The presence of Lee’s father can be felt throughout his work. But one needn’t be the child of taciturn Chinese immigrants to feel the depth of longing in Lee’s films. In Lee’s films, displaced elders cling to the old ways—tai chi, calligraphy, and so, so much food. The first is the essentialist position, which sees Chinese traits in all of Lee’s films, and qualifies him as a great Asian director. Speaking about Life of Pi, in which a teenage boy spends many months on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean following a terrible shipwreck, Lee remarked in 2013: “Taiwan is like my floating island.