That this movie was branded as a romantic comedy was probably one of the greatest misfortunes it had deigned to suffer. Revolving not around the whims of attraction, Crazy Rich Asians instead delves into generational tensions, cultural conflicts, and illusions of superiority, asking and answering questions about the traditions of exclusionary behavior and hierarchical distinctions.

 

As the movie opens, we meet a dignified and well-dressed Asian woman, who arrives at a private hotel in London, drenched in rain. Behind her is another woman and two children, who, upon entry, track mud all over the clean lobby floors. The woman asks to be shown to a suite, for which she has made a reservation. At this, the hotel managers express their racialized contempt for her, suggesting that she stay at Chinatown instead. It is here that she reveals that she is Mrs. Eleanor Young from Singapore, the lady of the house, and the new owner of the hotel.

 

The family name “Young” connotes novelty and ascendance, suggesting that their wealth and international regard are the result of a newfound development, an unseating of a previously long-standing Western hegemony. Again we see a sort of Asian ascendancy when Mr. Goh tells his children to eat more, lest they grow up skinny like those “children starving in America”. And then, upon seeing a cast of Westerners featuring mainly as servers and performers, we are quickly convinced to prepare for a racial conflict framed by tensions between the East and the West. Remembering the title, “Crazy Rich Asians”, we are swept into the mindset that this story is about a reversal of the global tradition in favor of a new empire embodied by the new and rising Youngs.

 

However, none of this stems from their pride in being Asian; Mr. Goh demonstrates his internalized racism by putting on a stereotypical Asian accent, while the Youngs embellish themselves with Methodist faiths, English accents, and Oxbridge degrees. In fact, contrary to their family name, the Youngs are obsessed with maintaining tradition, and are willing to incorporate anything into their family culture in order to solidify their upper hand. 

 

Meanwhile, Rachel Chu’s American upbringing symbolizes revolution, anomaly, and passion, which threatens the tradition so revered by the Youngs. She had been raised by a mother who had run away to America for love, while Nick Young, her boyfriend, had been raised as an heir to the family fortune and to stay beyond the reach of any fleeting pursuits made in the name of passion. To Mrs. Young, their relationship is a threat, because Rachel does not follow in these traditions, and is therefore considered an outsider.

 

Yet this glamorous and exclusive society of the Youngs is merely an illusion. It is a savage girl-eat-girl world riddled with jealousy and dishonesty, where friendship is a facade to maintain connections or appearances, and a woman’s worth is based off of her surname, riches, and sex appeal; a two dimensional image composed of “optimal angles” instead of a more natural pose in Cousin Eddie’s family portrait; a bundle of secrets and concealments where even Nick lacks the transparency to tell Rachel about his familial background until she is already heavily invested in the relationship.

 

Perhaps the most damaging effect of this family’s penchant for pretense is incurred by Astrid, Nick’s cousin, who fantasized perseveringly that she could elevate her ordinary husband into becoming an accepted member of the family. She hides her riches and turns down jobs, hoping not to make him “feel less than”, yet he is still regarded by the family as Astrid’s “boy-toy”. In his desperation to assert his masculinity, he chooses to be unfaithful to his wife, and he is shocked and disappointed when, upon hearing this news, Astrid chooses to prioritize her family’s perfect public appearance, rather than to admit to how much he had hurt her. 

 

As Astrid helps Rachel bury the fish remains (which Nick’s jealous ex-girlfriend had used to vandalize Rachel’s room) at the beach, she reveals what her husband has done. In the scene she wears the same colors that are picked out at the beginning of the movie as Chinese funeral colors. It is clear to us that she is not only burying a fish, but also mourning the death of a tradition: for the sacred practice of marriage and the integrity of the nuclear family, a most time-honored custom of all, had been violated. Ironically, it is Astrid’s use of pretense to protect a parody of perfection, and her husband’s own delusions of belonging, that not only failed to buoy up the status quo, but had actively been deteriorating it.

 

And Rachel might’ve ended up with a similar fate, except for the fact that she pointedly chose integrity; instead of trying to sacrifice her sense of self to assimilate with a world that would never accept her, she decided to embrace her given identity and to let go of those who could not be compatible with it. It is this honesty, an honesty to the self, that lasts in the end.

 

In the most climatic scene of the movie, Mrs. Young sits down to a game of Mahjong with Rachel. Rachel throws out the tile of the eight bamboo sticks, which Mrs. Young claims for herself. Triumphantly, Mrs. Young reveals her winning hand, almost as if to say that she had come out on top. 

 

Rachel sighs knowingly. She explains that she had chosen to leave Nick, not because she was scared of Mrs. Young, or because she felt that she wasn’t enough, but because she didn’t want Nick, whom she cared so much about, to grow to resent his mother. She told Mrs. Young that, when Nick had married a girl who could win her approval, and when he had given her the future that she wanted, she would remember that it had all been because of Rachel’s sacrifice.

 

Then, Rachel knocks her tiles over: she had already achieved a winning hand, now short of eight bamboo sticks. It was because of Rachel’s sacrifice that Mrs. Young could win.

 

It is worth mentioning that the tile of the eight bamboo sticks serves different purposes in their two respective hands. For Mrs. Young, it is the final piece she needed to complete four sequences of identical tiles, symbolizing how she had finally succeeded in building a family that was homogenous, aligned, and composed only out of those that were “of our own.” As for Rachel, however, the eight bamboo sticks would have been included in an ascending sequence of non-identical tiles, showing how her admittance into the Young household would have been a divergence from the status quo. But in giving away this tile, Rachel showed that she was ready to step away from this struggle, and to allow Mrs. Young to complete her set, a vision of perfect sameness.

 

It is Rachel’s commitment to authenticity, and her choice to remove herself from a world that had been built to exclude the people like her, that saved not only her own happiness, but the reputation of the Young family. In contrast with Astrid and her husband, it was Rachel’s refusal of such pretension that would’ve made Nick’s marriage free of scandal, and the Young empire last.

 

In the end, Mrs. Young realizes this, too. Enshrined in her engagement ring, truth to the self was made into a family tradition. Meanwhile, the traditional antagonism between mothers-in-law and newlyweds was broken, and the empire of generational trauma was over, beginning a new era of love.

 

Whether through the form of hierarchy, exclusionary practices, or love, tradition is not necessarily old. It is only built to last.