Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

and the Tile She Gave Away

A romantic comedy about a professor who meets her boyfriend's very rich family, and the first major-studio film with a mostly Chinese-descent cast since The Joy Luck Club. What it teaches about "not our own kind," a standard you were never meant to reach, your past used against you, "it was never my job to make you feel like a man," and knowing you're enough without winning.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018). Directed by Jon M. Chu, written by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim from Kevin Kwan’s novel. Constance Wu as Rachel Chu, Henry Golding as Nick Young, Michelle Yeoh as Eleanor Young, Gemma Chan as Astrid Young Teo, Awkwafina as Goh Peik Lin, Lisa Lu as Shang Su Yi, and Tan Kheng Hua as Kerry Chu.

“I’m not leaving because I’m scared, or because I think I’m not enough - because maybe for the first time in my life, I know I am.”

Rachel Chu, to Nick’s mother, over a game of mahjong.

This page belongs to On Screen. It is a refusal, and a gentle one, with two refusals in it. It was the first film from a major Hollywood studio with a mostly Chinese-descent cast in a modern setting since The Joy Luck Club, twenty-five years earlier, and it carries some of the same questions: what a mother wants for her child, and what it costs the woman who isn’t what she wanted. One note: the film was also criticized for casting few actors from Singapore or Southeast Asia, and for leaving out much of Singapore’s multiracial population.

Like every entry on the On Screen page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. Eleanor isn’t a villain. The film lets her be formidable, wounded and, in the end, moved. This page reads what she does to Rachel, and what Rachel does with it.

The Story

Rachel Chu, an economics professor at NYU, flies to Singapore with her boyfriend, Nick Young, for his best friend’s wedding. On the plane, in first class, Nick admits his family is wealthy. Rachel’s old college roommate, Peik Lin, tells her how wealthy: the Youngs are close to Singaporean royalty.

Nick’s mother, Eleanor, disapproves of Rachel from the first meeting: she’s American, and she puts her own passions before family. Nick’s cousin Astrid is kind to her. Astrid has her own trouble: she discovers her husband, Michael, is cheating.

At the bachelorette party, Rachel is warned that the family will never accept her. She returns to her room to find a dead fish on her bed and a message calling her a gold digger. Astrid helps her clean it up.

Making dumplings with the family, Rachel admires Eleanor’s ring. Eleanor tells her she quit law school to marry and raise a family. Alone with Rachel, she tells her that Nick’s grandmother once refused to give Nick’s father the family ring to propose with. Then she tells Rachel she will never be good enough for Nick, or for his family.

Peik Lin persuades Rachel to stand up for herself. At the wedding Rachel is glowing, and holds her own. Astrid confronts Michael, who blames his cheating on the gap between their fortunes. At the reception, Eleanor and Nick’s grandmother confront Rachel with a private investigator’s findings: Rachel’s father isn’t dead, as she believed, and she was born of an affair. They accuse her of lying to get Nick’s money.

Rachel is devastated. Nick flies in her mother, Kerry, who tells her the truth: her husband was abusive, an old friend helped her, they fell in love, and she fled to America, pregnant and afraid. Nick proposes, ready to leave his family for her. Rachel says no. Astrid moves out with her son.

Rachel invites Eleanor to a mahjong game. She tells her that Nick proposed, and that she turned him down. She won’t make him choose between them. Then she lays down the tile that lets Eleanor win, and shows her she could have kept it and won herself. On the plane home, Nick proposes again, with his mother’s ring. Rachel says yes. At the engagement party, Eleanor nods to her across the room.

Crazy Rich Asians made more than $238 million, the highest-grossing romantic comedy of the 2010s.

What It Gets Right

A great deal. It takes the old Cinderella story, the poor girl and the prince’s family, and gives the girl a career, a mother she loves and her own mind. It lets the disapproving mother be a real person with her own story. It shows a woman’s friends, Peik Lin and Astrid, holding her up. And it gives the series one of its clearest refusals, and one of its quietest: a woman who doesn’t need to win to know what she’s worth.

What It Teaches

1. “Not our own kind”

At the mahjong table, Rachel asks Eleanor why she disliked her from the start. Eleanor answers with a Hokkien phrase, “kaki lang”: “our own kind of people, and you’re not our own kind.”

Rachel guesses why: “Because I’m not rich? Because I didn’t go to a British boarding school, or wasn’t born into a wealthy family?” The Decoder’s Card 8, Financial Superiority, is “Using money as control and leverage.” In this family, money decides who belongs. Many women know what it’s like to be weighed at someone’s family table and found wanting before they’ve said a word.

2. Never good enough

Eleanor tells Rachel, alone, that she will never be good enough for Nick or his family. Nothing Rachel could do would change it. She is a professor, kind, loved by Nick, liked by his grandmother. It doesn’t matter.

The Decoder’s Card 13, Moving Goalposts, is “Nothing is ever enough.” When the standard is who you were born to, there’s no amount of effort that reaches it. Knowing that is a kind of freedom: you can stop trying.

3. Your past, used against you

At the wedding, Eleanor and Nick’s grandmother confront Rachel with what a private investigator found: a secret about her own birth that she didn’t know, and that her mother kept to protect her. They use it to call her a liar.

Many people have had their history, their family, their hardest story, brought out and used against them by someone who wanted them gone. It wasn’t yours to be ashamed of. Rachel’s mother tells her the truth, and it turns out to be a story about a woman who left a man who hurt her, and ran to save her child. That isn’t a scandal. It’s courage.

4. “It was never my job to make you feel like a man”

When Astrid confronts Michael about his affair, he blames it on her money, on how small he felt beside her. She answers: “It was never my job to make you feel like a man. I can’t make you something you’re not.”

The Decoder’s Card 28, The Pity Play, is “Using self-pity to deflect accountability.” Michael’s insecurity is real. It’s still not a reason, and it’s not her job. Astrid moves out with her son, and the film treats it as the right choice.

5. The tile she gave away

At the mahjong table, Rachel tells Eleanor that she has made a game no one can win: if Nick chooses Rachel, he loses his family; if he chooses his family, he may resent his mother for the rest of his life. So Rachel has turned him down.

Then she shows Eleanor the tile she could have kept to win, and gives it to her instead. And she says the line at the top of this page: “I’m not leaving because I’m scared, or because I think I’m not enough - because maybe for the first time in my life, I know I am.”

That’s the whole lesson. She didn’t need to win to know her worth. She didn’t need Eleanor’s approval. And it was only once she didn’t need it that it came.

Not Our Kind, Side by Side

	Pretty in Pink (1986)	The Joy Luck Club (1993)	Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Who said she wasn’t enough	His rich friends	A mother-in-law who wanted a son	His mother
What she did	Went to the prom anyway	Got out with a clever story	Gave away the winning tile
The pattern	Class as a closed door	Never quite enough	Money deciding who belongs

Three films about a woman told she isn’t the right kind. In each, the turn comes when she stops asking to be let in.

If You Grew Up on This

This one came out recently enough that many readers saw it as adults, some of them with a partner whose family never quite let them in. Nothing on this page asks you to see Eleanor as a monster. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Have you been weighed at someone’s family table and found wanting before you spoke?
Was there a standard you could never reach, because it was about who you were born to?
Has someone used your history, or your family’s, against you?
Have you been asked to make someone feel bigger, as if it were your job?
What would it feel like to know you are enough, without anyone’s approval?

Rachel gave away the winning tile. She already knew what she was worth.

You’re the audience now. You don’t have to win to know it too.

If someone is hurting you, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. Every number is on the Resources page.