Behind the Facades of Chinatown

“My plays are the most objectionable work any Asian American actor can find because they challenge white stereotypes,” declares playwright Frank Chin. “It took me awhile to see that Asian American actors aren’t used to plays that deal with things that are real in their own lives.”

To be sure, the playwright of “The Chickencoop Chinaman” and co-editor of “AIIIEEEEE! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers” has never been one to mince words. He’s long been outspoken in his views on literary authenticity when it comes to characterizations of Asians and Asian Americans. And that carries over into his plays, including “The Year of the Dragon,” which opens Wednesday at East West Players.

Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1976, the action revolves around the Eng family during its celebration of the Chinese New Year. Home has become a noisy battleground between the fake and the real.

Fred (Keone Young), the oldest son, is a tour guide for white folks who want to see the “real” Chinatown. Of course, he goes all out to give them their money’s worth. “I’m top guide here,” he singsongs in pidgin English. “Allaw week Chinee New Year. Sssssshhh Boom! Muchee muchie firey crackee!”

In real life, Fred snaps out colloquial English and denigrates the ignorant tourists--and himself for pandering to them.

“Basically, Fred is caught in the dilemma of playing the part of the fake Asian American,” says Mako, who is directing East West Players’ revival of the play, written in 1974. “He likes to manipulate people, but he’s beginning to lose his grip on what he wants to do--that’s his personal dilemma.”

Meanwhile, Fred’s sister Mattie (Mimosa) and her white husband, Ross (Brian Mulligan), have arrived for a visit from Boston. Pa (Dana Lee) has brought his first wife (Shizuko Hoshi) over from China, shocking Ma (Momo Yashima) and everyone else. Younger son Johnny (Trieu Tran) has been in trouble with the law and may get into more trouble if he stays in Chinatown. So Fred urges him to go to Boston with his sister. Still, Fred believes he must ask for Pa’s approval for these changes. The dialogue flies fast and furious as the characters banter, argue and fight.

When the play first opened in Los Angeles and New York 26 years ago, one critic took issue with the portrayal of Ross, the only white in the cast--a man who seems intrigued by Chinese culture but is also laughably ignorant of it. As a result, Ross becomes the butt of many jokes in the play. “Just being the butt of a joke--what’s the big deal?” retorts Chin, 60, who lives in Los Angeles. “Whites are sensitive; whites want to be noble--they aren’t always.”

The production received respectful reviews. “What I found absolutely fascinating was its insights into the Chinese community,” Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Times. “It’s a boldly cut play,” said Los Angeles Times theater critic Dan Sullivan, “that might even seem crude if Chin didn’t know his people so well.”

“The Year of the Dragon” was later produced as part of the Exxon “Theatre in America” series on PBS, starring George Takei as Fred.

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Although “The Year of the Dragon” was written more than two decades ago, Chin believes it is still relevant. “Whites feel they know us and know us well enough to be able to judge us,” he says. “The tourist guide makes his living lying about the Chinese. He has his mixed feelings about it, and I’d always wondered about tourist guides--how they can do that. So, I decided to explore this schizophrenic attitude.”

He compares such Chinatown guides to today’s Chinese American writers or “anybody who makes their living talking about the Chinese or Chinatown. And nobody asks if what they’re saying or using is real.”

This launches Chin into one of his favorite activities--attacks on authors Maxine Hong Kingston (“The Woman Warrior”) and Amy Tan (“The Joy Luck Club”), whom he accuses of faking it.

“I offer all kinds of proof, yet they continue doing well,” he says, “and nobody cares that they fake it.”

He cites as an example Tan’s second novel, “The Kitchen God’s Wife,” whose title refers to one of the most popular folk gods in traditional Chinese culture. “Amy Tan says the kitchen god’s wife is not honored--this is the kitchen god, the kitchen god’s wife is honored,” Chin says. He holds up a folder filled with illustrations of the kitchen god--with his wife right beside him, a position Chin insists is a place of honor. He jabs each page with his finger: “I didn’t fake that, she fakes it! The kitchen god’s wife not being honored is the basis of the whole book!”

Furthermore, he accuses David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly”) of writing “racist fiction” and thus refuses go into the David Henry Hwang Theatre, home of East West Players. In a prepared statement, Chin writes, “I apologize to the cast [of] ‘The Year of the Dragon’ for not going inside the house of the fake, with them to be eaten alive.”

Does that mean he won’t be attending any performances of the play? “I guess not,” he says. But Chin does admit that he did go into the theater for a week to help out with rehearsals. “I feel bad about that--I went against my own word--so I’ll live with my hypocrisy for a while.”

In contrast to the fakery he perceives in the work of Kingston, Tan and Hwang, he insists, “My work is real. I don’t malign Chinese culture; I don’t rewrite Chinese literature.”

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“I’ve always been interested in Frank’s writing,” says Mako, founding artistic director of the East West Players. “Often when Asian American writers write or attempt to write plays, it becomes a kind of narrative: This is what happened and so on and so on. We never get to really know those characters, whereas in Frank’s piece, the characters seem to radiate opinion.”

Mako was involved in the original production in 1974, staged in Santa Monica. Three members of the original cast--Young, Lee and Hoshi--are also returning, now playing the roles closer to the ages Chin had envisioned.

“I thought [then] it was time that we as a theater company explore ourselves as to what we are, where we are--if we exist at all. That’s why I was interested in doing it--and still am interested in doing it,” says Mako, a veteran of four decades of stage and film.

“Hopefully, my progress in the last 26 years has helped deepen my understanding of certain scenes,” he adds. “And in some ways, the actors are much closer to the characters too.”

In restaging “The Year of the Dragon,” Mako said, “the difference will be in the interpretation, the approach to certain scenes.” This time, Chin was able to spend two weeks with the cast in workshops that took place away from the theater, reviewing all the dialogue and every scene. He revealed, for example, that in the second act, the character of Ma is undergoing a major emotional crisis, perhaps going off the deep end. “That I was not aware of last time,” Mako says. “Her role, hopefully, becomes more interesting and fits into the overall theme of disintegration of the family unit.”

Mako acknowledges that a play is an ensemble effort, culling the input of the actors involved, but “this time, I think, it will be closer to Frank’s vision of the play.”

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“THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON,” David Henry Hwang Theater, 120 Judge John Aiso St., L.A.. Dates: Opens Wednesday at 8 p.m. Runs Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends Feb. 25. Prices: $25-$30. Phone: (800) 233-3123.