The Flower Drum Song

Author C. Y. Lee fled war-torn China in the 1940s and came to the United States, where he attended Yale University's playwriting program, graduating in 1947 with a Master of Fine Arts degree.

By the 1950s, he was barely making a living writing short stories and working as a Chinese teacher, translator and journalist for San Francisco Chinatown newspapers.

A regular visitor to the household is his sister-in-law Madam Tang, who is taking citizenship classes and urges Wang to adopt Western ways.

Linda's friend, seamstress Helen Chao, who has been unable to find a man despite the shortage of eligible women in Chinatown, gets Ta drunk and seduces him.

In the end, taking his son's advice, Wang decides not to go to the herbalist to seek a remedy for his cough, but instead enters a Chinese-run Western clinic, symbolizing the beginning of his acceptance of American culture.