Lulu Wang’s Golden Globe-nominated The Farewell will ring many bells for those trapped between two cultures

In Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet, a Caucasian/Chinese gay couple in Manhattan pretends to be straight for the benefit of the parents of the Chinese man, who are visiting. When my grandmother had cancer, my family didn’t tell her.” Billi thinks that this is a lie, that this is wrong. The doctor, a man educated in the “West” but still rooted enough in the “East”, says: “I mean if it’s for good, it’s not really a lie. “When your Nai Nai reaches that point, I’ll tell her too.” The logic is this, and it goes back to something Billi’s father told her before they left: “Chinese people have a saying. But later, as Billi’s parents became more “American” – or perhaps when Billi learnt that she could rebel because she was “American” now – they allowed her to pursue her dreams of becoming a writer.