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An American woman's extended Chinese banquet
November 29, 1997
Her mother's words -- "Isn't marriage hard enough without cultural differences?" -- inspired "Apple pie and Chopsticks"
Web posted at: 11:09 p.m. EST (0409 GMT)HONG KONG (CNN) -- Elise Glickman's journey from typical American to Chinese daughter-in-law and wife has been challenging and captivating.
Along the way she made a documentary film about it called "Apple Pie and Chopsticks." It was a seven-year labor of love.
CNN's May Lee reports.
"I remember during the wedding banquet. In my ears, I heard this laughter of everyone around me. I didn't understand Chinese. I just sat there, smiling, stone-faced. I also heard my mother's voice saying ... Isn't marriage hard enough without cultural differences?'"
Glickman stresses the fact that similarities outweigh differences between American and Chinese women.
"To my surprise, I discovered China is not as exotic a place and mysterious as I thought and that the longer I live there, the more I feel we're very much the same, but it's hard to put into words.
"So what I try to do in this documentary is to give the pictures, and that's one of the virtues of television, to move people to help them feel what it's like to live in China."
One of the important aspects of life in China is family. For Elise, that has meant living under the same roof with her in-laws. She has gotten a look at tradition in southern China. One such tradition is frugality -- illustrated in the film by Elise's mother-in-law and a 30-year-old hand-knit sweater.
"She had given it to her husband, who wore it. Her sons wore it and she wore it and then it had fallen to such disgrace that she had unraveled the entire sweater and she was reworking it.
"And to me, that was not only representing her personality, but an entire generation that really valued economy, making the most out of the very least," Glickman said.
Elise's mother-in-law is just one of the four women in the documentary who exemplify survival, strength and creativity.
There is Shu Hua, once the highest ranking woman guerrilla in Fujian province during China's revolutionary era; Mei Yu, a rural farmer who lives on a mountaintop; and Xiao Yan, a young designer succeeding in the male-dominated world of fashion.
All of the women in the documentary have overcome huge hurdles to achieve various forms of independence. For Glickman, they are the role models who play an integral part of her ever-changing life inside China.
Correspondent May Lee contributed to this report.
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