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Kung Fu Guy
In Interior Chinatown, Chinatown symbolizes Asian characters’ struggle to maintain their Asian identity as they assimilate into Western culture. In particular, it represents how Asian culture in the U.S. is oversimplified and manipulated to fit the tastes of mainstream American culture. Protagonist Willis Wu describes Chinatown as an ironic place filled with Asian immigrants like his Taiwanese parents, who traveled from their old countries to try to make better lives for themselves in America—only to end up in a “pretend version of the old country” in Chinatown. Though Willis’s parents once dreamed of taking full advantage of the opportunity they believed America had to offer, they ended up having to compromise their dreams to conform to the more modest, unthreatening success that Western culture would allow them. This meant setting aside their individuality and authentic cultural ties to perform one-dimensional, unnuanced stereotypes of how Western culture thought Asian people should act. In many ways, Chinatown is the geographic equivalent of the stereotypical roles that Willis and the other Asian characters are assigned to play—Chinatown, as the book sees it, is a fake, oversimplified vision of Asian-ness engineered to emphasize its residents’ otherness and un-Americanness, entrapping them in a physical space where they cannot forget that though they may be in America, they will never be of America.
Chinatown Quotes in Interior Chinatown
The Interior Chinatown quotes below all refer to the symbol of Chinatown . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Act 1: Generic Asian Man
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Kung Fu Guy is not like the other slots in the hierarchy—there isn’t always someone occupying the position, as in whoever the top guy is at any given time, that’s the default guy who gets trotted out whenever there’s kung fu to be done. Only a very special Asian can be worthy of the title. It takes years of dedication and sacrifice, and after all that only a few have even a slim chance of making it. Despite the odds, you all grew up training for this and only this. All the scrawny yellow boys up and down the block dreaming the same dream.
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Even for our hero, there were limits to the dream of assimilation, to how far any of you could make your way into the world of Black and White.
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Act 2: Int. Golden Palace
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You’re here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.
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GREEN (turns to you) You speak English well.
GENERIC ASIAN MAN Thank you.
TURNER Really well. It’s almost like you don’t have an accent.
Shit. Right. You forgot to do the accent.
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Act 3: Ethnic Recurring
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“I’m working with them now. This could be good.”
“Happy for you,” he says. He looks skeptical. Worried.
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Are you doing the right thing? Something about this feels wrong.
But this is Black and White. They let you have a part. You can’t stop now.
You look at your dad. He shifts his eyes away, and you know in that moment that he is disappointed. But he won’t ever say it. You’ll never talk about it again. He’s gone, slipped back into Old Asian Man. He’s not going to make the choice for you. It’s your role to play.
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Act 5: Kung Fu Dad
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You survey the room: drawings, hair ties, notes to herself. Seemingly every species of stuffed animal or creature, real or imagined, lined up like a royal court along the walls on the floors. Her friends, her audience. Her off-screen voices. She seems both more resourceful and yet more childlike at the same time—how she’s invented a world, stylized, so that its roles and scenery, its characters and rules, its truths and dangers, all fit within one room. How small it is, and overstuffed, and ready for expansion. How bright it is, how messy. This whole place, the objects in it, all from her.
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The words coming out of your mouth, you can feel it happening, how you’re softening, changing into a different person. You were a bit player in the world of Black and White, but here and now, in her world, you’re more. Not the star of the show, something better. The star’s dad. Somehow you were lucky enough to end up in her story.
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PHOEBE Can you tell me a story?
KUNG FU DAD I don’t know how. No one’s ever asked me to.
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KAREN You wanted them to find you.
KUNG FU DAD I wanted them to find us.
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Act 6: The Case of the Missing Asian
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“Hey,” Turner says. Off-script.
“I can’t do this anymore,” you say.
Turner smiles. “Yeah, man. I know.”
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Get the entire Interior Chinatown LitChart as a printable PDF.
Chinatown Symbol Timeline in Interior Chinatown
The timeline below shows where the symbol Chinatown appears in Interior Chinatown. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 1: Generic Asian Man
Willis’s parents have also become poor. Now Sifu knows exactly what time restaurants in Chinatown toss out their old pork buns. He shops for food in bargain bins at the...
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...not Willis’s real brother—he’s “Everyone’s Older Brother.” He’s talented, smart, and popular: the “Guardian of Chinatown.” At one point, he and Sifu briefly starred together in a story about “father-and-son martial...
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Act 2: Int. Golden Palace
INT. CHINATOWN SRO. Willis lives in a room on the eighth floor of the Chinatown SRO Apartments. At the center of the complex is an interior courtyard, which is where...
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...whether they can trust the man. Green says they probably have no choice and that “Chinatown is a different world.” Turner reminds Green that he minored in East Asian Studies at...
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Act 3: Ethnic Recurring
...a part that needs subtitles when he used to fight dragons on the rooftops of Chinatown. Speaking in Taiwanese, he tells Old Asian Man that the police have questions. Old Asian...
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...Older Brother must be involved in a money-laundering scheme. They ask where the money in Chinatown is. Special Guest Star (Willis) looks at Old Asian Man, knowing he’ll be disappointed in...
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...forces himself inside the office. Mini Boss (Young Fong) calmly offers to let Turner “sample [Chinatown’s] exotic flavors,” gesturing toward the scantily clad women downstairs. Then he presses a button, and...
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...an Hermès bag, explaining that it’s the money: Young Fong was running a counterfeit business, “Chinatown’s number one export.” Lee turns to Willis and tells him he knows where they make...
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Act 4: Striving Immigrant
...get a job as Young Asian Man, washing dishes at the Fortune Palace restaurant in Chinatown.
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EXT. DOROTHY’S BACKSTORY. Dorothy moves to Chinatown from Ohio. She brings her meager belongings and “a memory of her mother dying in...
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On their days off, Dorothy and Ming-Chen Wu wander around Chinatown but don’t venture beyond its confines. Dorothy dresses in bell bottoms and floral prints and...
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Ming-Chen Wu and Dorothy debate the origins of their romance. Dorothy argues that Chinatown isn’t a place for love—it’s where police find dead bodies. Wu agrees but says they...
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...often don’t bother with Generic Asian Men. She asks where he’s from, and he says Chinatown. Willis guesses that she went to a liberal arts college and knows how to ride...
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...montage of date scenes: Willis and Karen sharing a bowl of tsuabing shaved ice in Chinatown, each learning about the other’s life, eventually kissing.
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...life, but Willis disagrees. He suggests they keep a long-distance relationship while he stays in Chinatown and Karen moves to the suburbs to do her show, but Karen says that’s not...
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Act 6: The Case of the Missing Asian
Older Brother continues. He explains that Asian people created Chinatown to have their own space in a country where they felt so cut off from...
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Willis says he’s spent most of his life trapped in Interior Chinatown. Then he got out and became Kung Fu Dad. But that wasn’t a real improvement—it...
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