The Family Chao

Chang uses the setting of this section to provide both backdrop and metaphor for the novel’s themes, beginning with the snowfall that insulates Haven from the outside world. The storm also serves as the plot device that interrupts Ming from returning to New York City and instead sends him back to Haven. The cold depths of winter are a time of death—the freezer room writ large. Chang uses this sense of isolation and the complexities of the Chao family relationships to emphasize the novel’s thematic exploration of Being Both Outsider and Insider. James thinks of the family as a community unto itself, not really knowable to outsiders—a microcosm of the Chinese community within Haven. Those not a part of it, like Katherine or Brenda or Jerry Stern, can never really understand the full complexity. Alice echoes this sentiment of being restricted by one’s role in the family when she suggests being tied to her mother will freeze her in place.

The Chaos’ family dynamic highlights the importance of Loyalty, Filial Piety and Sacrifice for Family to their family in specific and to the Chinese community more broadly. Each Chao brother takes a turn reflecting on his place in the family, including his relationship with his father, his attitude toward the restaurant, and their attachment to their mother. Ming articulates the immigrant parent’s hope that one’s children will have a better life and repay the parent’s sacrifice with achievement—an ideal echoed by Leo at the start of the novel. The Chao sons, Ming says, have failed in this way. Dagou has not done anything impressive but has instead, after failing to establish a career as a musician, returned to their small town. Chang contrasts Ming’s perspective with Dagou, who believes running the restaurant is his new ambition; he is a gifted chef who enjoys making food and creating feasts.

Each of the Chao sons define themselves by their similarities to or differences from Leo, suggesting that they’ve conflated their relationship with their father with their relationship to their Chinese heritage. Dagou is the son most like Leo, ruled by his appetites, but unlike Leo, Dagou has his mother’s soft heart. Ming, in contrast, rejects his family and avoids any connection to his Chinese roots. He has ambivalent feelings toward Katherine; he finds her attractive but wants her to detach from the Chao family, as he did. Ming has inherited his father’s love for money but little else. James, the youngest, feels loyalty to both his parents and wants his family to get along. James is just beginning to explore who he is, as conveyed through his sexual awakening with Alice. All three of the Chao brothers are dealing with desires that manifest in different ways and control them to different degrees. All three feel contempt for their father and, to a lesser extent, their mother for staying with their father and putting up with him for so long. Winnie, at the opposite end of the spectrum, wants to renounce desire and material attachments, believing that in doing so, she will achieve tranquility.

In this section, Chang builds on the established anti-Asian discrimination in Haven, depicting racist language and behavior from white customers in the restaurant and the clerk in the convenience store, both of whom equate Asian features and facility with a language other than English with foreignness, erroneously defining “Americanness” via proximity to whiteness. Ming uses a term Leo introduced earlier, ABC—American-born Chinese, a distinction used among those of Chinese descent living in the US, just as “FOB” (for “fresh off the boat”) is a colloquialism referring to those who have newly emigrated. Chang uses these terms in the conversations among the characters to provide a nuanced picture of the Chinese community in Haven—making distinctions between the culture of mainland China (which many feel to be the “authentic” Chinese culture), first-generation Chinese immigrants in America, and Americans of Chinese descent born in the United States. Katherine exemplifies yet another remove, the Chinese-born child, adopted and raised by white parents, for whom Chinese American culture is a curiosity.

These many gradations suggest the complexity of navigating multiple cultures—Being Both Insider and Outsider—an experience not unique to the Chaos, as the Chang daughter, who shows up at the Christmas party, indicates. Chang positions Eric as an example of the ways in which white Americans still consider Chinese American culture foreign; he becomes physically sick at the idea—suggested by Fang as a joke—that he consumed dog meat. Eric easily accepts the stereotype that Asians consume dog meat, and more than that, Chang describes his distinct unease at being in the ethnic minority at the party, surrounded by people who don’t look like him. What people look like—and what is assumed about them on this basis—is a quiet but persistent theme the author weaves through the novel.

The recurring motif of the old man’s bag surfaces again in this section, underscoring the notion held by many of the novel’s characters that money provides liberation, and pointing to the novel’s thematic interest in the ways systemic racial discrimination and economic privilege complicate the conceit of the American Dream. The old man’s bag also serves as a plot point to indicate Leo’s greed; though his sons assume he has stashed money somewhere, Leo always wants more. The repeated references to cold temperatures and freezing weather coupled with Dagou’s fantasies about locking his father in the freezer room foreshadow the crime to come in the following section. Dagou’s dream can be read as a dream of his father, the “Big Dog,” depicted as a larger version of the family dog, Alf, who shows Dagou a different perspective on the world he knows, giving him a taste of the freedom he longs for.