I loved—ecstatically so—Charles Yu’s novel Interior Chinatown. It came out just before COVID hit, but I read it during lockdown, and it provided an escape from the dumpster fire that was 2020. It’s a metafictional, postmodern delight, blending prose and screenplay (the latter depicts the popular procedural show Black and White). But it’s also a serious, meditative piece exploring Asian culture, identity, and the immigrant experience.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the TV series. Before watching it, I hadn’t read Yu’s interview, in which he sheepishly admits that adapting the book is impossible. So, I was taken aback when, after the first episode, it became clear that the series was going in a very different direction.

Like the novel, our protagonist is Willis Wu (played by Jimmy O. Yang, who you may recognise from Silicon Valley), a waiter at the Golden Palace. He dreams of becoming a Kung Fu Man like his older brother, who worked for the police and vanished under mysterious circumstances. The abduction of a woman outside the restaurant—Wu the only witness—attracts the attention of Detectives Sarah Green (Lisa Gilroy) and Miles Turner (Sullivan Jones), the heroes of the TV show “Black and White”. Along with Green and Turner is Chinatown expert Detective Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet), who co-opts Willis’s help in her unsanctioned investigation into the disappearance of Willis’s brother.

The first episode is the most faithful to the novel. In both mediums, Willis views the abduction/murder of a woman outside the restaurant. But where the novel cares little about the mystery, focussed more on Willis’s climb up the ladder of Asian stereotypes, the show is very much concerned with the strange goings on in Chinatown—not just the initial abduction, but the questions surrounding Kung Fu Man, Willis’s brother: Did he murder Detective McDonough? Was he the leader of the notorious gang, the Painted Faces?

Initially, I was disappointed by the divergence. Aside from the world turning into a TV show the moment Green and Turner enter the scene, it felt too conventional; it lacked the metafictional verve of the novel. I started to lose faith. But that was my mistake. By episode four, it becomes apparent that Charles Yu and the other writers, in tune with the novel, have a metafictional game to play, one that takes advantage of the visual medium. My enjoyment rose as the episodes became increasingly surreal, as the narrative began to fragment around the characters.

What’s important is that the themes from the novel are retained. This is still a story about the Asian cultural experience in America—the stereotyping, the erasure, the assimilation. With ten episodes at his disposal, Charles Yu and the writing team flesh out these ideas. There’s Willis’s best friend, Fatty (played by Ronny Chieng), who becomes a viral sensation as a rude waiter, the white customers lapping up his insults. And there’s Willis’s mother, Lily (Diana Lin), who starts to embody the American dream as a real estate agent. 

By the end of the ten episodes, I loved the show. Texturally, structurally, and narratively, it’s very different from the source material, but it has its heart in exactly the same place.