Yiyun Li has long been the representative of American Chinese writers. Over the years, she sticks to writing novels and short stories entirely in English. Her works involve not only the cultural shock between these two countries, but also political opinions, subtle feelings, and the seemingly simple relationship which is indeed complicated of all human beings. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is the movie adopted by one of her novels and shot with the background of multicultural impact centering around the main clue of the father-daughter relationship. The paper aims at analyzing some elements behind the objective reality.

Ha Jin, who is also an immigrant writer, has once said in his book The Writer as Migrant, that at the outset of his career, a writer often wrestles with the Aristotelian questions—to whom, as whom, and in whose interest does he write? His answers will shape his style of writing. Therefore, as we discuss a book, the topic of its writer is inevitable. To know the writer better can help the readers to understand better. There many studies on the writer towards varies terms, such as Focusing on the nonentities and writing cultural differences by Feng Yuanyuan to depict the features of her works, The Analysis of the Identity Construction of the Translator’s Behavior for Chinese-American Language Writer by Tang Lei to concentrate on the identity construction of the writer herself and The Ones Who Are in Dilemma—the novel Theory of the Chinese Woman Writer Yiyun Li for Language Acquisition to introduce influence of the cultural identity on her writing by Li Jing.

About Yiyun Li, Ahmed Fatema proposed in the review Double Agent that Li’s ability to write about both her native and adoptive countries—her characters include Chinese immigrants in America and emigres on return visits to China—makes her a skillful double agent. And the cross-cultural dispatches she delivers require rapid adjustments on the part of the reader, too. Qin Sheng suggested in Don’t Let Us Have Nothing to Say about This World—Li Yiyun and Her Story A Man Like Him that the settings of the books written by YiYun Li are always related to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, therefore, most of the heroines in her works suffered from trauma and loss, which is linked with her experience and memories. On the other side, the trauma is not the whole part what she tried to tell, but the narrative texts to inspire the reflection on the post-trauma times.

In terms of the content in the movie, the father and the daughter “Yi Lan” fail to settle down to talk with each other openly and truthfully. In fact, they are just the epitome of the Eastern and Western Culture—the two generations of the post-modernity. According to Ahmed, Fatema, also said in Double Agent, the parent-child relationship in this book provide a poignant commentary on the dislocation between modern China and its recent past. When Mr. Shi visits his divorced daughter in the Midwest, anxious to catch up on the conversation they fail to have during her childhood when he was too busy to answer her constant questions. After a lifetime of no talking, her daughter has nothing to say to him, but he could not understand her even if she did. “A foreign country gives one foreign thoughts.” This kind of phenomenal is largely due to the increased westernization widening the generation gap.

Symbolism plays an important part in her books. The director Wang Ying has used comprehensive objects to indicate the hidden currents of emotion under the peaceful surface between the father and the daughter. He said that people growing up in oriental families usually use other ways to convey their ideas rather than expressing themselves directly. Many directors like conducting the movie in a simple way. This kind of film put more focus on the development of the story which is very objective. The related researches mainly include: The Interpretation of Symbolic Literature of the Movie A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Li Bing, Reflections on the Appreciation of Revolutionary Cultural Relics by Li Feng, Mao Ruonan. Li Bing divided his analysis into three parts: Chinese elements and symbols, the contrast between the shots and the plots, and the images of the river and the train coming up in the beginning and the end of the movie. Li Feng tried to analyze two different values and the cultural connotations behind the symbols in this movie.

In the aspect of writing techniques, researchers mainly focus on the pragmatic analysis, like The Linguistic Strategies of Alienation and Adaptation in YiYun Li’s Novels by Li Bing, Mirror Image by Daiyue xing. Ling Bing suggested that she chose to combine alienation and adaptation in order to make the Chinese English maintain its local characteristics, on the other way, to hold the English Standardization. Daiyue Xing constructed a three-dimensional cube consisting of the writer, the work and the reader to analyze the two different points of views in her novel, helping readers to appreciate this novel from varied perspectives.

In addition, many other YiYun Li’s books also have been discussed, Like Golden Boy, Emerald Girl, The Vagrants, Kinder Than Solitude. The related studies include Research on the trauma and cure in Golden Boy by Cai Jie and A Song of Weeds—A Review on The Vagrants—the first long novel by YiYun Li, which can help to understand the movie better. Many of her works have presented different people and their families under the change of time and different cultural settings. With this condition, many researches tend to talk about the typical images in these two different contexts: Marx, Mao and Morality in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Chin, Vivian and From What We Eat to How We Are: Food and the Father-Daughter Relationship in Yiyun Li’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Lo, Yi-Jou, Cultural Faults in Chinese American Family Relations by Manli, Lu.

Under the background of cultural exchange and integration, people around the world tend to accept the new beliefs and customs, especially for the immigrants. On one hand, they should try themselves to merge into the local life to behave like the locals; on the other hand, they lose their original traditions and values gradually, which may lead to the cultural faults and estrangement between the two generations. In the movie, the daughter has once said that English can help her express herself better, because she thought Chinese is a restriction for her. She loses the natural ability to express love, leaving countless audiences a deep depression. Therefore, the language influences on way of thinking will be discussed. Love is the immortal theme for all human beings, especially inseparable for those related by blood. This thesis is intended to explore the love between the father-daughter relationship and the language impact on them.

2. 研究的基本内容与方案

This paper is to analyze the relationship between the father and the daughter mainly centering around the patterns of connection both from the internal and external elements. The external element refers to the cross-cultural conflicts, which leads to the different family beliefs and attitudes towards personal relationships. And the misunderstanding also results in the contradicted point of view of these two generations of this post-modern society. On the other hand, the internal element lies in the two characters’ personal feelings and experiences, in which Yi Lan and her father has the false expression on each other lasting over many years. From analyzing the personalities from the psychological perspective, it will be easy to understand the inner logic of the two characters better. The environment people live in can influence their speech and behavior, and the experience can also shadow on their lives of later years. By combing these two factors, the sense of alienation in this movie can be well explained.