The Road Home (1999): Symbolism

While watching the Chinese movie called The Road Home (1999) I saw several objects that focused on symbolism. However, two objects stood out to me the most while watching this movie.

Image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48ivIU6Szok

      The first object I saw was the red cloth banner. It was created by Zhao Di to give to Luo Changyu, the village's new school teacher. He had it placed onto the unfinished ceiling beam of the village's new school house. He had put it there so he would be reminded of Zhao Di while looking at it as he taught his daily lessons. The red cloth banner was finely stitched and by custom it was created by the village's most beautiful maiden. According to the son telling the story, the finely stitched banner cloth symbolized that Zhao Di already loved the teacher before even knowing him. The color red in Chinese culture symbolizes beauty and desire. This correlates to the beauty of love and the feelings of romantic desire felt between Zhao Di and Luo Changyu.

Image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZrevOz7YW8

        The second object I saw was the broken bowl.  Zhao Di broke it while she was trying to run after the school teacher as he was leaving the village.  Since this bowl was previously used by the teacher when he ate dinner at their house, the bowl had a significance to Zhao Di. This caused Zhao Di's mother to go to the village  pottery man to get the broken bowl repaired. The pottery man replied to Zhao Di's mother that hopefully like the bowl being repaired Zhao Di's broken heart can also be repaired too. Thus the broken bowl symbolizes the state of Zhao Di's broken heart due to the uncertainty she had felt about her future relationship with the village school teacher. Although just like the bowl being repaired her heart soon repairs itself as  Luo Changyu returns and later marries Zhao Di  .