The Year Of The Dragon Sparknotes

The Prejudicial Effects of Ethnic Myths in Frank Chin’s The Year of the Dragon

In The Year of the Dragon, Frank Chin makes great use of dramatic devices in order to illustrate the tragic results of ethnic stereotypes on families and identity.

Frank Chin is considered to be one of the pioneers in Asian American theatre. In his work, he mainly depicts the effects of human stereotyping. His vision on the fate of Chinese Americans works as a background to his depiction of individuals and their families who are damaged by the roles that they are forced to play in white America’s society. The particularity of Chin’s work is that he stresses the great damage of preconceived opinion more on the relations between family members than on the individual

mind.
In his famous play The Year of the Dragon, Frank Chin shows the prejudicial impact that ethnic myths can have on people using the representation of a Chinese American man, Fred Eng, and his family. The staging of this family bonds helps to picture the conflict between the assimilation that is researched by the younger generation, and the will of the older one to follow traditions.

The play starts with Fred Eng, a forty-five years old men, animating a tour group in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Chinese New Year. He uses a stereotypical Chinese American accent that he voluntarily bastardized, and tells that he is Chinatown’s best guide. He then says to the tourists “you make me feel good. I like ya. Goong Hay Fot Choy.” (p.71). The Chinese expression he uses is a typical one, which is said during the Chinese New Year, meaning "Best wishes and Congratulations. Have a prosperous and good year”. Nonetheless, after his speech, he swears under his breath: “Goddam, motherfucking…” (p.71). That reveals us how much he despites his job and hates the tourists he is falsely entertaining. The reason for this rough beginning in the play is that The Year of the Dragon presents a more complex and desperate view of the Chinese Americans’ experience. Chin’s characters make great efforts to make the American Dream a reality by exploiting the cultural myths created by the society. Although financially successful, in the end they find themselves unable to endure the degenerating effects of the stereotypes they had adopted for lucrative gains. This deterioration leads to tensions between the family members, mostly Fred and his father, and emphasizes the opposite view of Chinese American. While the father desires to embrace the old tradition, stay in Chinatown and see his son manage the family business, Fred’s desire is to be a writer and leave this place, which is progressively swallowing his identity and integrity.

In order to demonstrate the worsening of family ties and identities, Frank Chin uses several dramatic devices to reveal the results from the influence of cultural myths on the Eng’s family members. Firstly, the play constantly uses overlapping dialogues, announced through stage directions, to show that the family members are often more interested in giving their own opinions than fully listening to and considering the concerns of others:

MA (overlapping): I’m glad you’re home, son.
PA (overlapping): Friend? Hootlum! Bum! I know! Donk ting I nonk know!
MA (light overlap): … But why you got to change into doze ol’ clo’se fore
you come home, huh?
JOHNNY (overlapping MA): I’m no bum, pa! (p.96)

Indeed, hardly a line passes during an argument without a theatrical indication showing that an interlocutor has cut the speaker. Worse still, even when they are not arguing, they do the same. At several points during the drama, a lack of communication is also exhibited when two or more topics of conversation are discussed simultaneously while the characters seem unaware of what the others
are talking about.
Moreover, all of these disputes are also cadenced with stage directions, telling us firecrackers and festive sounds are resounding outside. We could interpret this as a way of contrast, placing the arguments within the apartment directly in opposition with the celebrations in Chinatown. For instance, when Pa collapses in the first act:

MA lights a stick of incense… one of many stuck in a coffee can full of sand on the windowsill.

She opens the window and the sound of exploding firecrackers outsides become louder. She comes out of the bathroom, takes the stick of incense to the shrine on a high shelf. (p.106)

The family does not seem to be shocked at all, the relations with the father are at their lowest, as the contrast with the festivities outside suggests it.

The sounds could also be used as a mean to demonstrate that the district has internal problem, exactly like the family but at a bigger scale. The festivity would therefore be seen as a mask whereas the recurrent arguments in the family would be evil that consumes it.

Furthermore, the decline of the family relationship is also symbolically shown through the lighting of incense. Indeed, the fact that MA put the stick on a shrine is already quiet revealing, but then we learn with the stage direction that: “Behind the shrine are family portraits of individuals and groups, pictures of various sizes in different frames from various periods” (p106). This gesture could therefore suggest that the family is waiting for the father to die, expecting that it would release all of them from their problems. Later during the second act, the family lights more incense as a morbid reminder, then finally at the

end:

CHINA MAMA takes a picture of PA off the wall and puts it by the red-painted coffee can full of sand. She lights a punk and sits in her chair. (p.141)

By combining the incense and the picture of PA on the wall, the last stage direction works as a confirmation of the family waiting, showing us that they considered the father as responsible of the family decline.

Finally, the most consumed character through the play is none other than Fred.

We can easily notice his condition thanks to a series of monologues scattered throughout the play that inform us about his degenerative mind. Primarily, Fred seems able to separate his disdain for his work from his introduction speech he is always doing. He is thereby able to wear the kind of mask Chinatown uses to hide its internal problems, when he is the happy tour guide. Until there, he could find an outlet for his despise by cursing after he has finished his speech. Nonetheless, while the tours pass, Fred is less and less able to maintain is integrity and starts to weaken under the strain of stereotypes. Thereby at the end of the first act, Fred starts his tour by saying to the tourists: “Well, folks, we been up and down these Chinatown hills sucking up the sights faster’n the eye can see” (p.113). There is no more phony accent, fake laughs or Chinese proverbs. The monologue becomes cynical as the mind of Fred is being crushed progressively. At the end of the play, when the family bonds have been definitively destroyed and the last piece of dignity has disappeared, Fred appears entirely dressed in white like Charlie Chan, the ultimate stereotype for a Chinese man. This symbolic disguise is referred to as a “symbol of death” (p.141) and shows that Fred has completely lost

hope.

Tragically, Pa Eng’s death does not free his family as the closing stage direction of the play shows us how Fred has been sucked into Chinatown’s depths. By taking his father’s place, Fred demonstrates the vision of Frank Chin about the doomed Chinese American people. We can thereby assume that death is the only way to escape ethnic stereotypes.