film review about Gua Sha(刮痧影评)

The Gua Sha treatment is a movie about the differences and conflicts between American and Chinese culture. There are so many cultural gaps shown in this movie. Ways of child education, value of friendship and concept of familial affection, all of these Chinese traditions torture Da Tong, the leading role of this film, and his family during their assimilation into American culture.
The first culture difference come into my mind is the way they treat their children. For Da Tong , when his son does n’t obey his word to make an apology to his boss’s son, he teaches his son by force without thinking twice. When his boss asks him, he say he do this because he want to save his boss’s face. This is quite unacceptable for the boss. There are two obvious culture differences in this case. First, i n Chinese parents’ eyes, children are their “private” property, they have right to teach their children in any way they like. Second, it is quite common to teach children by force if they refuse to apologize to other children before their parents. It’s one way to save other adults’ face. But for America they don’t have such ideas. They care more about their children’s feelings, care more about the law.
The second typical difference is the way they do things. In the film it reflects on the way they choose lawyer. At first they choose a lawyer who isn’t familiar with the family affairs. They do this because they have a typical Chinese belief that “acquaintance make things easy ” . This is a
quite common belief for Chinese. But for Americans , they choose the proper one even if he is a strange.
Da Tong, as a typical Chinese man, chooses to undertake his father’s fault in court rather than tell the truth. We Chinese can understand it , but for Americans it’s quite unacceptable. In their views, one must stand on his own feet, so everyone must take his own responsibility, at the same time , one must tell the truth in court. So Da Tong is wrong. But we Chinese can understand him. As a traditional Chinese son, he should to undertake his father’s fault in such case.
Fortunately, as we communicate more, more understanding and appreciation is between us.。