Reviewing the Evolving Feminism Perspective

Daisy Chen​

(Editor's note:  Daisy Chen is a high school student from the Class of 2026 at Torrey Pine High School.  Daisy is  recipient of ACA API 2024 internship scholarship)

​On March 29th, Dr. Cheyenne Huang, a prominent writer of fiction and creative non-fiction in both Chinese and English gave a presentation at the Pacific Highlands Ranch library on The Evolving Feministic Perspectives of Chinese Family Movies.

The three movies she goes over, Eat Drink Man Woman (1996), Yolo (2024), and Her Story (2025, all incorporate key female perspectives. However, Dr. Cheyenne argues that these three films also demonstrate a clear timeline on the shifting depictions of female perspectives in Chinese Cinema over a twenty year period. Starting with Eat Drink Man Woman, a Golden Era Taiwanese film directed by legendary director Ang Lee, she delves into the nature of the film's narrator. While the films synopsis may lead audiences to believe that the central protagonist and narrator of the movie is the three sisters due to their overwhelming presence on the film’s poster and advertisement, the first scene of the film makes it clear that the film is being told from the perspective of the father, the semi-retired and aging chef Chu. Throughout the 2 hour and 4 minute run time, the daughter’s central obstacles and tribulations come from their relationships with men, whether it be lovers or an aging father. The catalyst for the youngest daughter, Jia-Ning, to move out of the house she has lived in her entire life is her pregnancy and sudden elopement with a mutual friend Guo-Lun. Her agency is derived simply off of traditional roles of the woman as the child bearer and wife. Thus, she is taken away from her father and sisters by her continuance of traditional gender roles. A similar fate befalls Jia-Jen, the eldest daughter, when her hurry to marry and consummate with volleyball coach Ming-Dao leads to her rushing off with him on a motorbike away from the family. Finally, the most career-oriented and modern second daughter makes the decision to reject a promotion and stay instead with what she believes is an ailing father. The decisions of the three women are made through their relationship with the men in their life and we so rarely see their desires outside of these connections. While the choice to focus on the father and other male-focused perspectives does not come at the detriment of the film, it is still a beautiful film observing the clash between traditionality and modernity told through the changing dynamics of a father-daughters relationship, it showcases the overall hesitation during this era to veer away from traditional gender roles even in such a unconventional film as Eat Drink Man Woman. The three women are allowed to have motivation and desires, so long as they revolve around the men. Such, while the beginnings of the female perspective started to develop, true female led narratives were still novelties.
However in the 21st century, the novelties have grown into smash-hits topping the charts. As Dr. Cheyenne explains, the recent films YOLO and Her Story are prime examples of the diversification of female perspectives in Chinese cinema. Nowhere is this better displayed than in the relationships between female narrator and protagonist, Leying, and her male love interest, failed boxer and coach, Hao Kun, in the film YOLO. Inspired by his capabilities in boxing and her realizing that she has gained a liking for him, Leying asks to be his student. However, when their relationship falls apart once Leying realizes Hao Kun’s self-destructive and pessimistic nature, her motivation to continue boxing and improve herself shifts from her desire for a man and onto her desire for self-improvement. Only through her own self-determination and self-efficacy does she attain her goal and make a lasting impact on her life. Similarly, in the film Her Story, the narrative follows the two female leads Tiemei and Xiao Ye learning to have aspirations beyond motherhood and being someone's sidepiece. The men in this film, much like the women in Eat Drink Man Woman, act like catalysts to further the development of the central female protagonists; Drumming teacher and potential love interest Xiao Ma guides Tienmei to discover her passions beyond motherhood and reconsider her own goals, whether that lies in a career or self-fulfilment. 
Ultimately, all three films present important and distinctive portrayals of a female narrative that greatly represent the time period that the films were produced during. And in the words of Dr. Cheyenne, showcases the extent to which female perspectives have grown in the past decades.