This article is transferred from the author | Zhang Lushi
You Chaokai explained that the protagonist's experience in the play is also the epitome of his life: he has to play the role of the dragon set in the fictional story over and over again, and in the end it has become his own life.
Charles Yu, a 45-year-old Chinese-American writer, won the 2020 National Book Award in the fiction category for his second novel, Interior Chinatown. Recently, I did an exclusive interview with an author who is at home in the United States via video link. The National Book Award, which You Chaokai was awarded, has been awarded to William Faulkner, Philip Ross, Tony Morris and other novel giants in history, which is quite valuable. In the contemporary American literary world, the novel with the theme of "Chinatown" (or Chinatown), Xu Lingfeng (Bonnie Tsui), who was also a second-generation immigrant, also published a book called "American Chinatown" more than 10 years ago, which also received attention from the mainstream media in the United States at that time. The special thing about You Chaokai, a latecomer, is that he once wrote for the science fiction drama "Westworld", and in his own novel with social topics, he adopted the writing method of the TV script, and then used the Hollywood studio familiar to the public as a scene to cut in: using Hollywood as a metaphor for mainstream American society, borrowing the situation that Chinese actors who "all look the same" are arranged to "run the dragon set" for many years, pointing out the stereotype of society for Asian Americans, the identity of Asians and the identity of Asians in society. The author also cuts in from a second-person perspective, placing the reader in the perspective of the Chinese protagonist Willis Wu, which is rarely seen in Asian-American characters on television; in addition, Willis himself is also the object of narration. You Chaokai's narrative technique is refreshing. The national book award jury commented that the work was "sometimes hilarious and heartbreaking... You Chaokai's highly creative work highlights the many obstacles that his ordinary protagonist must face in a world of severe racial discrimination and hierarchy, and tries his best to get a decent role in his own life story." Although the novel is themed around "Chinatown," You says he explores Asian-American identities, with a particular focus on the living conditions and circumstances of East Asians in mainstream American society. I flipped through this year's data by the way: 23 percent of the Asian-American population is Chinese.
Cover of The Inside of Chinatown US edition
The protagonist of the book, Willis Wu's family, from his father's generation to his own generation, is doing Hollywood kung fu dreams. The part of the book written in the form of a script, according to You Chaokai's design, is actually one of the episodes in the TV series. The dialogue in the script has always been played between a pair of black and white police officers, and the Chinese characters will never have any lines at all, or at most they will die after saying one line. Willis usually works at the "Golden Palace Hotel" in Chinatown, and he is also the "Asian Volkswagen Face No. 3" and "courier" in the TV series. You Chaokai explained that the protagonist's experience in the play is also a microcosm of his life: everyone is a low-level cameo in the play; outside the play, they are also small people trapped in the "Golden Palace Hotel" in Chinatown. Willis had to play the immutable dragon suit characters in the fictional story over and over again, and in the end it became his own life. In the book, You Chaokai consciously explores the role of "playing Asian", and deliberately blurs the line between real life and acting. He said that through Willis Wu, on the one hand, he wants to embody the "Asian public face" as a background, he lacks the opportunity to speak, so no one will pay attention to him; on the other hand, Willis will always notice others: "This is his duty, because he "does not want to block others". At the same time, he also has a perspective in the story that is not easy to notice: "This angle is a bit tricky, a bit like looking from the back, from the side, not the angle that you want to see." Because no one cares what an Asian person who is a background prop sees. You Chaokai consciously describes such a marginal state in the novel, all the Asian faces that have appeared, very ordinary and vague, and very clear, they have not entered the main narrative structure: "Sometimes I want to hide, sometimes I want people to see your existence, but I am always nervous, whether I can fit in a little bit." 」 In a recent interview, Korean-American actor Steven Lian said that being Asian-American feels like "you care about everyone's feelings, but no one cares about your feelings." You Chaokai said that this sentence really came to an idea. Even after winning the National Book Award, You Chaokai mentioned that it was still a little strange to be in the spotlight. He said that he was similar to the characters in the novel, and grew up more accustomed to being incognito corners and observing others. Through the words of his characters, the author tells the internalization of the inferiority complex in the Asian-American heart. The sixth act near the end of the novel is a court trial scene, with a large collision of positive and negative views. In it, the author borrows sarah green, who plays a "white female detective", to ask a deep-seated question in the novel: "What do you really want?" Do you think you're the only one invisible in society? ...... Are you sure you don't want to be treated like a white person? The author responds by citing the "older brother" who defended Willis: "He wants to be treated like an American." A real American. Because, let's be honest, what do you see when you think of Americans? white? black? We've been here for two hundred years.
The first Chinese arrived in 1815, and the Dutch, German, Irish, and Italians who arrived in the early 20th century became Americans. Why doesn't this face look Like America? In the words of Big Brother, Asian-Americans don't want a "low-end replica of blacks turning themselves into the United States," but an independent self-definition. The novel is presented in the form of a seven-act play, and the first page of each chapter quotes many sentences from Xu Lingfeng's book "American Chinatown". I was most impressed by the front page of the final act, quoting a passage from the late Chinese-American architect and historian Philip Choy: "Chinatown is like a phoenix, reborn from the ashes with a new façade." They are the dream of Chinese Americans, but they were built by white architects and look like China on a stage, but they don't actually exist. I asked You Chaokai if he would often go to Chinatown, but the answer was surprising: born in Los Angeles, he grew up in a period of basic isolation from Chinatown.
Cover of the British edition of Inside Chinatown
In the 1960s, You Chaokai's father moved to the United States as a space mechanical engineer, and You Chaokai, a second-generation immigrant born in Los Angeles, grew up to study law at Columbia University. He is somewhat distant from the working class in his novels who live in the burrow room upstairs of the "Golden Palace Hotel". Therefore, when You Chaokai's mother saw the title of the novel, her first reaction was "What Do you know about Chinatown?" You Chaokai said that he lacked personal experience and really needed to make up lessons through reading. The location of Chinatown in the novel is a fictional location, but the author says that the location is actually a reference to the Chinatowns in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Despite being far from Chinatown, You Chaokai also realized in his own formative years that the pop culture symbol of East Asian immigrants has always been "Bruce Lee", and the stereotypical Chinese image projected by Hollywood and American society is mostly associated with "kung fu".
The Chinese in "Inside Chinatown" are all doing the role settings of Hollywood kung fu dreams, and it is a natural thing. When the novel was drafted, some of you Chaokai's American immigrant characters were heard from his parents. Among them, many details of the characters of "old Asian man" and "old asian woman" are directly from some of the feelings of You Chaokai's parents after they moved to the United States. For example, "Asian old man" will patiently wait for all customers to sing karaoke every time, and when it is their turn, they must choose John Denver's "Country Road, Take Me Home". This novel, written by You Chaokai for six or seven years, was overturned and rewritten during this period.
At the end of the book, he also lists 10 Chinese exclusion laws and regulations with strong racial discrimination from 1859 to 1965 in two parts. In this section, scottish literary critic Stuart Carey, who was a guest at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this summer, mentioned that he was shocked to read these old statutes, "similar to the opium wars that many Britons have never heard of before" when they were guests. You Chaokai said that in the process of writing, he once doubted whether it was really necessary to write a novel on the theme of immigration; but when Trump was elected president in 2016, he suddenly had a sense of urgency: "I even feel like the racial discrimination and exclusion law passed in the United States in 1882 seems to have a relationship with today." This also explains the author's list of old statutes at the end of the book. You Chaokai, who studied law, was less than 30 years old but had already won the attention of the mainstream American literary circle as a new generation of novelists, won the Sheward Anderson Novel Award, and his works were also selected by the Harvard Review of Books, and in his early 30s, he was recognized by the National Book Foundation for his first short story "Third Class Superhero".
In 2016, at the recommendation of his younger brother You Chaomin, who works as a producer and actor in Hollywood, You Chaokai was given the opportunity to participate in the screenwriting of 10 episodes of the science fiction TV series "Westworld" and co-wrote one of them. Writing "Westworld" is "very brain-burning", but it is enough to make You Chaokai make up his mind to completely bid farewell to his 13-year professional lawyer status. You Chaokai specializes in science fiction writing, and his first novel was titled "How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe", which became a bestseller in the United States after its publication 10 years ago and was widely praised by the mainstream media. Inside Chinatown, published last year, in addition to winning the nation's most recognized fiction award, also entered the final shortlist for the French Medici Literary Prize. You Chaokai, who has a pair of young sons and daughters, said that his son had read "Inside Chinatown" and said that he was "well written" after reading it, but it did not sound like he had a deep understanding of the scene in the text. At the end of the novel, there is a large dialogue between the protagonist Willis and his young daughter Phoenix, and the atmosphere is intimate and warm. You Chaokai said that it was the passage that was closest to his reality. Our interview was done in English, but You Chaokai said that he and his family now speak Mandarin more because it will be a "very practical language" in the future.
You Chaokai, who writes full-time today, also writes for the New York Review of Books. As last year's novelist, he also joined the jury of the National Book Awards this year. He concluded by mentioning the recently released Marvel film "Shangqi and the Legend of the Ten Rings", which he believes is expected to be a turning point in the development of East Asian filmmakers in Hollywood. You Chaokai also revealed that the possibility of moving "Inside Chinatown" to the TV screen is currently being discussed.