The movie's ''Eat a Bowl of Tea'' title is a literal English translation to a Cantonese Chinese phrase that means "take your medicine" or "swallow your medicine".
Much of the picture was filmed in Hong Kong including interiors and ones set in Chinatown in New York City.
The movie's film director Wayne Wang has said that the film is a return to "the source of myself". He has also said: "[Eat a Bowl of Tea] was very traditionally shot and I hated it. There was a certain anger in terms of not being able to make the film I wanted to make. I was under the reins quite a bit." He has also commented: "You kinda have to eat sh*t in order to do something right And that's also true of film-making. You have to eat a lot of sh*t to make a movie".
The movie's closing credits declare that this picture was: "Filmed on location in Hong Kong, San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C.."