by Charles Yu
Push in on our hero.
Push in on his opponent.
The eyes, it’s in the eyes.
It’s all too much, you can’t resist, and you’re up, bouncing off the walls of the room, your home, your world, a five-year-old. You are a future Kung Fu Guy in training. Kung Fu Kid.
KUNG FU KID
Someday, I’m going to be Bruce Lee.
You repeat it, for effect.
KUNG FU KID
(ahem)
I said, someday, I’m going to be Bruce Lee.
And then one more time, but still no answer from your mother, deeply engrossed in her textbook. On-screen, two fighters crisscrossing six feet above the ground, somersaults in the air, butterfly kicks, twisting horizontally, diagonally, three-sixty, seventy-twenty, ten-eighty. Gravity waiting patiently for the two black-haired masters to succumb, not inevitably bound by the rules of physics like regular mortals, rather by choice, returning to earth only if and when they feel like it and even then in their own manner. Blue sky behind them, the midday sun backlighting the whole scene in such a way as to wash out all details—the sweat on their temples, the features of their chiseled, sinewy torsos—leaving only the outlines, the stylized and timeless archetypes of two masters being masterful. Hi-yah. Kung Fu Kid leaps! Twists! Your leg slicing through empty space, splitting the world in two. Wah. Yah. Foom. Doing your own soundtrack. Gearing up for the big move, full aerial splits, legs horizontal, toes pointed, your lower body one straight line, energy shooting from your feet in both directions…
You pulled it off.
First time ever.
…Or so you thought, so close to completing the move but then, as you land, your foot catching the edge of a plastic tray with your ma’s pot of oolong steeping inside. The tray now tracing out its own arc through the air, everything in super-slow-mo, your mother’s face somehow remaining calm through it all, the only flicker in her expression one of momentary concern, as the pot of scalding tea nearly hits you on its way down. She catches it, or almost does, the bulk of the pot landing on her palm, which must be impervious to pain, because she doesn’t yell or cry out, simply takes it, absorbing the blow, all of the liquid heat and force and letting no harm come to your stupid little head.
Already you can see the red marks forming on her wrist and forearm, burns that will peel then scar then darken and firm up into reminders you’ll see years later. After you’ve gone to bed, you’ll hear her walking up and down the hall, going door to door asking your neighbors for aloe, but no one has any or no one has any that they are willing to part with, so she’ll settle for a small glob of cold toothpaste daubed onto the spot, left there thick and mint-green. You lie awake, hearing her come back into the room, bracing yourself for her wrath or fury or guilt trip, but instead you get something else entirely. Tenderness. A softening in her eyes. It’s the only thing worse than anger: advice.
KUNG FU KID
I’m sorry, Ma. I’m really sorry.
MA
(waving you off)
I don’t care about that. Just promise me something, okay?
KUNG FU KID
Okay.
MA
Don’t grow up to be Kung Fu Guy.
KUNG FU KID
Okay, okay, I promise.
(then)
Wait, what?
MA
You heard me. Don’t be Kung Fu Guy.
KUNG FU KID
Oh. Then what should I be?
MA
Be more.
Lying there in the silence, you try to imagine what she could possibly mean. Kung Fu Guy is the pinnacle. How could anyone be more?
INT. CHINATOWN SRO
Most nights in the SRO you go to bed a little hungry. Which is made worse by having to wait until one or even two in the morning to take a shower, the better to avoid the long wait, people lined up all the way down the hallway and into the stairwell, holding their toothbrushes, towels slung over their shoulders, reading the paper, gossiping, staring at the walls. Nighttime is a battle against boredom and hunger and heat and humidity. By midnight, your stomach’s making all kinds of noises, and it becomes a game to imagine that the various gurgly complaints coming from your abdomen are actually your internal organs’ way of communicating very specific things to you (“How about a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder” or “What if you cooked your shoe?” or “What if you cooked your shoe with some garlic and chili sauce?”). A damp washcloth thrown in the freezer and pulled out later can be a treat, if someone else doesn’t get to it first.
Once in a long while, late-night fever takes hold of the building, spreads down one hallway then up and down the stairwells like wildfire. Frustration boils into indignation which condenses into something like, how funny is this shit? Because at some point, this shit kinda is funny. Someone says to hell with it and digs out from the back of the icebox the flank steak they’re supposed to be saving, throws it into a pan, and fries it up with onions and mushrooms, slices bok choy and ginger and garlic, sizzle and grease and the smell floating down and up and all through the corridor. A teenager turns on some music. Once that gets going, doors start opening until they’re all open, the whole building buzzing until sunrise, as if nothing matters because nothing does matter because the idea was you came here, your parents and their parents and their parents, and you always seem to have just arrived and yet never seem to have actually arrived. You’re here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.
INT. CHINATOWN SRO—EIGHTH FLOOR
You drift off for a while, only realizing you were asleep at the exact moment you wake, roused by the familiar and obnoxious sound of idiots trash-talking one another in various dialects. You open the door to find them all hanging out, shouting, playing cards, seems like every male in the building is there, crowded around your door. The Generic Asian Men, except up here they’ve got names:
The usual suspects. Chen, Lin, Ling, Fong.
And, it goes without saying Huang, Hung, Chang, Li.
Lee, Lim, Wu, Wang.
But also Chu, Yang, Chiu, Tsai, Liao, Fu, Hsieh.
And even Tang, Mo, Dai, Yan, Zhang, Gong, Gu.
Not to mention Long, Jiang, Meng, Bai, Wei, Yu.
Pan, Peng, Ng, Lam, Yip, Sam.
You poke your head out and they pull you by the arms into the hallway.
I’m in my underwear, you say, but half of them are, too. By choice.
Someone slaps you on the back. Sup Willis.
Cousin Tsai, man, how you doing? You call him cousin because your moms are cool.
Someone starts talking smack.
Hey hey, everyone listen up.
What?
I’m gonna tell you something.
What?
I’m going to get the part.
You? You?
What? Why not me? I have good hair.
Yeah, but you’re short.
We’re the same height.
Bullshit.
I bench more than all of you.
You saying we’re weak?
No one said that.
So you do think I’m weak.
I didn’t say that. You said that.
Said what.
That you’re weak.
Say it again.
I didn’t say that. But I have no problem saying it to your face. You’re weak.
Say it to my face.
I just did.
You’re just jealous because my Wing Chun is the best.
No it’s not. Anyway, it’s not about Wing Chun anymore. They want flashy kicks.
No they don’t. They
don’t even know what Wing Chun is. They want Taekwondo.
They want Chinese punching and Korean kicks.
They don’t know what they want. They want cool Asian shit.
Finally, agreement all around. Cool Asian shit is what they want. If you could only figure out what that means.
You say, what makes any of you think it’s going to be different this time?
What do you mean?
Maybe they make one of us Kung Fu Guy. Maybe a few good scenes. Maybe a poster, in the back, real small. And then what?
Silence. They all know you’re right.
A beat.
Then Chiu says, man Willis, why you always gotta be such a downer? The other guys all agree and go back to playing cards.
INT. CHINATOWN SRO—EIGHTH FLOOR—YOUR ROOM—NIGHT
The main thing about living on eight is that the shower pan in the bathroom on nine is cracked. It was cracked when you were a kid, crammed in this room with your parents, and it’s still cracked now. They’ve repaired it a half-dozen times in the past few years but always on the cheap, caulking it with cheap stuff when what they really need to do is replace the whole damn thing. Otherwise, it will just keep cracking over and over again. As, everyone knows, water hates poor people. Given the opportunity, water will always find a way to make poor people miserable, typically at the worst time possible.
Which, for those living on the eighth floor, means that every time Old Fong (903) falls asleep in the shower, or Wang Tai Tai (908), or any one of the other Old Asian People up there on nine forgets to shut off the faucet (or can’t shut it tight, on account of rheumatoid arthritis or carpal tunnel or general infirmity), after about five minutes, the whole pan floods, which means, for those of us down here on eight (and parts of seven on this side of the building), you’re sleeping in half a foot of water for the next several nights. One time it went all the way down to six and soaked the little seat cushion that Baby Huang was sleeping on facedown, and Baby Huang sucked gray water through nylon for a couple minutes before her mom woke up to the dripping on her own head, found her little girl looking a strange color. The baby lived, but to this day whenever you see her running down the hall trying to keep up with the other kids, all you can hear is her sloshy wheeze. She seems a little slow, although her dad, who is so nice everyone calls him Nice Guy Huang, is pretty slow himself (he’s never even managed to become a Generic Asian Man, stuck in nonspeaking), so who knows, maybe the whole almost drowning in her own crib didn’t affect Baby Huang that much after all. Not like she was going to the Olympics anyway. Mostly she’s growing up to be a pretty happy kid, living in this building, in Chinatown, it’s fine. She doesn’t know any better.
INT. CHINATOWN SRO—NIGHT
Old Fong fell asleep in the shower again. You know because the water stains on the ceiling are starting to darken and get puffy. In about ten minutes, it’ll be raining inside your bedroom.
INT. CHINATOWN SRO—LITTLE LATER
It’s raining inside your bedroom. You hope Old Fong is enjoying his nap.
INT. CHINATOWN SRO—HALLWAY—LATER
Shit. You were wrong. Old Fong didn’t fall asleep in the shower. He died there.
Someone knocked on the door, telling him his phone was ringing. Old Fong’s son, Young Fong, calls once a week, to check on his father. Old Fong usually sits on his bed all day, unwilling to move. He never misses that call. He’ll nibble on a cracker, or maybe listen to the radio at an inaudibly low level. Maybe glance at the Taiwanese newspaper. But mostly, he just stares at his ancient rotary phone, waiting for it to ring.
The story, apparently, is that Old Fong waited all day, and Young Fong didn’t call, because he had to work an extra shift and by the time he got home, Young Fong figured it was too late. So he called the next morning, right when Old Fong had stepped into the shower. Old Fong heard it and, excited to talk to his son, tried to get out, slipped and hit his head on the molded soap holder protruding from the shower wall.
Fatty Choy was apparently the one who found him. For once, Choy didn’t have much to say. He was quiet for a long time. It took a shot of warm Christian Brothers and half a can of Coors Light to get him to stop crying. Then Fatty sat there stone-faced for another half-hour before explaining what happened.
Found him on the ground, Fatty says between slugs of beer. The water pooling. Must have hit the corner of the sink. Head getting soft like a fruit.
“He kept asking me,” he says, “one eye shut. Asking what happened to his head.”
INT. CHINATOWN SRO—LATE NIGHT
Young Fong’s here, to collect his father’s things. Everyone’s standing around now, trying to figure out what to say at a moment like this. Wang Tai Tai opens her mouth to speak, her voice not much more than a warble.
WANG TAI TAI
You were a good son.
YOUNG FONG
Thank you, Wang Tai Tai.
WANG TAI TAI
You shouldn’t feel bad.
YOUNG FONG
I don’t. Well, I didn’t. But now I kind of do.
Old Chan shushes Wang Tai Tai, scowls at her. She scowls back. She’s better at scowling than Old Chan.
You’re exhausted, but there’s no way you’ll be able to go back to bed. So you bum a cigarette off of Skinny Lee on the fifth floor, and come out here to smoke it.
You keep thinking about Old Fong. Not that he died alone. Not that he died naked, or wet, or with soap on half his body. That he died waiting for his son’s phone call. That he lived, absolutely sure that one person in the world would always care, would always remember to check in on him. And then in his last moment, he was unsure of whether that was still true.
Young Fong packs his father’s things. A simple action, done carefully, turns into something more. He drags an old steamer trunk into the room to collect the belongings, carefully tucking each item into place. Smoothing out the threadbare clothes, as if his father might need them again. Treating the broken, the inexpensive, the humblest of possessions with dignity, just as Old Fong had taught him to do.
Standing there in the hall, you watch through the doorway, pretending you’re not watching through the doorway. Has he forgotten you’re back here, or does he just not care? The latter, you think. Young Fong isn’t performing for twelve million people a week, or even twelve, by this point the rest of the SRO’s inhabitants having mostly drifted away. When he’s done, Young Fong inspects the room one last time, then turns toward his father’s empty bed and lowers his head to say goodbye.
INT. GOLDEN PALACE—AFTER CLOSING
Back inside, the restaurant is closed. The tables are cleaned, the kitchen is dark.
It’s karaoke time at the Golden Palace Chinese Restaurant.
After all the patrons have finished their smirky renditions of Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder, tourists tipsy on one too many lychee margarita-tinis done wailing Whitney or Céline a half-step flat, after all of that it’s the staff’s turn at the microphone. And they don’t waste it. Off-duty busboys warble corridos between long pulls from cans of Tecate, buried in their twang about a dozen different emotions you forgot you had. But even they’re just the warm-up for the main event. At the appointed hour, right on time, he appears at the foot of the stage.
Old Asian Man is on the mic.
Everything goes silent while he adjusts his glasses, wipes his forehead, takes a sip of water.
“For my friend Fong,” he says, and begins singing John Denver. If you didn’t know it already, now you do: old dudes from rural Taiwan are comfortable with their karaoke and when they do karaoke for some reason they love no one like they love John Denver.
Maybe it’s the dream of the open highway. The romantic myth of the West. A reminder that these funny little Orientals have actually been Americans longer than you have. Know something ab
out this country that you haven’t yet figured out. If you don’t believe it, go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying “Country Roads,” try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to “West Virginia, mountain mama,” you’re going to be singing along, and by the time he’s done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who’s been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home.
BLACK AND WHITE
PRODUCTION NOTES
MAKEUP
Taped eyelids
Heavy coloring, emphasizing skin tone
SET DESIGN
Curved eaves
Massive roofs
Pay attention to cornices!
Oriental flourishes and touches
Details are everything
INT. GOLDEN PALACE CHINESE RESTAURANT—NIGHT
Dead Asian Guy is still dead. The Impossible Crimes Unit is on the case.
GREEN
Let’s try to be sensitive here.
TURNER
I’m always sensitive.
Green gives him a look. Then she freezes. She holds up a finger, silencing Turner.
GREEN
Wait.
(hears something)
You hear that?