The Bridegroom

Several stories of The Bridegroom depict characters attempting to navigate or synthesize both American and Chinese cultural value systems. In “An Official Reply,” Mr. Fang misinterprets many American social attitudes and customs. He misunderstands a lecture given by a visiting American professor, and believes for a period that acting selfishly is not only acceptable in America, but necessary in order to assert one’s dominance. This attitude causes him to embarrass himself in front of an American novelist (who he expects to pay for his cheese strudel), as well as in front of an academic audience (when he gives a brash lecture during a panel on American literature in China). Though the narrator of “An Official Reply” depicts Mr. Fang’s mistakes as simply egotistical errors, Mr. Fang’s blunders also illuminate the invisible boundaries that distinguish acceptable and unacceptable social behavior, whether in China or America.

Another way American and Chinese social customs come into conflict with another is through the many references to capitalism sprinkled throughout The Bridegroom. At the beginning of “An Entrepreneur’s Story,” people consider the narrator a criminal for running an illegal business selling cigarettes at a higher price than he purchased them. Several years later, however, the same practice which once landed the narrator in jail is suddenly legal. The narrator then tries his hand at trade once again and, instead of punishment, becomes a very rich man. Nevertheless, he still fears the government suddenly and randomly seizing his profits once more. He says, “I may lose everything at any time; the city can confiscate my business and savings just by issuing an order” (124). “An Entrepreneur’s Story” demonstrates how capitalist business practices are in evolving conflict with China’s communist economic and political organization.

The story where the differences between Chinese and American social and economic attitudes appears most thoroughly, however, is “After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town.” In this story, a fast-food restaurant’s American owner and his Chinese employees are at odds over how best to handle a number of given situations. The employees feel Mr. Shapiro is naïve to indulge customers’ complaints, while Mr. Shapiro tells his employees that, in the American way of doing business, “the customer is always right” (185).

At another point, the employees call Mr. Shapiro’s words “capitalist baloney” (187). When trying to console his father, who works for the Communist Party and earns lower wages than he does, the narrator says, “Every day you just sit at your desk drinking tea and reading newspapers, or chatting away, and at the end of each month you take home a full salary. But I have to work my ass off for a capitalist who pays me by the hour” (198). Yet at the same time, when attacked by local Chinese who call the employees “American dogs” (185), the employees adamantly defend their employment and the restaurant that employees them. As with “An Entrepreneur’s Story,” “After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town” paints a vivid picture of the numerous complications that arise in the conflict between capitalism and communism, as well as between American and Chinese social value systems.