The film is about the fragility and resilience of the director’s grandmother who faced oppression from unjust Confucian traditions in Asia. It aims to reflect upon women’s oppression and struggle for freedom.
T’ung-yang-hsi is a tradition of pre-arranged marriage, selling a young girl to another family to be raised as a future daughter-in-law in productive roles. The director’s grandmother was a T’ung-yang-hsi. She was assigned to do all the household chores and was not allowed to receive higher education. The narration is based on interviews with the director’s grandmother’s children. Egg is an important symbol in the film. As the metaphor for women in the film, the eggs are the symbolization of the productive roles in the male-dominated society. After labor and oppression experienced by a T’ung-yang-hsi, the film reaches its climax with Hakka ‘Old Mountain Song’ combined with turbulent waves. Behind the rail track, there is the sea. Across the sea, therein lies freedom.
From microscopic to macroscopic, from personal witnesses to the general phenomena in society, the audiences may glimpse the long past, imagine women’s situation in our own times, and look forward to striving for real gender equality in the future. Egg is life per se. Eggs are fragile, but at the same time tough. My grandmother is an egg.
