The novel begins with the story of the Monkey King, a deity who reigns over monkeys on Flower-Fruit Mountain. One night, smells from a party in Heaven waft down to Flower-Fruit Mountain, and since the Monkey King loves parties, he decides to go. When he gets to the door of the party, the guard denies him entrance since he’s a monkey and isn’t wearing shoes. The Monkey King is embarrassed, so he beats up the other deities at the party. Back home, he’s suddenly aware of his fur’s smell. The next day, he declares that all monkeys in his kingdom must wear shoes, and locks himself in his chambers. After 80 days studying kung-fu in solitude, he achieves the four major disciplines of invulnerability and the four major disciplines of bodily form, which means he can’t die and can shape-shift. The other monkeys are ecstatic when the Monkey King emerges, but they’re puzzled by his appearance: he looks somehow human. One monkey offers his king a scroll from Heaven, which reads that the Monkey King has been sentenced to death for trespassing upon Heaven. The Monkey King says this is a mistake: he’s no longer the Monkey King and is now The Great Sage, Equal to Heaven.
The Monkey King storms off to announce his new name. Ao-Kuang, Dragon King of the Eastern Sea, laughs at the Monkey King’s pronouncement and tries to proceed with the execution, but when the Monkey King stomps on him, he accepts the name. The Monkey King goes all around Heaven, brutally forcing everyone to accept his new name. Finally, the gods, goddesses, demons, and spirits go to the emissaries of Tze-Yo-Tzuh (the creator of the world) to report the Monkey King as a menace. A few days later, Tze-Yo-Tzuh interrupts the Monkey King. He explains that he created the Monkey King. Incensed, the Monkey King speeds away through the universe. When he reaches five golden pillars at the end of all that is, he carves his name on one and urinates on it. After he returns to Tze-Yo-Tzuh, Tze-Yo-Tzuh offers the Monkey King his hand: one finger bears the Monkey King’s name and a spot of urine: his fingers were the five pillars. Tze-Yo-Tzuh insists that the Monkey King cannot escape him and is supposed to be a monkey. When the Monkey King insults Tze-Yo-Tzuh again, Tze-Yo-Tzuh collapses a mountain on the Monkey King and traps him inside so he can’t practice kung-fu.
500 years later, Tze-Yo-Tzuh chooses a monk named Wong Lai-Tsao to carry three parcels to the west and explains that the Monkey King will be Wong Lai-Tsao’s first disciple. Wong Lai-Tsao journeys to the Monkey King’s mountain and tries to convince the Monkey King to help him, but the Monkey King is derisive. The Monkey King only begins to reconsider when two demons start to roast Wong Lai-Tsao on a fire—and Wong Lai-Tsao points out that the Monkey King can free himself if he releases kung-fu and returns to his true form. With a sigh, the Monkey King turns back into a monkey and beats up the demons. He agrees to accompany Wong Lai-Tsao and leaves his shoes behind.
At the same time, a young boy named Jin Wang tells his story. Jin’s mother and father immigrated to the U.S. from China and met at school in San Francisco. They lived in Chinatown and Jin was born there. Now, Jin spends his time blissfully playing Transformers with other Chinese boys in the apartment complex. Jin’s mother goes to an herbalist once per week and takes Jin with her. One day, the herbalist’s wife asks Jin what he wants to be when he grows up. Jin says he wants to be a Transformer, but according to his mom, that’s impossible. The herbalist’s wife says it actually is possible—if Jin is willing to forfeit his soul. Not long after this, Jin’s parents move to the suburbs and Jin starts third grade. His teacher, Mrs. Greeder, says his name incorrectly, says he came from China, and tells a concerned classmate named Timmy that Jin stopped eating dogs as soon as he arrived in America. The only other Asian student is a Japanese girl named Suzy Nakamura, and many students believe that Jin and Suzy are related or that they’ll be married when Suzy turns 13. School is lonely for Jin. Boys continue to tease Jin about eating dogs, though one boy, Greg, sometimes stands up for Jin. A bully named Peter becomes Jin’s friend, but their friendship consists mostly of games that hurt or humiliate Jin. Peter moves away when Jin is in fifth grade, and a few weeks later, a boy named Wei-Chen from Taiwan joins Jin’s class. For some reason, Jin wants to beat Wei-Chen up. When Wei-Chen approaches Jin at lunch, Jin rudely tells Wei-Chen to speak English and that they can’t be friends. However, Jin changes his mind about Wei-Chen when Wei-Chen pulls out a Transformer toy, and the two become best friends.
Alongside Jin’s story, the novel takes the format of a sitcom called Everyone Ruvs Chin-Kee. It’s accompanied by a laugh track that indicates laughter or clapping from an audience. The scene opens in a suburban living room, where a white boy named Danny studies chemistry with a girl named Melanie. Danny is aghast when his mother announces that cousin Chin-Kee will be here soon and will accompany Danny to school. Chin-Kee bursts through the door. He’s dressed in traditional Chinese clothes and has yellow skin, buckteeth, and a long queue. Chin-Kee mixes up his r’s and his l’s as he compliments Melanie’s bust and salivates. At school, Chin-Kee embarrasses Danny at every turn. He answers every question in class correctly, eats “crispy-fried cat gizzards with noodle” for lunch, and pees in the Coke can of Steve, an older boy on the basketball team whom Danny admires. Chin-Kee goes to the library after school while Danny attends detention, tries unsuccessfully to ask Melanie out again, and goes to the gym. Steve sits down with Danny and Danny shares that every year when Chin-Kee visits, his classmates start to think of him not as Danny, but just as Chin-Kee’s cousin. Because of this, Danny has switched schools every year since eighth grade. Steve kindly says that kids at this school are nicer than that, as no one teases him for being overweight, and offers to buy Danny a Coke. Danny angrily asks if that’s so he can pee in it, and storms away.
When Jin is in seventh grade, he falls madly in love with a classmate named Amelia. When he confides in Wei-Chen about his crush, Wei-Chen initially teases him for liking a girl at all, but Wei-Chen soon begins dating Suzy. Wei-Chen and Suzy often tease Jin about the fact that he can’t speak or behave normally around Amelia. Despite this, Wei-Chen pushes Jin to volunteer to feed some temporary classroom pets after school when Amelia raises her hand, but his outburst causes the teacher to assign Wei-Chen feeding duties instead. That afternoon, Jin fixates on Greg’s curly hairstyle, since Greg sits next to Amelia in science and she seems to like him. Jin gets a perm so his hair looks like Greg’s, which shocks Suzy and Wei-Chen at school the next morning.
As Wei-Chen and Amelia feed the pets after school, they accidentally get locked in a closet together. While they wait for Jin to figure out what happened, Wei-Chen tells Amelia about how good and kind of a friend Jin is to him. When Jin opens the closet, he feels a jolt of confidence coming from his curly hair and asks Amelia out. She agrees. Since Jin’s parents are extremely strict, he pleads with Wei-Chen to lie to Jin’s parents about where Jin is so he can go on the date. After Wei-Chen grudgingly agrees, Jin and Amelia decide to go to the movies. Since they can’t drive, Jin lets Amelia ride on his handlebars as he bikes up the hill to the theater. By the time they arrive, Jin’s armpits reek—his parents don’t see any reason for Jin to have deodorant. Near the end of the movie, Jin feels a jolt of confidence. Remembering the advice of his cousin Charlie, Jin rushes to the bathroom, scrubs dry soap into his armpits, and returns to the theater to put an arm around Amelia. She leans into him. As they leave the theater, Jin sees with horror that there are soap bubbles coming through his shirt and onto Amelia’s shoulder. Thankfully, Amelia doesn’t notice, and they get milkshakes. Greg sees them as they leave.
At school the next day, as Jin prepares to ask Amelia out again, Greg pulls Jin aside and asks him for a favor: to stay away from Amelia. Greg says that he’s not interested in Amelia, but he’s concerned for her social standing going into high school and doesn’t think Jin is right for her. Confused and hurt, Jin agrees, but he regrets it immediately. His anger simmers until later, he approaches Amelia to try again—but loses his nerve when he sees Greg. Despondent, he joins Suzy outside. She’s close to tears and shares that over the weekend, she went to a party for one of her friends from Japanese school, but realized quickly that the friend didn’t want Suzy to be there. Suzy says she was extremely embarrassed and today, when Timmy called her a “chink” (a racist slur against Asian people) she realized she feels embarrassed like that all the time. Inexplicably, Jin leans over and kisses her. Suzy punches him in the face. Later, Wei-Chen goes to Jin’s house and asks why Jin would do something like that. Jin angrily tells Wei-Chen that Wei-Chen isn’t good enough for Suzy, and Wei-Chen punches Jin in the face. That night, Jin convinces himself that what he told Wei-Chen is true. He dreams of the herbalist’s wife, who says that Jin has finally forfeited his soul. She asks what Jin wants to be. When Jin gets up to use the bathroom, he turns on the light and sees that he’s white. He names his new self Danny.
Back in the sitcom Everyone Ruvs Chin-Kee, Danny (Jin) goes to the library to find Chin-Kee dancing on a table and singing “She Bangs” by Ricky Martin. Mortified, Danny drags Chin-Kee out of the library by his queue, tells him to leave him alone, and punches him again and again. Chin-Kee takes the abuse, but then fights back with kung-fu moves, all of which have names that come from classic Chinese restaurant dishes. After Chin-Kee appears to emerge victorious, Danny throws one final punch at Chin-Kee—and knocks his head off to reveal the Monkey King. The Monkey King returns to his monkey form and then makes Danny revert to his true form as Jin. The Monkey King explains who he is and that Wei-Chen is his son and an emissary of Tze-Yo-Tzuh. Wei-Chen’s test of virtue was to live among humans without vice for 40 years. His test went well for three years, until Wei-Chen lied to Jin’s mother. After that, he told the Monkey King that he was uninterested in serving Tze-Yo-Tzuh and finds humans to be selfish and horrible. When he began refusing the Monkey King’s visits, the Monkey King started visiting Jin instead. The Monkey King says that he didn’t do this to punish Jin; he visited Jin to act “as a signpost to [his] soul.” Jin calls after the retreating Monkey King and asks what he’s supposed to do now. The Monkey King says that he would’ve saved himself years of imprisonment in a mountain had he realized how good it is to be a monkey, and leaves Jin a business card for a Chinese restaurant.
Jin goes to the restaurant and orders pearl milk tea every day after school for the next month. Finally, one night, Wei-Chen pulls up outside in his cool car, blasting loud music and smoking. Jin tells Wei-Chen that he met the Monkey King and invites Wei-Chen inside. He can see the small, scared monkey inside of Wei-Chen. In the restaurant, Jin tells Wei-Chen about the Monkey King’s visit and says that he’s really just trying to apologize. After thinking for a moment, Wei-Chen says he knows where they can go to get better pearl milk tea. The boys talk and laugh together late into the night.
