Billi: Okay, when were you guys going to tell me this? How could you let me find out like this?

Jian: How should I have told you? "Oh, your grandma's on the roof".
Jian: [Asking a second time] So, YuPing, are you still going to send Bao away for college?
Jian: I know it was hard. It was hard for us too.
Jian: Chinese people have saying, when people get cancer they die. It's not cancer that kills them, it's the fear.
Jian: I don''t like, you know, put all my emotion on display. Like I''m in the zoo. But in here, if you don''t cry, you don''t put a show, they think that you don''t love your family. You know, in here, they even hire some professional criers. Just to show how sad they are. It''s just so ridiculous. I hate that.
Nai Nai: I walked the path of life and I have to say, you will face with difficulties. But you have to have an open mind. Don't be like a bull hitting his horns all over the walls of the room. Life isn't just about what you do, it's more about how you do it.
Billi: You know, one of the few good memories of my childhood were those summers at Nai Nais's. They had that garden, Ye Ye and I would catch dragonflies. And then we just moved to the States. Everything was different. Everyone was gone. And it was just the three of us.

Jian: I know it was hard. It was hard for us too.

Billi: I wanted to believe that it was a good thing, but all I saw was fear in your eyes. And I was confused and scared constantly because you never told me what was going on. And then Ye Ye died. You didn't even tell me he was sick. So it felt like he just vanished suddenly. And you wouldn't even let me go to his funeral.

Jian: You were at school. We didn't want you to miss school. We did what we thought was best for you.

Billi: But I never saw him again. And every time I came back to China, he just... he just wasn't there anymore. And I come back and he's just gone. The house is gone, A Die's gone, our Beijing home is gone and soon she'll be gone too.
Billi: [frustrated] Are you going to tell Nai Nai?

Haiyan: I can't, Billi. I won't go against my family.

Uncle Haibin: Billi, there are things you misunderstand. You guys moved to the West long ago. You think one's life belongs to oneself. But that's the difference between the East and the West. In the East, a person's life is part of a whole. Family. Society.

Uncle Haibin: You want to tell Nai Nai the truth, because you're afraid to take the responsibility for her. Because it's too big of a burden. If you tell her, then you don't have to feel guilty. We're not telling Nai Nai because it's our duty to carry this emotional burden for her.
Jian: You're broke again? Are you always going to live like this?

Billi: Poor but sexy? I hope so!

The Farewell Quotes

Extended Reading

The Farewell short comments

Rashawn 2021-12-28 08:02:14

The sentence "In the West, life is individual; in the East, life is collective." It directly points out what the whole film wants to express. The film is not as comedy as expected, it is more about the discussion of the differences between Chinese and Western cultural thinking. "Suddenly, my grandpa is gone, the old house is gone, and even my grandma is almost gone." Grandma in the end watched the car slowly leave, touching my tear ducts. Perhaps it is not the patient who caused the death, but the fear. "Ha ha!"
Carroll 2022-03-26 09:01:09

【YVR-5th】Top Ten! Is this the perfect movie? no. There are still flaws in performance and line design. But this is a careful and sincere Chinese film. The polishing of details (for example, when a Japanese girl returns to a hotel at the door to watch her parents enter and then enter the door) is very important, but what is more important is the honesty and sincerity of Chinese culture and identity. The most everyday but most contagious everyday situations and other people's perceptions. This little home is a country. The audience of this film is not only overseas Chinese and Chinese, nor domestic parents, but all Chinese. Among them, there is no team for the collision and display of Eastern and Western cultures, but images are given to the audience to judge for themselves. I remember that after Sundance, many film critics said that there was a feeling of Ang Lee pushing hands and a wedding banquet, yes! But lulu has also shaped its own style. The lines and stories in it are sympathetic. Thanks director! I am fine (I thought that watching it twice in a short period of time would dilute the level of love, but it didn't at all, the more I watched it, the more I liked it. I hope to get good grades, don't be buried!