Meet Kung Fu Guy

Charles Yu’s surreal peak into pop culture Asian portrayals, the model minority myth, and anti-Asian racism in a mosaic of American bigotry in Interior Chinatown

I picked up my plastic-sleeved, glossy, deliciously crinkling library hard-cover copy of Interior Chinatown after checking my library account on February 7 and seeing that I was unable to renew the book. It would be due February 9. I resented this deadline, as I wanted to give myself the pleasure of leisurely reading this 2020 hit novel, recommended on all the best of 2020 reading lists I found. While a situation that was “out of my control” caused me to pick it up, the masterfully absurd, keenly self-aware, and ultimately heartfelt storyline made it hard to put down. Though I had three days to read it, I read it in one and a half.

Set in the immediately recognizable monospace (and screenplay) typeface, Courier New, Interior Chinatown immediately reveals itself to be a screenplay for a cheesy, detective/cop show whose plot and details do not make sense if you think about them, which the audience is not expected to do. The show is set in Chinatown, a supposedly universal “Asian-American” backdrop for gambling, counterfeit, gang-violence, and exotic cultures. The extras and supporting characters on the show are also these universal “Asian-American” props. We experience the show and the world from the perspective of Willis Wu, a second-generation American whose greatest ambition is to work his way up the ladder of Asian male stereotyped roles (Dead Asian Man, Generic Asian Man, Asian Delivery Guy, Asian waiter, etc.) to be Kung Fu Guy. To Wu, Kung Fu Guy is the one character closest to commanding respect from the directors, all the other stars on the show, and from the audience. Kung Fu Guy beats the bad guys. Kung Fu Guy gets the girl. Kung Fu guy has a backstory that matters.

However, the screenplay is not so simple. The genius and novelty of Interior Chinatown lies in Wu’s description of his personal life, his childhood, the stories of his parents, the death of a neighbor, all as a continuation of the screenplay. The blurring of Wu’s reality and his recurring roles in the cop show pushes the reader to admit there is no boundary between the two. Wu sees his own life as a screenplay, and cannot picture his existence as a character—a person—off screen. As the reader struggles to parse out which plot points take place on or off set, Wu struggles to define himself beyond the roles stereotypically given to actors who look like him. When Wu finally realizes he does not want to be Kung Fu Guy and escapes Chinatown to visit his daughter, he invents the new role of Kung Fu Dad. Even after abandoning his dream of Kung Fu Guy, he continues to be a captive of the show, and is chased down by the cops whose car he used to escape.

In typical action-cop good guy/bad guy movie fashion, the screenplay crescendos to a grand finale court scene, where the truth is revealed and justice is served. In what seems to be the final episode of the show, aptly entitled Black and White, the white cop who tries to take Wu’s side and the black cop who is often hostile or rude to Wu testify in The Case of the missing Asian. Straying from the typical “color-blind” cookie cutter cop show reality, this scene is particularly lucid and vindictive of Wu. Miles Turner, the sexy, often harsh black detective, diagnoses Wu with an inferiority complex, alleging that Wu has excused himself from race dialogue because Asian-Americans have not faced the same oppression as Black people in America.

“Don’t you need to take some responsibility for yourself? For the categories you put us in? Black and White? I mean, come on? Do you think you’re the only one who’s trapped?” (224)

Next, it is Sarah Green, the sexy, witty, and gentle white woman detective, who gives testimony against Wu. She accuses him of ignoring other marginalized groups, including elderly people, people that don’t conform to Western beauty standards, black women.

“Are you sure you’re not looking for something that you feel entitled to? Isn’t this a kind of narcissism? Are you sure you’re not asking to be treated like a White man?” (228).

While Turner asks Wu to participate in racial discourse and acknowledge the racial realities of the U.S., Green gaslights Wu into considering that he is asking for too much, that he is ignoring others who suffer just as much as, perhaps even more than, he does. It is Older Brother, the star actor disappeared and returned as a pedigreed Harvard Law School lawyer, who finally unravels the complexities of Wu’s mind and the socially and legally imposed limitations that Wu has grown to internalize. After a brief overview of formal and covert discrimination against Asian Americans in U.S. history, he contends,

“… despite all that, you somehow feel that your oppression, because it does not include the original American sin–of slavery–that it will never add up to something equivalent. That the wrongs committed against your ancestors are incommensurate in magnitude with those committed against Black people in America. And whether or not that quantification, whether accurate or not, because of all of this you feel on some level that you maybe can’t even quite verbalize, out of shame or embarrassment, that the validity and volume of your complaints must be calibrated appropriately, must be in proportion to the aggregate suffering of your people.

Your oppression is second-class” (233).

And though Wu claims to have “no clue” what Older Brother was saying, after being found guilty, Wu admits,

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy… I finally got my shot. And when I did, you know what? I thought: I wonder why I wanted this so bad… Kung Fu Guy is just another form of Generic Asian Man… It sucks being Generic Asian Man. But at the same time, I’m guilty, too. Guilty of playing this role. Letting it define me. Internalizing the role so completely that I’ve lost track of where reality starts and the performance begins” (245-247).

And as he continues his speech, the crowd of other Generic Asian Men actors become increasingly riled up, angry, energized. Though it seemed like Wu had broken the fourth wall, was aware of the construction of his narrative and the way the screenplay has read so far, the scene closes with an Kung Fu action scene. And in the end, Willis Wu is shot, dead.

Fortunately for invested readers, death is not final in this screenplay. But it is a final escape in this last scene. Having died, Wu is freed from having to work on the show. But having understood his internalized limitations, having relinquished his dream of being Kung Fu Guy, Wu can leave the show, the set, the world of Interior Chinatown. And as Wu’s consciousness matures out of the screenplay, we are left with one final scene in which he witnesses his father and his daughter having a tender moment, outside Int. Chinatown. Often called Sifu throughout the narrative, Wu finally sees his dad outside the context of his various characters and does not use the word Sifu but rather his name, Ming-Chen Wu.

I think I read this novel at the perfect time, and for that I have to thank my library. I am not blind to the stereotypes expressed in this book, and I’ve heard mounting criticisms of cinematic portrayals of Asians and Asian-Americans in the U.S. Yet through this exaggeration and subversion of these types, I’ve understood in a new and deeper way the damaging effects the model minority and cultural portrayals can have on a population. The erasure of cultural nuances, the flattening of histories and traditions. But that is not all. Yu is careful to include a brief summary of many policies historically enacted in the U.S. to discriminate against Asian Americans, to establish them as second-class citizens, breaking the idea that Asian-Americans have not inherited the legacy of systemic injustice.

I am writing this at a time when the U.S. begins its path to recovery from a pandemic that originated in the Wuhan province of China, and as the Black Lives Matter Movement builds on the momentum (hopefully not dwindling, but I don’t know enough to say) from the summer protests, many of which continue. Asian Americans endured hateful language and violence from racist, xenophobic people who conflate a virus that began its spread in China with people who (to them) look Chinese. The conversation on race has been refreshed in the minds and tongues of many Americans, especially youth. The past few days have been stained with increased aggression and violence towards Asian Americans, with stabbings, kidnappings, robberies as many communities prepare for the Lunar New Year. These stories are not being featured prominently on mainstream media sources, and who can be surprised that Asian-American narratives are being ignored after reading this book.

Thank you to Charles Yu for his light but thoughtful, surreal yet at times painstakingly explicit, caricatured yet moving novel.