Lulu Wang The director of The Farewell on her new streaming series Expats, the power of empathy, and the lesson in a search for a salad with cranberries

Your breakout film, The Farewell, about a dying matriarch, asked questions about the difference between American and Chinese values when it comes to things like family and community. What were you trying to explore?

- CHARLOTTE ALTER

I think that there's something about old world, new world. There's this theme that runs through all of my work around collectivism vs. individualism. It's easy to think of it as a binary, that Americans are all about individualism and Eastern cultures often emphasize collectivism. But I think ultimately the answer lies somewhere in between. For everybody it's going to be a little bit different.