The Great Wall Is a Great Wall

Peter Wang's most excellent adventure -- as director and actor in this work, his work simply shines. This film probably works best for adults, preferably in their thirties or forties or older. It's about tracing one's roots, one's ancestors across the sea -- in this case, the Pacific Ocean; but in other ways, many of the elements of the story are universal.

There's a friendly, respectful attitude taken to Mainland China here; none of the atmosphere or tension of investigative journalism presents itself. After all, the subject at hand is visiting with relatives. Wang does a nice job of presenting how both cultures tend to look down at the other, not necessarily in a bitter way, but more in a comic vein. We express sympathy for what we perceive as faults or missing elements in the culture or individual lives of the other relatives. What the American Chinese family perceives as a failing may be a source of pride or strength for the Mainland family -- and vice versa. This film is one of a handful that, immediately after seeing it, I wanted to go right back into the theater and see it again. I didn't. I went back the very night day. Finding the video to rent can be difficult in some places; but well worth the effort. I try to watch it at least once every two to three years; always gets me laughing again, and by the end, I still wish I could have been there with this young family in China and had them as personal friends to visit with here in California. They seem to have such fun and such spirit; a very beautiful rapport between father and son is shown and further developed as the film unfolds. Don't miss it, whatever you do -- the whole film, not just the ending. It took my breath away. Too bad the title is a bit much.

In San Francisco, Peter Wang doesn't get the promotion to lead the new division, so he spills hot coffee on his boss's lap. Then he takes his wife and son to visit his sister's family in Beijing. There, the daughter of the house, Qinqin Li, is trying to get one of the rare admissions to university. They all distract each other from their lives.

Peter Wang's exploration of cultural clash amidst a loving family seems very random at times, yet it all adds up to the random series of events that go into a family. Wang's brother-in-law, Xiaoguang Hu, is the most comical of all the characters, with his sluffing off of responsibility to rearing his daughter to his life, and comes out with statements about the evils of American society and the rampant homosexuality on the streets in the United States. Yet in the end everyone likes everyone else, and has something to teach, and to learn.

The movie is a good concept with amateur / poor execution. But the scenes -- on the street, in the hotongs, courtyards, and streets of Beijing are just amazing. Beijing today is an amazing metropolis, and in this movie, in 1986, it has more the feeling of an overgrown village. you get somewhat unintentional glimpses of poverty and poorly maintained infrastructure -- Beijing in 2006 is far more cosmopolitan in places, with both much greater energy and wealth than you will see here and also more filth and poverty. The cultural notes are mostly still relevant, though the rampant capitalism, scheming and vitality of today's BJ make for a very different city. the Beijing of this movie is as lost as the "LA" of Chinatown (the movie) circa 1930's.....

so as history and culture lesson the movie is a 10. 'the world of Susie Wong' works as both history and movie; this one is just good history!

there are some really good constructive criticism for China and these includes problems that are common in the contemporary Chinese society, such as cutting in in front other people in the line of waiting and disrespect to privacy. Economic progress alone is not enough to make a modern society and this is the greatest contribution of this movie behind its stories.

The first American movie filmed in Mainland China presents a mild but occasionally diverting clash of cultures following the reunion in Peking of a thoroughly westernized Chinese-American family from San Francisco with their Old World relatives. The comedy catalogues the bewilderment of host and guest alike when confronted by peculiar foreign customs, with the best laughs coming from the People's republic point of view: students singing 'Papa Rawdi' (Pavarotti) and reciting, in unique pidgin, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; an old man coping with the electric blanket presented as a gift by his American brother-in-law; the question of whether or not everyone in the United States has VD. The Western perspective is less interesting only because it's more familiar (football, rock 'n' roll, and so forth) but everyone benefits from the mutual exposure, including the audience.