Food and Cooking Symbol Analysis

In “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” cooking and food are forms of communication, symbolizing the way messages can be conveyed without a shared language or understanding. Mr. Shi tries to show his care for his daughter using cooking and food. She is reluctant to accept or eat his food when he cooks for her, however, symbolizing the tension and alienation in their relationship. Near the beginning of the story, Mr. Shi tells his daughter that he took a cooking class after his wife died and studied the material rigorously, suggesting that he wanted to communicate with and understand others better. Every day Mr. Shi cooks dinner for his daughter to try to give her sustenance, both literally and metaphorically, after her divorce, but she does not want what he gives her, because Mr. Shi fundamentally misunderstands what his daughter wants and needs.

Mr. Shi explains to Madam that he believes a good relationship between father and daughter requires a thousand years of good prayers. He knows that his relationship with his daughter is bad, and concludes that he must be “praying halfheartedly.” Later, he says that his cooking has become his praying, but his daughter is leaving his prayers “unanswered.” Mr. Shi therefore recognizes that their misunderstandings are mutual: his prayers lack fervor and his daughter rejects them in the form of food because she can sense their lack of enthusiasm. In a story in which characters find many ways to communicate—Madam and Mr. Shi find intimacy despite not speaking the same language and Mr. Shi’s wife asks questions with her eyes, for example—food is another way of showing that communicating beyond language can both convey truths that cannot be expressed in words and obscure the meaning of things that can only be conveyed in a shared language.