After watching the 2022 Oscar best picture movie “CODA”, I once again realized the value of the presence of true love in a family. The true love that can’t be pretended was revealed by the deaf parents of Ruby in sign language and the powerful sound that deaf people can’t grasp, which brought novelty and happiness to both sets of audiences. After a brief contact with her deaf parents, Ruby’s boyfriend commented that Ruby’s parents were so much in love, unlike his parents who were cold to each other.

In fact, the coldness from just one parent, not between each other, is enough to permeate every corner of a family. I think of “The Reader”, a film about human nature and ethics which won Kate Winslet the Oscar for best actress in 2009. When I watched “The Reader” for the second time, I again felt the cold atmosphere of young Michael’s family, while seeing Michael’s mother talking about their children at the dinner table with his father’s indifferent expression. I thought that Michael’s love for Hanna who was twice his age might has something to do with the indifferent and cold atmosphere of his family.

The movie “The Reader” also made me feel that there was sometimes an insurmountable gap between macro kindness and love versus micro kindness and love, because of different cognition or intelligence. In the court, as an illiterate, Hanna could not possess macro kindness and love for the deaths under her control, so she did not feel guilty about what she had done in World War II; although after the war, she practiced micro kindness and love to Michael, a sick stranger, by taking care of him, which built the base for the story of “The Reader”. Later, as a lawyer, Michael, based on his moral intelligence, helped Hanna who was sentenced to life in prison, in a macro kindness and love way; but Michael himself lost the micro kindness and love for Hanna when he was 15 years old, so he stayed away from Hanna by ignoring the letters Hanna sent from prison.

Coming back to our current affairs, it has now been more than two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I now like to watch movies with simple stories full of difficulties and hope. “CODA” belongs to this category, because the film made me see the difficulties in deaf people’s daily life, and also presented to me the micro kindness and love, which brought hope to Ruby, from Ruby’s family and from her musical teacher.

The world has been fighting the pandemic for more than two years, the task is difficult and promising, and the outcome will not be a “man conquered the nature” tale. Sometimes I feel that the war against COVID-19 which started in 2020′s needs more macro kindness and love, which the illiterate Hanna lacks.

Little Episodes

1. “CODA”
Ruby, a high school student, who is the only person with hearing in her family of deaf parents and a brother, is very busy. She is busy helping her deaf father and brother to work like normal people while also attending school. She likes singing, but her deaf parents can’t understand the beauty of music as they can’t hear.

In the movie, the place where Ruby dived and swam with her boyfriend reminds me of the famous quarry of halibut Point State Park

2. “The Reader”
In 1958 after World War II in West Germany, 15-year-old Michael was very ill in the rain and ran into Hanna’s help. After recovering from scarlet fever, Michael brought flowers to thank Hanna. The two soon begun a passionate secret relationship. In 1966, Michael, a law school student, was shocked to see Hanna was on trial while watching a war-crimes trial of a group of women, all former Nazi SS guards.

3. 2009, Kate holding her Oscar Award, a statuette of a knight standing on a reel of film gripping a crusader’s sword.

In 1995, when my daughter was two years old, I ran into a middle school classmate at George Mason University in Virginia where I took my computer science courses before switching from chemistry to software. He told me: “‘The Joy Luck Club’ talks about the generation gaps between mothers who grew up in China and daughters who grew up in the United States. You have a daughter. It’s worth watching it. ” So I rented the video tape of “Joy Luck Club” to watch it carefully at home and I learnt not to be too strong of a mother like Lindo in the movie.

On the plane, I sat next to a born-in-the-80s mother of two daughters. We chatted casually and I learnt from her that she earned her Ph.D. degree in agriculture in the United States, that she is the only child of her parents, and that her family last name is Chi. This is the first time she and her husband brought their two preschool-age daughters back to China. Seeing me watching “Joy Luck Club” with tears, Dr. Chi asked: “This is an old movie, as I never heard of it before. Is it good? “

I said, “The film tells a few stories about the generation gap between mothers grew up in China and daughters grew up in the United States. You have daughters. It’s worth seeing. “

More than 20 years later, I passed the same message to a young China-born mother of “Joy Luck Club”, which is worth watching, because it reveals the challenges of dealing with cultural differences between China and the United States.

On the airplane, after watching the Joy Luck Club, I once again felt the ordinary human-sustaining nature of being a mother as well as the beauty of Chinese culture in terms of food and clothing. I also had a new discovery based on my previous reaction towards this movie.

In 1995, I was surprised to see the standing sex scene in the “Joy Luck Club” for the first time, so I remembered it.

In 2019, when watching the once surprising scene in “Joy Luck Club”, I immediately noticed this scene was shot in the hall of the main building of Filoli garden. Actually, “Joy Luck Club” borrowed the Filoli garden to shoot many scenes that took place in Shanghai in the 1940s. The movie of “Joy Luck Club” I liked came across with my favorite Filoli garden in Silicon Valley, which made the movie more personalized and interesting for me.

Recalling of the couplet of Jingxi Pavilion in Yongan temple in Beihai Park: “Stillness suits contentment. No need of long journey to grasp (悦性适应静，会心何必遐).”

Comprehending heartedly without going far requires a hardened mind.

Little Episodes

1. List of movies on the flight:

2. One of scenes in movie “Joy Lucky Club”:

3. The main building of Filoli garden (03-18-2018):

5. The Hall in the main building of Filoli Garden (03-18-2018):

Chines Version

Recently, my daughter and I watched a movie called “The Death of Stalin”. She was surprised that I knew the main characters in the movie.

I told her: “In China, we were taught in school to follow Stalin’s Soviet Union and to criticize Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet revisionism. ”

I asked my daughter: “Why did you want to watch this movie?”

My daughter said: “Friends recommended it.”

“History major friends?”

“No, club friends.”

“Recommended to watch for what?”

“Watching nonsensical behavior of high ranking officers in a brain-washed society.”

I thought about the movie we just watched and replied: “A brain-washed society is very scary.”

In a brain-washed society, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in China, it was not only high ranking officers were acted nonsensically, but also many average people, such as students against teachers, children against parents, people against people, etc.

This thought brought back memories of my mother reminding me to be careful about what I said in college (1981 – 1985).

In the 80’s, in last century’s China, one of the favorite activities for college students who just came back to school from winter or summer breaks was tasting different homemade foods brought back by roommates from different places.

In my college dorm room 501, in Sichuan Normal University female student building there lived eight classmates who came from Zigong, Mianyang, Ziyang, Chengdu, and Chongqin. We always tasted different homemade foods in our dorm room at the end of each break, foods like pork sausages, salted peanut, sweets, preserved meat, salted eggs etc. I still remember a glass jar of fried small fish, brought by Shan. Shan told us: “The fish was caught by my neighbor. The river in my hometown has lots of small fish, anyone can go to the river and catch small fish easily. ”

When I heard Shan’s story about “Anyone can go to the river to catch small fish easily”, I said to Shan: “your hometown practices real communism!”

Shan’s story touched my heart, when I came home during break, I told my parents: “ I tasted the fried small fish brought from Mianyang by my roommate Shan. There are lots of small fish at Mianyang’s river, anyone can catch them. Mianyang really likes communism.”

Before I went back to school after the break, my mother seriously talked with me: “You should not say ‘Mianyang really likes communism’ any more when you are back to school.”

I was irritated and asked her: “What is wrong with that?”

My mother saw my irritation, she thought a bit and said carefully: “You say ‘Mianyang really likes communism’ implies Zigong doesn’t, this could be interpret as slander against Zigong.”

I would never want to slander against my hometown. So I kept my mother’s reminder in my mind.

My mother experienced “people who bide their time to take revenge” during the Cultural Revolution. She was afraid that my innocent words may trouble me in the future. A mother’s love expressed under a special sensible time. Now, I still felt the deep love from my mother.

The flavor of Shan’s fried fish faded out, The Fort Mountain where the home for my entire schooldays was gone. However, the memory of my mother reminding me to watch my words, in our home on Fort Mountain, is still vivid.

The past few days, I was reading a book about the German invasion of France in World War II by Danielle Steel, from the book I learnt the sad story about French Jewish. When the race, not the words, threatens life, Jewish mothers in France gave up their own children to strangers and hoped their children would be smuggled to safe lands to survive, because those mothers believed there exists a love that is more powerful than a mother’s love.

Today is Thanksgiving, I have lots to be thankful for. The most thankful feeling goes to my mother for her unconditional love to me and to all the mothers who believed there exists a love more powerful than a mother’s love.

Dear Mother（10/25/1928－05/02/2018），I miss you.

(05/06/2017, Mother at ChangPin)