Traditional Chinese American buildingsroman appropriate Chinese culture to establish its reputation and distinctiveness. The paper shows that previous criticism of Chinese American literature mainly assumes that stereotypes are from public's perception and ignores the source of ethnic writing practice itself. The paper reads Chinese American writer Weike Wang’s debut novel Chemistry as an atypical ethnic bildungsroman that challenges this subgenre’s unconscious promulgating of stereotypes. I argue that the narrator’s contemplation on Chinese culture in Chemistry deconstructs the stereotyped ethnic traits into universal human traits. Inspired by science’s universality across cultures, the author reveals the shared emotions underlying the stereotypes. Ultimately, I show how Wang utilizes a dual narrative to motivate the narrator to contemplate on development process of various kinds, which constitutes a meta-bildungsroman where a identity without ethnicity and particularities emerges. By creating Chemistry as a meta-bildungsroman, Wang reveals ethnic identity is not only a construct, but fundamentally embodiment of humanity.