Eat a Bowl of Tea

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1961

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-10

Chapters 11-22

Chapters 23-35

Chapters 36-43

Chapters 44-57

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

The Closeness of Chinatown’s Community

Most of Eat a Bowl of Tea takes place in New York City’s Chinatown, and the community plays an important role in the novel. Novelist Louis Chu was himself active in New York’s Chinatown in the 1960s and 1970s, hosting a radio show aimed at Chinese audiences. He writes that “Chinatown is a closely knit community where everybody knows almost everybody else” (118). The fact that the novel’s protagonist Wah Gay belongs to a number of organizations, such as “The Chinese Masons, the Kuomingtang, the Chinese Elks, Ping On Tong, and the Wang Association” (118), demonstrates the close-knit nature of the community. This abundance of social and political clubs suggests that there are many opportunities for Chinatown residents to engage with their community.

The novel suggests that there are drawbacks and benefits to the closeness of the Chinatown community. Because of the intimacy and familiarity between residents, individuals are rarely granted privacy. As Chu warns in his description of Chinatown, “You may have no idea what a celebrity you are in your own community” (118). Although Ben Loy and his wife are newcomers to the community, their fathers are well-established figures, and as a result, rumors of Mei Oi’s affair with Ah Song spread quickly. Lee Gong feels “bitter because he felt his own daughter had brought disgrace upon himself” (137) as a result of these rumors. Ultimately, Ben Loy and Mei Oi feel like they have to leave New York to escape the observation of the tight-knit Chinatown community.

On the other hand, the close-knit nature of the Chinatown community is quite literally life-saving for Wah Gay. Wah Gay is an active member of the Wang Association, a community organization founded to support “the Wangs and their friends in New York” (143). When he is wanted by police for the attempted murder of Ah Song, the Wang Association rallies around him. The organization’s president tells the membership that Wah Gay “has performed whatever duties, as a member, that have been requested of him” (234) and that “it is fitting now that, when he is in need of our help, we should do all we can to help him” (234). Ultimately, members of the Wang family come “from Brooklyn, from Staten Island, from the Bronx, from Long Island” (233) to vote in support of Wah Gay. As a result, the matter is escalated to the Ping On Tong, which has the power to banish Ah Song. The close-knit nature of the Chinatown committee offers challenges and benefits for Wah Gay and his family.

The Value of Tradition

Eat a Bowl of Tea centers on two generations of Chinese American immigrants navigating the balance between Chinese traditions and their new life in the US. Although Wah Gay is trying to build a new life for his family in New York, he and his wife rely on Chinese traditions to organize the marriage of their son, Ben Loy. Although Ben Loy and Mei Oi express interest in each other, the families insist that they need to wait and “see how the birthdays come out […]. See what the red book has to say” (52). The reference to birthdays and the red book points to the traditional Chinese study of star charts in order to determine compatibility. Even though the couple has a “modern” wedding ceremony in Sun Lung Lay village church, they wear traditional Chinese clothing, a nod to the deeply held traditions of their country. Mei Oi’s mother vows to “observe all the traditional Chinese holidays” (54) on behalf of her daughter and to “present, as long as her daughter remained living in her husband’s village, all the favors that were customarily a mother-in-law’s offering to the bridegroom’s household” (54). The older generation’s dedication to maintaining Chinese traditions even after their families have been separated by continents speaks to the novel’s belief in the value of tradition.

Ben Loy is not as committed as his parents to maintaining Chinese traditions and leaves for San Francisco without speaking to his father. Although he believes that “new frontiers, new people, new times, new ideas” (261) await him in San Francisco, Ben Loy ultimately builds a life that looks remarkably like his father’s. In the novel’s final chapters, Ben Loy and Mei Oi host a “haircut party” (265), a traditional Chinese celebration honoring the new mother and baby. This party suggests that, despite his protests in New York, Ben Loy is returning to the traditions celebrated by his father’s generation. The fact that Ben Loy’s impotence is cured by drinking a “thick, black, bitter tea” (262) prescribed by a traditional herbalist in San Francisco further highlights the value of maintaining traditions. The novel’s final lines indicate that the couple will invite their fathers back into their lives by including them in the next haircut party for their son, demonstrating the link between Chinese tradition and strong family ties. Ben Loy and Mei Oi’s happy ending is only possible because they return to the Chinese traditions their parents’ generation brought to the US.

Misogyny in Male-Dominated Societies

The anti-Chinese immigration laws passed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries meant that Chinese American immigrant communities in cities like New York and San Francisco were often dominated by single men and married men living apart from their wives. The novel suggests that the relative scarcity of women in the community has a negative effect on the men, who grow more vulgar than they would be if women were present. In places like the Money Come club, for example, “where unattached men usually gathered, the discussion and the language would not be the finest” (23). The repeated use of the sexualized insult “wow your mother” (9, 10, 11, 16, 17, 105, 107) highlights this objectification of women in male-dominated spaces. The older generation’s attitudes are not presented as a moral flaw but as a result of the social forces shaping the Chinatown community.

The novel suggests that misogyny is an unfortunate side effect of male-dominated societies like New York City’s Chinatown. Because of the community’s demographics and strict guidelines for propriety, single men like Chin Yeun rarely spend time with women. As a result, when Chin Yeun is alone with Mei Oi, he has an intense reaction to touching her: “He felt a softness the like of which he had never known before. It made his heart throb erratically” (165). Chin Yeun immediately sexualizes Mei Oi, denying her the opportunity for full personhood and reducing her to a sexual object. The fact that Mei Oi is his best friend’s wife does not bother Chin Yeun, “who admitted to himself that he might have been the other man in the love theft” (132) if he had had the opportunity. The novel suggests that his interest in Mei Oi is unrelated to her personality or individuality, but rather a result of his lack of alternatives in the male-dominated Chinatown.

Although the relative lack of women in Chinatown causes men to sexualize Mei Oi, the men in the community do not necessarily value her. Women are rare in New York but common in China, and before his son’s marriage, Wah Gay speculates that “if Ben Loy should not like Lee Gong’s daughter, he could always get another girl [in China] and be married” (30). Even after Mei Oi’s marriage, Ah Song continues to devalue her, dismissing her as “just a country girl who found herself in the big city” (98). Ah Song is confident in his ability to seduce Mei Oi: “[H]e believed that he held the power to sway the emotional outburst of this young girl to suit his fancy (98-99). The novel suggests that Ah Song’s devaluing of women like Mei Oi is a result of the primarily male demographics of Chinatown.