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RONNIE: OK, so they got Asian-American studies. That still doesn’t explain—

BENJAMIN: What?

RONNIE: Well . . . what
you
were doing taking it?

BENJAMIN: Just like everyone else. I wanted to explore my roots. And, you know, the history of oppression which is my legacy. After a lifetime of assimilation, I wanted to find out who I really am.

(Pause.)

RONNIE: And did you?

BENJAMIN: Sure. I learned to take pride in my ancestors who built the railroads, my Popo who would make me a hot bowl of jok with thousand-day-old eggs when the white kids chased me home yelling, “Gook! Chink! Slant-eyes!”

RONNIE: OK, OK, that’s enough!

BENJAMIN: Painful to listen to, isn’t it?

RONNIE: I don’t know what kind of bullshit ethnic studies program they’re running over in Wuss-consin, but did they bother to teach you that in order to find your Asian “roots,” it’s a good idea to first be Asian?

(Pause.)

BENJAMIN: Are you speaking metaphorically?

RONNIE: No! Literally! Look at your skin!

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

RONNIE: You’re white! Is this some kind of redneck joke or something? Am I the first person in the world to tell you this?

BENJAMIN: Oh! Oh! Oh!

RONNIE: I know real Asians are scarce in the Midwest, but . . . Jesus!

BENJAMIN: No, of course, I . . . I see where your misunderstanding arises.

RONNIE: Yeah. It’s called, “You white.”

BENJAMIN: It’s just that—in my hometown of Tribune, Kansas, and then at school—see, everyone knows me—so this sort of thing never comes up.
(He offers his hand)
Benjamin Wong. I forget that a society wedded to racial constructs constantly forces me to explain my very existence.

RONNIE: Ronnie Chang. Otherwise known as “The Bow Man.”

BENJAMIN: You see, I was adopted by Chinese-American parents at birth. So, clearly, I’m an Asian-American—

RONNIE: Even though you’re blond and blue-eyed.

BENJAMIN: Well, you can’t judge my race by my genetic heritage alone.

RONNIE: If genes don’t determine race, what does?

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

RONNIE: You can’t just wake up and say, “Gee, I
feel
black today.”

BENJAMIN: Brother, I’m just trying to find what you’ve already got.

RONNIE: What do I got?

BENJAMIN: A home. With your people. Picketing with the laundry workers. Taking refuge from the daily slights against your masculinity in the noble image of Gwan Gung.

RONNIE: Gwan who?

BENJAMIN: C’mon—the Chinese god of warriors and—what do you take me for? There’re altars to him up all over the community.

RONNIE: I dunno what community you’re talking about, but it’s sure as hell not mine.

(Pause.)

BENJAMIN: What do you mean?

RONNIE: I mean, if you wanna call Chinatown
your
community, OK, knock yourself out, learn to use chopsticks, big deal. Go ahead, try and find your “roots” in some dim sum parlor with headless ducks hanging in the window. Those places don’t tell you a thing about who
I
am.

BENJAMIN: Oh, I get it.

RONNIE: You get what?

BENJAMIN: You’re one of those self-hating,
assimilated
Chinese-Americans, aren’t you?

RONNIE: Oh, Jesus.

BENJAMIN: You probably call yourself “Oriental,” huh? Look, maybe I can help you. I have some books I can—

RONNIE: Hey, I read all those Asian identity books when you were still slathering on industrial-strength sunblock.
(Pause)
Sure, I’m Chinese. But folks like you act like that means something. Like, all of a sudden, you know who I am. You think identity’s that simple? That you can wrap it all up in a neat package and say, “I have ethnicity, therefore I am”? All you fucking ethnic fundamentalists. Always settling for easy answers. You say you’re looking for identity, but you can’t begin to face the real mysteries of the search. So instead, you go skin-deep, and call it a day.
(Pause. He turns away from Benjamin and starts to play his violin—slow and bluesy)

BENJAMIN: So what are you? “Just a human being”? That’s like saying you
have
no identity. If you asked me to describe my dog, I’d say more than, “He’s just a dog.”

RONNIE: What—you think if I deny the importance of my race, I’m nobody? There’re worlds out there, worlds you haven’t even begun to understand. Open your eyes. Hear with your ears.

(Ronnie holds his violin at chest level, but does not attempt to play during the following monologue. As he speaks, rock and jazz violin tracks fade in and out over the house speakers, bringing to life the styles of music he describes.)

I concede—it was called a fiddle long ago—but that was even before the birth of jazz. When the hollering in the fields, the rank injustice of human bondage, the struggle of God’s children against the plagues of the devil’s white man, when all these boiled up into that bittersweet brew, called by later generations, the blues.

That’s when fiddlers like Son Sims held their chin rests at their chests, and sawed away like the hillbillies still do today. 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 timber of horsehair riding south below the fingerboard—and who finally sailed for Europe to find ears that would hear. Europe—where Stephane Grappelli initiated a magical French violin, to be passed from generation to generation—first he, to Jean-Luc Ponty, then Ponty to Didier Lockwood. Listening to Grappelli play “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” is to understand not only the song of birds, but also how they learn to fly, fall in love on the wing, and finally falter one day, to wait for darkness beneath a London street lamp. 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. Joe Venuti. Noel Pointer. Sven Asmussen. Even the Kronos Quartet, with their arrangement of “Purple Haze.” Now, tell me, could any legacy be more rich, more crowded with mythology and heroes to inspire pride? What can I say if the banging of a gong or the clinking of a pickax on the Transcontinental Railroad fails to move me even as much a one note, played through a violin MIDI controller by Michael Urbaniak?
(He puts his violin to his chin, begins to play a jazz composition of his own invention)
Does it have to sound like Chinese opera before people like you decide I know who I am?

(Benjamin stands for a long moment, listening to Ronnie play. Then, he drops his dollar into the case, turns and exits right. Ronnie continues to play a long moment. Then Benjamin enters downstage left, illuminated in his own spotlight. He sits on the floor of the stage, his feet dangling off the lip. As he speaks, Ronnie continues playing his tune, which becomes underscoring for Benjamin’s monologue. As the music continues, does it slowly begin to reflect the influence of Chinese music?)

BENJAMIN: When I finally found Doyers Street, I scanned the buildings for Number 13. Walking down an alley where the scent of freshly steamed char siu bao lingered in the air, I felt immediately that I had entered a world where all things were finally familiar.
(Pause)
An old woman bumped me with her shopping bag—screaming to her friend in Cantonese, though they walked no more than a few inches apart. Another man—shouting to a vendor in Sze-Yup. A youth, in white undershirt, perhaps a recent newcomer, bargaining with a grocer in Hokkien. I walked through this ocean of dialects, breathing in the richness with deep gulps, exhilarated by the energy this symphony brought to my step. And when I finally saw the number 13, I nearly wept at my good fortune. 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. I suddenly saw it all: Gung Gung, coming home from his sixteen-hour days pressing shirts he could never afford to own, bringing with him candies for my father, each sweet wrapped in the hope of a better life. When my father left the ghetto, he swore he would never return. But he had, this day, in the thoughts and memories of his son, just six months after his death. And as I sat on the stoop, I pulled a hua-moi from my pocket, sucked on it, and felt his spirit returning. To this place where his ghost, and the dutiful hearts of all his descendants, would always call home.
(He listens for a long moment)
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. Lights fade slowly to black.)

END OF PLAY

DAVID HENRY HWANG, is a playwright, screenwriter and librettist. His plays
FOB
(1981 OBIE Award),
The Dance and the Railroad
(1982 Drama Desk nomination),
Family Devotions
(1982 Drama Desk nomination),
The Sound of a Voice
and
The House of Sleeping Beauties
, were all produced at The Joseph Papp Public Theater/ New York Shakespeare Festival. His other plays include:
M. Butterfly
(Broadway, 1988 Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics, John Gassner awards);
Face Value
(Off-Broadway);
Bondage
;
Trying to Find Chinatown
(both produced by Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival) and
Golden Child
, which was commissioned by South Coast Repertory, premiered at The Joseph Papp Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, and moved to Broadway (1997 OBIE Award, 1998 Tony, Outer Critics nominations). His adaptation of Ibsen’s
Peer Gynt
, written with Stephan Müller, premiered in 1998 at Trinity Repertory Company. His libretti include two works for composer Philip Glass:
1000 Airplanes on the Roof
and
The Voyage
;
The Silver River
with music by Bright Sheng; and with Linda Woolverton and Robert Falls, he has co-authored the book for
Aida
, with music by Elton John and Tim Rice. Mr. Hwang has received fellowships from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and The Pew/ TCG National Artists Residency Program.

Trying to Find Chinatown: The Selected Plays of David Henry Hwang
is published by Theatre Communications Group, Inc., 355 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10017–6603.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that this material, being fully protected under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Berne and Universal Copyright Conventions, is subject to a royalty. All rights including, but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this book by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured from the author’s representative: Bill Craver, Writers and Artists Agency, 19 West 44th Street, Suite 1000, New York, NY 10036, (212) 391-1112.

The House of Sleeping Beauties
is adapted from a short story by Yasunari Kawabata, 1961. The biblical quotes within Act II, Scene One, of
The Voyage
are from Ecclesiasticus 43:26, Luke 10:23, Zechariah 9:10 and Isaiah 49:23, respectivley; Act II, Scene Two’s translations and nautical terms are from Samuel Eliot Morrison’s
Admiral of the Ocean Sea
, 1942.

This publication is made possible in part with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

TCG books are exclusively distributed to the book trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, 1045 Westgate Dr., St. Paul, MN 55114.

BOOK: Trying to Find Chinatown: The Selected Plays of David Henry Hwang

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