Lai-Tsao is a selfless monk who feeds and treats the wounds of vagrants. After disclosing to Jin how she often feels embarrassed and like she doesn't fit in, Jin kisses her, causing her to slap him in anger. When young, she and Jin avoid each other due to rumors about them being related. Suzy is a Japanese-American girl who goes to school with Jin. Early in the book, Greg defends Jin when Timmy insults him, but later Greg asks Jin not to date Amelia, saying she needs to start paying attention to the sort of person she hangs out with.
However, Amelia's friend Greg asks Jin not to ask her out again, saying he isn't sure they are right for each other. After much anticipation, Amelia and Jin have a mutually enjoyable date.
Amelia HarrisĪmelia is a classmate of Jin's who Jin develops a crush on. After Danny fights Chin-Kee, it is revealed that Chin-Kee is in fact the Monkey King, acting as Jin's conscience. Chin-Kee speaks in broken English, mistaking his r’s and l’s, his eyes are slanted, his teeth stick out, he eats cat parts with noodles, and his name is a play on the slur "chinky." He embodies every negative stereotype that Jin does not want to be associated with. Chin-KeeĬhin-Kee is Danny’s cousin, an over-the-top racist caricature of Chinese stereotypes. Every year, Danny makes inroads at a new high school only for his cousin Chin-Kee to visit and ruin Danny’s reputation. Dannyĭanny is Jin's fantasy alter-ego, who embodies everything Jin Wang wishes he could be: popular, smart, blond, athletic, and white. He brings a message to Danny, who is really Jin, that he must embrace his true identity as an American-born Chinese person. The Monkey King later arrives incarnated as Chin-Kee. Eventually, a monk named Wong Lai-Tsao helps him return to his true form as a monkey, without shoes. When he faces Tze-Yo-Tzuh, the creator of the Earth, he retains his false belief that he is the greatest being ever created and winds up buried in a mountain of rock for five hundred years. He returns to his kingdom and masters Kung-Fu disciplines that make him invulnerable to the execution order leveled against him. He considers himself equal to the gods and goddesses that rule over him and the monkeys within his kingdom, but when they reject him from a party because he is a shoeless monkey, he assaults them in anger. The Monkey King is a deity who rules over Flower Fruit Mountain. Jin later meets Wei-Chen to see that he has embraced consumerism and flashy clothes and cars. A recent immigrant from Taiwan, Wei-Chen's accent is pronounced and Jin encourages him to act less like he is "fresh off the boat." After Wei-Chen and Jin have a falling out, it is revealed that Wei-Chen is the Monkey King's son incarnated as a human, as a test of virtue to see if he can avoid human vices for forty years. Wei-Chen is Jin's best friend throughout most of the book. Jin eventually embraces his true identity. His discomfort at being Chinese leads him to fantasize about shedding his ethnicity and transforming into a white boy named Danny. Born and raised by Chinese immigrants in San Francisco's Chinatown, Jin moves to a predominantly white suburb, where he is bullied by his peers for his ethnicity.
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