The movie Fat, Drink, Man, Woman displayed the tradition family structure in China (Taiwan).

The family starts with the father, who also is a chef at a big restaurant, preparing a grand dinner for his three daughters. It seems that Chinese delicacies are much more different than American delicacies, as the father used frogs for one of his dishes.

During the dinner, the aura at the dinner table was very tense. This tenseness seemed to be mainly due to the family tragedy that happened, where the father’s wife died. Particularly the 2nd daughter, who seemed to be the most rebellious of all, was the perpetrator of the tenseness. Her stubbornness toward the father came around because the father forced her out of the restaurant’s kitchen and prevented her from becoming a chef, which seemed to be her childhood dream. Interestingly enough, she seemed to be the most successful of the three daughters at the same time. She also seemed to be the most liberal of all.

The oldest daughter, aged at 28-30 (I believe), is being pressured to become married because of how old she is. She claimed that she wasn't marrying because her heart was broken from her first boyfriend, but the 2nd daughter later learned that she was lying from her colleague. Nonetheless, she ultimately got married to a sports coach.

The youngest daughter was the least successful of the all, working at a fast food joint. Her friend, who also worked at the joint, had a boyfriend, but because she acted crudely towards him, the youngest daughter was able to break the couple up by reasoning with the boyfriend. Of course, she didn't do it out of bad will, as she initially thought the love was one-sided (where only the boyfriend loved the girlfriend). Furthermore, she ended up marrying that man, which seemed to have broken the relationship between her and the friend at the joint.

While the situation may have been tense between the father and the daughters, he seemed to have a very loving relation with his “granddaughter.” His affection for her goes so far as to he was willing to feed her entire class upon being requested for doing it by the granddaughter. I think this represents how the Chinese believe it is nice to have granddaughters, and perhaps necessary to spoil them.

The movie ended with an interesting twist, where the father decided to retire, leave his home, and marry the granddaughter’s mother and in order to forget and leave the memories of his previous love life; Most of which was met with objection from the entire family. One of the women even fainted upon hearing his news.

One important thing I must mention, is that the title of the movie seems to project the message of the movie; That is, to eat, drink, and to be coupled with opposite gender is the necessities of human life.