Part IV, Chapter 20: "Trying to Find Chinatown" by David Henry Hwang

The score of this play can be played on tape over the house speakers, and the actor can feign playing the violin using a bow treated with soap.

Over the house speakers, sound fades in: Hendrix-like virtuoso rock 'n roll riffs—heavy feedback, distortion, phase shifting, wah-wah—amplified over a tiny Fender pug-nose.

Lights fade up to reveal that the music's being played over a solid-body electric violin by RONNIE, a Chinese-American male in his mid-twenties; he is dressed in retro-'60s clothing and has a few requisite '90s body mutilations.

To be marginalized, as we are, by a white racist patriarchy, to the point where the accomplishments of our people are obliterated from the history books, this is cultural genocide of the first order.

To be marginalized, as we are, by a white racist patriarchy, to the point where the accomplishments of our people are obliterated from the history books, this is cultural genocide of the first order.

To be marginalized, as we are, by a white racist patriarchy, to the point where the accomplishments of our people are obliterated from the history books, this is cultural genocide of the first order.

...you must do battle with all of Euro-America's emasculating and brutal stereotypes of Asians...the exoticized image of a tourist's Chinatown which ignores the exploitation of workers...

...you must do battle with all of Euro-America's emasculating and brutal stereotypes of Asians...the exoticized image of a tourist's Chinatown which ignores the exploitation of workers...

All that—you know—oppression stuff—tuberculosis...

It's statistically irrefutable. TB occurs in the community at a rate—

The administration never figured it out. The Asian students put that "They all look alike" stereotype to good use.

After a lifetime of assimilation, I wanted to find out who I really am.

You know, it's very stereotypical to think that all Asian skin tones conform to a single hue.

Perhaps you'd prefer that I continue in denial, masquerading as a white man?

And with the coming of ragtime appeared the pioneer Stuff Smith, who sang as he stroked the catgut, with his raspy, Louis Armstrong-voice—gruff and sweet like the timbre of horsehair riding south below the fingerboard—and who finally sailed for Europe to find ears that would hear.

And Ponty—he showed how the modern violin man can accompany the shadow of his own lead lines, which cascade, one over another, into some nether world beyond the range of human hearing.

As he speaks, RONNIE continues playing his tune, which becomes underscoring for BENJAMIN's monologue.

An old tenement, paint peeling, inside walls no doubt thick with a century of grease and broken dreams—and yet, to me, a temple—the house where my father was born.

And I felt an ache in my heart for all those lost souls, denied this most important of revelations: to know who they truly are.

BENJAMIN sucks his salted plum and listens to the sounds around him. RONNIE continues to play. The two remain oblivious of one another.