With the quiet, understated “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” Wayne Wang has come full circle, returning to the small, intimate films like “Chan Is Missing,” “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart” and “Eat a Bowl of Tea” that established the Hong Kong-born Chinese American writer-director, best known for his deft screen adaptation of “The Joy Luck Club.” When recently widowed Mr. Shi (Henry O), a dignified, slightly stooped older man from Beijing, arrives in Spokane, he tells his attractive daughter Yilan (Feihong Yu), whom he has not seen in 12 years, that she looks exactly the same. That she is brusquely dismissive of her father’s remark proves revealing: She is not really glad to see him, and it does not occur to him that she has been changed by life in the U.S.
