In films that focus on a particular race, it is difficult to create believable characters and situations that represent the truth and integrity of the ethnic background represented. Ang Lee’s “The Wedding Banquet,” is a fictionalized story, but it presents a realistic portrayal of a Chinese marriage and ceremony. To expand my knowledge of Chinese customs outside of the facet of culture that was covered in the movie, I ventured to Chinatown. I delved into the midst of Chinatown and learned how this ethnic community manifested itself and how Chinese culture is retained to this day.

A Chinese wedding banquet is all about pageantry. The banquet is largely for the parents of the couple because it’s a huge social gathering where the parents are allowed and encouraged to flaunt their wealth and affluence. In “The Wedding Banquet,” Mr. and Mrs. Gao beg their son Wei-Tung to not be so casual and dismissive about planning his wedding to Wei-Wei. The parents implore Wei-Tung to make a spectacle of his wedding ceremony, especially because friends and relatives contributed $30,000 for a grand celebration. Although Wei-Wei and Wei-Tung’s marriage at City Hall was very underwhelming, the reception was the epitome of a traditional Chinese banquet.

The wedding hall in the film was adorned in red cloth. Red is of course known as the Chinese color representing wealth, success, and good fortune. Banners with Chinese characters and lanterns hung from the ceiling and golden dragons decorated the walls of the hall.

A Chinese bride is expected to change into multiple outfits throughout the night. Wei-Wei had a series of wardrobe changes; she started the night in an American-style white wedding dress, then she slipped into a pink, thin-strapped cocktail dress, and she ended the night a red chi-pao. A chi-pao is a traditional Mandarin-style dress that often times has floral print and a high-neck collar and hugs the body in a tight-fitting manner.

When asked to describe a Chinese wedding banquet, Asian-American Ryan Ng recounted the food spread, “Unlike American weddings, where guests are fed a standard three-course meal, Chinese weddings serve multiple courses. Lots of meat and seafood dishes are served therefore the guests take samplings of each dish.” The movie displayed what looked to be soup, lobster, perhaps a duck or chicken platter, shrimp, and various vegetable dishes. A distinction between Chinese and American weddings is that often a Chinese reception is spent in your chair enjoying the food as opposed to dancing like a Western-style wedding. To keep the guests at a Chinese banquet occupied, games meant to embarrass the bride and groom are played.

The reception is very much a crowd pleaser; it is designed for the pleasure of the guests. Ryan Ng talked about the happenings at a wedding banquet, “The Master of Ceremonies likes to get all the guests involved in the games. A lot of games are played. For example, the bride and groom will be placed back-to-back and they will have to answer a series of questions about each other. Often times a lot of raunchy questions are asked so the games are fun!” This concept of game playing seems to hold true because in the movie the newlyweds are put through a series of lighthearted games. One of the games, was the kissing game in which men one after the other kissed a blindfolded Wei-Wei on the cheek and she had to determine the kiss of her husband. In another instance, Wei-Wei and Wei-Tung have to catch a chicken wing dangling from a string with their mouths. In the movie, two white guests have an exchange about how surprised they are by the overall merriment of this event, one said, “God, and I thought the Chinese were meek, quiet, math whizzes.” The person next to him responded, “You’re witnessing the results of 5,000 years of sexual repression” (Lee).

In order to get a fuller appreciation and understanding for the Chinese culture I traveled to Chinatown. I exited the subway at Grand Street and I was hit with a visual unlike any other in New York City. The streets were buzzing with people. All of the people milling about were Asian with the exception of some Caucasian tourists. In fact, Lower East Side Chinatown has the largest concentration of Chinese in the Western Hemisphere. For such a small footprint of under two square miles, Chinatown is a tight space for a residential population of 150,000.

I was fascinated by the store awnings in Chinese characters, seldom without English translation. Nowhere else in the city do you see another language exclusively used over English. Here in Chinatown, Mandarin and Cantonese are the dominant languages, not English. I wandered about Chinatown and I noted the many open-air market and grocery store fronts and the proud and savory exhibition of hanging duck, chicken, and pork in restaurant windows. The vibrancy and effervescent display of Chinese culture is seen in all the storefronts and shops in Chinatown. Former resident Karina Wong, was born in 1998 in Chinatown and lived there until she turned seven years old. She recalled, “Growing up in Chinatown allowed me to experience my own culture authentically. Everything was raw and true, nothing was fabricated. I was able to really embrace everything, from the food to the traditions. I felt really at home and connected immensely with a lot of my classmates.”

The Chinatown we know today is unlike what former resident Judy Lee remembers. She is sixty years old now, but she recalls Chinatown when she first moved her from Hong Kong at the age of sixteen in 1972, “I lived in what was considered the outskirts of Chinatown for that time period, along East Broadway. The streets were dirty, the buildings were dilapidated. I tried not to go out at nights because the roads were dark and isolated, very little foot traffic. Safety in the 70s was not the greatest. Chinatown has changed through the years, it has really opened up to upkeep an image for foreigners and tourists.” Chinatown is very different from what it was in the past.

To learn more about “the past,” I conducted the historical portion of my research at the Museum of Chinese in America. It is a small museum but it is jam packed with the history of Chinese-Asian immigration into the U.S. and more specifically illustrated the establishment of Chinatown. A timeline in the museum set the stage for an introduction of the U.S. to the Chinese. In 1784, “The Empress of China” ship left New York Harbor bound for Canton in a commercial exchange that recognized the United States’ legitimacy in the international realm. New York merchants exchanged Mexican silver and western furs for luxury Chinese items such as porcelains, teas, and silks. After the Opium Wars (of 1840-1842 and 1856-1860) and the widespread drought and famine culminating to the Taiping Rebellion, (1850-1864) the United States was ready to capitalize on China’s weakened state. The U.S. looked to China for inexpensive human labor and foreign goods.

In the mid-1800s, many Chinese immigrants came to the United States, but weren’t keen on staying in the cities. Many Asian immigrants participated in the California gold rush and were instrumental in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR). However Chinese laborers were known for a diversified workload outside of construction of the CPRR for example, “Chinese Americans built ships for commercial fishing, and developed the abalone and shrimp industries. Skilled farmers reclaimed swamplands, built irrigation systems, and invented new agricultural varieties. In frontier cities and towns, Chinese became the first wage workers in woolen mills, cigar making, and shoe and boat factories” (MOCA. In 1868, the Burlingame Treaty was enacted to protect Chinese immigrants visiting or living in the U.S. as citizens. However not too shortly after the Chinese started to make their way into the cities, this ethnic group became demonized by white labor organizing for higher wages; thus came about the Chinese Exclusion Act (May 6, 1882). This act was created in response to the pressures of unemployment and displacement of “native-born” Americans by Chinese-Asian immigrants willing to work for lower wages; And no doubt racism was a factor in the creation of this law. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first time in U.S. history a specific ethnic group was barred from immigrating to the U.S. The bill was meant only to last ten years but was only repealed on December 17^th, 1943 (MOCA).

The numbers of Chinese immigration stifled during that time period. Anti-Chinese sentiments fluttered throughout the cities. It was only natural for the ostracized Chinese to form its own ethnic enclave in New York City to combat rampant xenophobia. Anti-Chinese propaganda was created, one poster in the museum read, “Chinese? NO! NO! NO! Come to 10^th and A Streets at 7:30 Monday evening and express your opinion on the Chinese question” (MOCA). Because families were prohibited from reconnecting with fathers/husbands that were sent to the U.S to work and relay money back home, a “bachelor society” was created. An oral account by shop owner, Lung Chin circa 1988, spoke of this phenomena during the mid-1900s:

People would sit on the chairs or benches. They would come to drink tea or smoke. They would tell stories of how they got stranded here and why they are in New York and how they will make a living. Most of the workers are bachelors or they are single because their families are in China and the laborers couldn’t bring their wives over in those days so they had to come over alone. It was harsh. The men lived right here in Chinatown. Most workers live in the basements to save money.

The Chinese banded together; especially for the single men it was a necessity to establish friendships and maintain social relationships to survive (MOCA).

To protect themselves from the opposition and hostility of extremists, Chinatown became a self-sufficient unit, occupying all the necessary businesses to not require much non-Asian interaction. Along the lines of self-sufficiency, fraternities, coalitions, service and social organizations were created to bring about a sense of social/political protection, community unification, and preservation of culture. Such an association was the Ging Hawk Club (1933-1952) which was founded on the principle of, “striving for knowledge,” and education of Chinese youth; Or the Square and Circle Club, consisting of 24 female members, who catered to protecting orphans, the poor, and the general needs of society (MOCA).

Public perception of the Chinese changed after December 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Over 13,000 Chinese men volunteered or were drafted to fight in WWII. Many Americans started to associate the Chinese-Americans as the “good-type of Asians” who were hardworking and brave as opposed to the Japanese-Americans who were treacherous and cruel. And of course, Japanese resentment was personified by how Japanese-Americans were sent to internment camps during the World War II. The relative trust and acceptance of Chinese immigrants was stunted by Mao Zedong’s Communist victory in creating the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The Red Scare of the Cold War once again made Chinese-Americans adversaries in the eyes of Communist opponents. About twenty years later, mends in U.S.-Chinese relations were made when President Nixon journeyed to China to meet with Chairman Mao Zedong in 1972. Relations with China were officially normalized in 1978, when President Jimmy Carter recognized the legitimacy of the People’s Republic of China (MOCA).

Chinatown wasn’t always dubbed a cultural and ethnic hub for Chinese people. This neighborhood has gone through the hands of very diverse enclaves of peoples. In the mid-1800s this space was mainly inhabited by the Irish, Germans, and freed slaves. The new wave of immigration of the late 1800s brought in Eastern European Jews, Italians, and a sizeable amount of Chinese to this area. There were enough Chinese in the neighborhood that in 1880 the New York Times officially termed the area “China Town.” In the early to mid 1900s Chinatown was inhabited by the Chinese with some Hispanics, and Blacks. Slowly the other ethnic groups fettered out leaving a majority of Asian-Americans (Waxman).

Chinatown is unique because of its seeming unadulterated retention of Chinese culture and customs; It is certainly arguable that no other ethnic community in New York City has been able to retain the authenticity and realness of their homeland culture. Asian-American, Jamie Wong, from Long Island, gave her opinion on a modern-day Chinatown and the impressions this community leaves on her when she visits it: “I get to appreciate and experience a deep depth into my culture whenever I’m at Chinatown and it is different from other cities because there’s a sense of unity that could not be described with just words and people seem to know everyone and anyone as if everyone is each other neighbor. Plus the food is almost as authentic as the original in China, that’s why I like going to Chinatown.” In Chinatown, it seems that American assimilation was stunted or slowed down in a fantastic manner allowing for pockets of American culture but still very much dominated by Chinese values.