American Born Chinese Versions of Reality Quotes

The title page to Chapter Three—"Everyone Ruvs Chin-Kee"—is all about introducing us to the idea of a TV sitcom, so it kind of prepares us for the premises of Chapter Three: that Chin-Kee is a real character and that Danny (a white boy) is related at all to Chin-Kee. At the same time, it's kind of an in-your-face way of projecting the racism in American pop culture back at the reader. Yang definitely doesn't want you feeling comfortable about yourself or the American culture while you're reading Chin-Kee's chapters (or any of the chapters, for that matter).

After the Monkey King forces all his monkey subjects to wear shoes, he goes deep into his cave and isolates himself for a long period of time. His excuse is that he's mastering all these advanced kung-fu moves to strengthen his position as the monkey deity, but you've got to wonder: after being humiliated at the party in the heavens, is Monkey hiding out in order to nurse his wounded ego too?

Another thought: maybe the Monkey King needs to isolate himself to such extremes because that's the only way he can recreate his reality. If he were constantly out and about in the world, he'd be forced to see how everyone else sees him: as a monkey and not as the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven.

The Monkey King and Tze-Yo-Tzuh go head to head, and Monkey tries to prove that he really can escape Tze-Yo-Tzuh's incredibly long reach—he flies past the galaxy and the universe, and even flies "through the boundaries of reality itself." How that works or what that means, we're not entirely sure, but the point is that Monkey is way out there. And yet, even though he appears to have escaped Tze-Yo-Tzuh's grasp, he actually doesn't because the five pillars of gold he reaches (and pees on) end up being the five fingers of Tze-Yo-Tzuh's hand.

Is the book actually that altering or escaping reality isn't really possible? That at the end we're all still dealing with one reality, the one that binds us to this world?