Character Analysis: The Year Of The Dragon

Frank Chin is considered to be one of the pioneers in Asian American theatre. In his work, he mainly depicts the effects of human stereotyping. His vision on the fate of Chinese Americans works as a background to his depiction of individuals and their families who are damaged by the roles that they are forced to play in white America’s society. The particularity of Chin’s work is that he stresses the great damage of preconceived opinion more on the relations between family members than on individual mind.
In his famous play The Year of the Dragon, Frank Chin shows the prejudicial effects that ethnic myths can have on people using the representation of a Chinese American man, Fred Eng, and his family. The staging of this family bonds helps to picture the conflict between the younger generation’s urge towards assimilation and the older generation’s obsession with tradition.

The play starts with Fred Eng, a forty-five years old men, animating a tour group in San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Chinese New Year. He uses a stereotypical Chinese American accent, and tells that he is Chinatown’s best guide for a tour of the exotic sights. He tells the tourists they make him feel good and he likes them. After his spiel, however, he swears at the end of his speech, under his breath : “Goddam, motherfucking…” (p.71) That reveals us that he despites his job and hates the tourists he is entertaining. The reason of the rough start for the play is that The Year of the Dragon presents a