What Is Culture?
Yang is bought to fill in the missing gap in this new family. They are white parents to an adopted Chinese daughter. Yang comes full programmed with every last shred of information about Chinese history and he looks like a Chinese teen. But he is a machine. He is not really Chinese or anything else. This fact lends irony to the entire situation: Mika is never really going to be “Chinese” because she is not being raised within that culture.
What Is Human?
Ironically, one can’t learn to be Chinese, but one can learn to be human. Yang learns to become human by developing empathy and artistic expression. Russ would seem to be born with these traits, but his lack of humanity proves they are learned, not innate.
Russ Goodman
An easy bit of comic irony comes with Russ’ last name. He is the owner of Russ Goodman’s Tech Repair shop. Ironically, he is very much not a good man.
Tech Repair
To a lesser ironic extent, Russ is also not much of a tech repairman. Russ is a xenophobic, racist piece of work. He immediately reveals his misplaced sense of supremacy by deprecating Asian technology. That would be the same Asian technology that, ironically, superior white American repairman Russ Goodman cannot repair.
The Neighbor
George, the narrator’s neighbor is initially introduced as “friendly enough” which is code for being a total jerk who is at least gregariously neighborly. He is set up to become a kind of low-rent Russ Goodman. Ironically, however, George becomes—arguably, perhaps—the most “human” character in the whole story. He is far from perfect but reveals a greater emotional depth than even the narrator.
