This is a story of a girl, Sarah from New York who was sent by her mother to live in Malaysia due to her mother career. The reason I wanted to discuss this movie for my blog post is because this movie has revealed a lot of Malaysia's Chinese culture and specialty. Besides, they also reflect a lot culture issues that happened in Malaysia.
Firstly, after watching the movie, I been asking myself a question. "There is not much Americans don't know English; there is not much Korean don't know Korean language, but why there is so much Chinese don't know how to speak Chinese?" My position is not criticizing Chinese or Chinese language but I'm asking myself why there is many Chinese people started give up on Chinese language? Like this movie, some people know how to speak Chinese but they will try not to speak it. But why? I have made a few assumptions toward this matter. Firstly, it is because some of the them have been influenced by western culture, they have not much interaction with Chinese language and they started to feel not familiar with Chinese because they have get used in speaking in English. Secondly, their parents have influences them by having an English language conversation with them since they are kids because they want them to speak fluent English. As we all know English is a very important language and also knows as International language. So most of the parents wanted to ensure their children future so they decide to teach them English rather than Chinese language. Thirdly, some peoples will have bad perception toward the Chinese language because they believe Chinese language is a very low classy or rude language. Some peoples feel humiliate when they talk Chinese in a city or higher standard areas because everyone is modernize with English language. Forth, some of them feel Chinese is hard to learn. Yes, Chinese language consider one of the hardest language to learn in the world. So, this might becomes the obstacle for Chinese to speak or learn Chinese language. Well, my assumptions do not really represent what the Chinese stop speaking or learning Chinese, these are just some assumptions and prediction that I have made when I observe the people around us.
Secondly, this movie has gives me a lot of memories on how Malaysian Chinese celebrate the festival in Malaysia. We are lucky as we living in a multicultural nation where we combined our culture into a unique culture which is only for Malaysian. For an example in the movie, they celebrate their own unique Christmas day with our Chinese culture which they use "boiled white chicken" (白斩鸡) the represent the turkey and some "red colored egg" to represent the Jesus's birthday celebration. This is the specialty happens in Malaysia as we learn and try each other culture and mixed it up to become our own unique culture to have fun with.
Thirdly, the director wanted to reflect a daily issues in the movie to the audiences. "I had just come home after working overseas, and I was shocked at just how rampant the smartphone culture was," she mentioned. In this modernize era, everyone is just looking at their phone all the times even in restaurants, shopping mall or mamak stall. They just keeping on enjoying the things happen in the internet rather than put down the phones to talk with each other and know each other more. Luckily, at the middle of the story of the movie, the director reveals some way to hint the audiences to use the technologies wisely.
In short, this is one of the best local movie I ever watched. They have managed to show the specialty, the beauty, the culture, the nature of our Malaysian. This movie also reminds us to appreciate the moment together with family. That's all for my review and opinion. :)
Your post got me thinking... is it really true many Chinese people do not know Chinese? I am assuming you only mean here in Malaysia?
ReplyDeleteFor where I stand, I see a whole lot of Chinese students who do know Chinese now, compared to when I was a kid. Back then, most Chinese people sent their kids to public schools (government schools) so the medium of instruction was BM and English so the prevalence of Chinese-speaking kids was not common.
Nowadays, I feel like many more Chinese parents send their kids to Chinese schools so there is more Chinese being learnt, although whether the quality of this Chinese is any good is debatable.
So just to give you a different perspective on the issue based on my comparison of 40 years ago and now.