[FIRST IMPRESSIONS] “A Portrait of Those Left Behind: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑜𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝐵𝑖𝑟𝑑” by X. H. Collins

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Huang Ji and Ryuji Otsuka (directors and screenwriters), The Foolish Bird 笨鳥, 2017. 118 min.

One minute into The Foolish Bird 笨鳥, I realised that, despite being a native Mandarin speaker, I did not understand what the characters were saying. I paused the film and turned on the English subtitles.

Partially based on Huang Ji’s own experience growing up as a left-behind girl, the film was shot in her hometown of Yiyang, a small town in Hunan province. The directors used non-professional actors who speak in Hunanese dialect. The camera follows Lynn, a high school student who lives with her maternal grandparents while her parents are away in Zhuhai, as she rides her bike through the winding, narrow streets in incessant rain, trying to navigate the difficult years of adolescence on her own, the bullying, the friendship, the sex, without support and guidance from any adults.

Leaving children in the care of grandparents is not uncommon in China, because we believe so strongly in our “blood ties”. There is no other relationship that can top that. This is perhaps the fundamental reason why parents choose to leave and tell themselves that the kids are going to be fine. Perhaps also why Chinese parents rarely adopt children. In the film, Lynn’s best friend May is adopted, but her adoptive parents’ purpose for doing so is to find a wife and caregiver for their disabled son.

Communications between generations are always hard no matter where we are in the world and what cultures we belong to. It is especially hard in a traditional Chinese home, where parents typically assume authoritarian roles in decision-making. Parents living apart from their growing children for extended periods only exacerbate this communication gap, as we observe between Lynn and her mother. They have nothing to say to each other, other than Lynn’s mother promising she will “take care of the money”. To her, providing for Lynn in the form of tuition for extra classes is probably what a good mother would do. What can she do by staying home, without this money or the education herself to teach her daughter? There is at least hope in going away, however false that hope might be. The decision to leave their children behind is an economic decision and a result of the class divide. It is much easier for parents who have stable jobs and middle-class incomes to be involved in their children’s daily lives.

Mobile phones are almost like characters in the film, just as they are in the real world. They are a means of communication and entertainment, but also the source of anxiety, and a way to be sucked into criminal activities, both as perpetrators and victims. Huang Ji has made it clear in her interviews that she did not intend to portray Lynn as a victim. Perhaps Lynn’s act of defiance is her own way of demanding justice: she is the one who steals mobile phones from her classmates, who calls random strange men to get attention, who invites Dawei to the hotel, and does him “favours” in exchange for help to get into the police academy.

Those who are left behind also include the elderly, like Lynn’s grandparents. In addition to Lynn, they also care for Lynn’s cousins, several rambunctious young boys, whose parents are also absent. They are as lonely as their charges, and they are vulnerable to sales scams, because the scammers make them feel seen and cared for, while their own children are thousands of miles away, lost in their own struggles. One of the most heart-wrenching scenes is the confrontation between Lynn and her classmates, mediated by their teacher: none of the girls have their parents with them, just their elderly grandfathers.      

I have been wondering about the title of the movie, The Foolish Bird 笨鳥. The only reference in the movie was the bird Lynn’s grandfather shot and tried to present to the teacher as a bribe and later the scamming salesperson as a thank-you. When I saw the title, I thought about the Chinese idiom 笨鳥先飛 bèn niǎo xiān fēi, clumsy birds have to start flying early. Starting to fly early in order to do what? Reach their destinations?  To get ahead of other flocks?  Perhaps that was what the film makers have intended to show us, that the left-behind children are like 笨鳥, foolish clumsy birds that have to start flying early. Without supportive parents in their corner, they have to leave their nests, grow up fast, learn about the cruelty of the world early, if they don’t want to be left behind as adults. But can they succeed?

How to cite: Collins, X. H. “A Portrait of Those Left Behind: The Foolish Bird.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 5 Apr. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/04/05/foolish-bird.

X. H. Collins was born in Hechuan, Sichuan Province, China, and grew up in Kangding on the East Tibet Plateau. She has a PhD in nutrition and is a retired biology professor. She is the author of the novel Flowing Water, Falling Flowers (MWC Press, 2020), and has published short stories and essays. She now lives in Iowa with her family. For more information, visit her website and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. [All contributions by X. H. Collins.]