliver: Yep.

Jeff: Chinese immigrant parents who wanted to ensure their kids had some modicum of culture poured into them, against their will in many cases.

Woman: I thought you spoke Chinese.

Grace: Can't you tell? I'm an American!

Valerie: Yeah. Her indignity is really wonderful in there. It was like, "Man, what is wrong with you?" So, again, you know, that's perpetual foreigner stereotype, that you must be from another country if you present as Asian.

Jeff: Something I think a lot of us have experienced in some fashion, this perception that just because we look like this, we act or speak or know certain things. And then the second beat, often later, is her like, "Well, you know, actually I do speak Chinese, but don't assume it!" You know?

Nancy: Asian Americans that I grew up with, we all spoke our mother tongues, but we didn't speak it to each other at school.

Oliver: No. It was, you know, school is assimilation, and we all had to be "American" and speak English. So it wasn't until later that I found out that everybody was fluent, and we just never practiced with each other.

The Wedding Banquet (1993)

Jeff: This is such a brilliant scene on so many levels. It is the scene which I refer to, and I think others have as well, as "straightening up the house." [laughs] It's not just about erasing the signs of queer identity. It's also erasing signs of whiteness, right? It's sort of like, "Oh, we're going to actually put together this facade of being part of this identity you've prepared for us." And for so many of us, that intersectionality isn't just about being a good Chinese boy. It's about being good in so many other ways, which may mean adhering to expectations around sexuality, around choice of lifestyle, around choice of partner, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Crazy Rich Asians (2019)

Wye Mun: Nice to meet you, too, Chu. Coo coo ca choo. You? Poo-poo? [laughs] Nah, I'm just kidding. I don't have an accent.

Nancy: It really eviscerates the idea of the stereotype accent. It just makes fun of the fact that Asian Americans, Chinese Americans, that fake Chinese accent that beleaguers, I think, the entire representation of Asian Americans throughout time.

Peik Lin: Damn, Rachel. He's like the Asian "Bachelor."

Valerie: Hello, handsome.

Jeff: It feels so subversive to see a hot Asian American guy or a hot Asian guy represented on screen. But also that there is that nod to American reality TV. The lens with which we see men has been so distorted that even when we're actually pointing to the sort of iconically gorgeous and impressive Asian male on screen, we can only see it and understand it when we talk about it through this pop-cultural lens that has always distorted us. And, of course, there still has never been, and may not be for a long time, an Asian "Bachelor."

Valerie: I would love to see the continuation of the trend where Asian Americans speak for Asian Americans and represent Asian Americans. And I hope it continues to make money, because that's the only way Hollywood will listen.

Nancy: I want to see an Asian woman superhero. I don't love superhero movies, but I need to see one, because we're waiting, and I want young girls to be able to see themselves as amazing superheroes.

Valerie: I think Ms. Marvel is named Kamala.

Oliver: Yeah, right. Yeah.

Nancy: Very soon, yes.

Oliver: Oh, I like the little book placement. That's nice. That's a nice touch right there. Just, you know, get a - oh, there you go. [Jeff laughs] There you go.

Jeff: We've got to do this again, guys!

Nancy: I loved it!