China Boy

China Boy is a 1991 work of autobiographical fiction by Gus Lee. Lee has confirmed that the book is a thinly veiled memoir of his early years, growing up as the child of Chinese immigrants in San Francisco’s Panhandle neighborhood. He changed names and diminished his father’s role in the story, but most details are otherwise true to his memory of events and circumstances. Today, Lee is an American author, legal adviser, and ethicist.

The book opens when protagonist Kai Ting (a version of Lee) is seven years old, his parents’ youngest child and only son. The Ting family lives in San Francisco’s Panhandle neighborhood in the 1950s; at the time, this part of San Francisco was almost entirely black. They are the only Asian family living there. The novel is narrated by an adult Kai reflecting on his childhood.

Young Kai has difficulty fitting in. The only American-born member of the family, he struggles with English because he has not been formally taught how to speak the language like his parents and siblings. His mother, referred to as Mah-mee, makes much of him for being the only son but coddles him too closely. Kai has poor vision and is not physically strong; he is often a target for bullying and beatings from the tough, streetwise children who live in his neighborhood.



Mah-mee is superstitious, clinging to traditional ways, but also proves herself to be outspoken and independent. Kai’s father, sometimes called TK or the Colonel, was born to a wealthy family that suffered after the advent of communism in China: his own father was an opium addict who was killed in a re-education camp after the revolution. He comes from a military background, embraces his new life in America, and tries to forget his cultural ties to China.

Kai seeks acceptance from his peers, struggling to find it. He wants to become a part of black male culture because that is the culture that surrounds him. The family cannot identify with the Chinese population of San Francisco; the city’s Chinatown is a Cantonese-speaking neighborhood, and the Ting family speaks Songhai and Mandarin.

Kai becomes more isolated when Mah-mee falls ill with breast cancer. The rest of the family tries to shield him from her illness. When she dies, they send him away for a month and delay telling him that she is dead. Kai’s sisters do not follow the Chinese mourning traditions following her funeral because they have no one to teach them the correct customs.



Soon after, Kai’s father remarries to an Irish-American woman named Edna. She is not a maternal woman; she insists the children call her “Edna” rather than “Stepmother,” and has little interest in raising them. She abuses them physically and emotionally, telling them they are burdens. She burns a crate filled with Mah-Mee’s possessions and is the first to tell Kai his mother is dead. Edna frequently kicks Kai out of the house and into the street, leaving him to be beaten by street bullies.

With Mah-mee gone, Kai loses his connection to the China he has never known. Gradually, he begins to lose his Songhai vocabulary, and what little Mah-mee tried to teach him about his culture. He finds some solace in the neighborhood, finally making a friend in a black boy named Toussaint, nicknamed “Toos.” Toos offers Kai some tips on fighting and tries to teach him black slang so he’ll fit in better with other neighborhood children.

The next time Kai is bullied, he tries to fight back. He manages to leave his attacker with a bloody nose, but the boy’s older sister finds Kai and beats him severely. A kind Latino man named Hector stops her, cleans Kai up, and takes him back to the Ting home. He tells Kai’s father that the boy should learn to box at the YMCA. Kai’s father agrees, hoping this will make his “delicate” son manlier. He associates femininity and fragility with China and virile masculinity with America.



Kai learns how to box and how to fight at the YMCA. Meanwhile, he also studies Chinese philosophy with a family friend “Uncle” Shim, regaining some of his cultural identity. He buys Kai new clothes and gloats over him as if he were Shim’s own son, making Kai feel accepted and loved.

In a boxing match, Kai defeats Jerome “Lucky” Washington, a formidable opponent. He is happy that he won but realizes how pointless fighting really is. The victory is short-lived when the biggest and cruelest of Kai’s bullies, Big Willie Mack, finds Kai and beats him severely, putting him back in his place.

Kai begins to skip his boxing lessons, instead, visiting the beach and trying to remember his mother. He realizes he has forgotten what her face looks like, which troubles him more. Finally, Mr. Lewis, Kai’s instructor at the YMCA, discovers why Kai has been missing lessons. He decides to train Kai for a fight against Big Willie to regain his confidence.



The day of his match against Big Willie arrives, and his training pays off: he defeats his bully. Afterward, he thanks his coaches, calling them his fathers. Toos’s mother, who has always been kind to Kai, helps clean him up after the fight. He goes home, but Edna refuses to let him in. Instead of leaving, he puts up his fists and tells her she isn’t Mah-mee, and he won’t put up with being picked on anymore.

China Boy received positive reviews upon release. Publisher’s Weekly referred to the book as “the Chinese American experience as Dickens might have described it,” delivering a narrative that is “a primer on how to keep body and soul together” on gritty streets. Lee continued his fictionalized autobiography in a sequel, Honor and Duty, which follows Kai’s life as a student at West Point. He also wrote a nonfiction memoir about his parents, Chasing Hepburn, in 2002.