WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 712 - Joe Wong / Doug Stanhope

Episode Date: June 2, 2016

Comedian Joe Wong grew up in China. Then he came to America and learned how to be a standup comic. Now he's back in China, helping to shape the Chinese comedy scene, and starring in his own TV show. Joe talks with Marc about overcoming language barriers and cultural differences with laughs. Also, Doug Stanhope returns for a breezy, humorous chat about what it was like for Doug to help his mom kill herself. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing with cannabis legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category.

legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! store and a cast creative all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the? What the fucking ears? How's it going?

This is Mark Maron. This is my show. This is the podcast, WTF. If you were wondering, if you are trying to listen to some other podcast, you've made a mistake, but maybe you should hang out for a minute or a few minutes or however long it takes me to get through this business. I hope everything's going well with you. Today is Thursday. get through this business i hope everything's going well with you today is uh thursday if we're dry if you're listening to it the day it comes out this is thursday uh just a reminder maybe

that's helpful to some of you maybe maybe you downloaded this thing and you were lost i'm telling you man right now i i barely know what fucking day it is and i guess that's a luxury perhaps perhaps it's a mental ailment i'm not sure what the fuck is going on with my brain right now today on the show joe wong joe wong is a guy i've heard about for a while he's a a chinese american comedian who does shows in china and can do stand-up in chinese it's just a world that I have no idea about. And I was excited to talk to him. Also, today on the show, we're going to talk to Doug Stan,

help for a minute about his new book, Digging Up Mother, A Love Story, which is available now. I want to thank everybody for coming out to the Trippany shows. They've been going well. Because I'm dealing with a sort of a new, I'm trying to deal with a new way of looking at things. What is my life like now that a lot of the things I used to be fucked up about

are unfucked? And it's exhausting because there's part of me that's sort of like, what do I sound like when I'm not angry? You want to know what that sounds like? Here, I i'll give you an example here's what that sounds like gee i think i'm done i think i i think i'm done with everything i don't see the point of doing much of anything if uh if i'm not angry so uh i can't seriously i've quit comedy like three times this week already but that's ridiculous there's got to be like i've

got to be able to embrace and open and move through it but these shows that the trippity have been good themes are starting to reveal themselves uh people are enjoying the shows thank you i don't know if there's tickets left but i'm going to be doing it for for a few more tuesdays through june you can also go to wtfpod.com slash tour to see where I'm coming. I'm doing dates in July, a lot of dates in July and throughout the fall. So, yeah, like things are okay. I'm exercising, which I don't know. I don't feel great.

I don't know. These people that say that they exercise and they feel great. I exercise this morning and I feel great. I don't know. These people that say that they exercise and they feel great. I exercise this morning and I feel exhausted. The day is going to be difficult now and I'm aggravated. It's not that's is that the desired result? Is it? And my my stray cats have disappeared now. They're not dead.

We all know scared. He's gone. But it's scared. He too comes and goes. Deaf black cat apparently has moved on and shows up sporadically now. And now he's just got a big bag of cat food. Now I'm not even a good cat guy anymore? I got to go somewhere else?

Yeah, where's that guy? Where's the guy that all the cats love? All right, well, look, here's the deal. Right now, let's go to me and Doug Stanhope, who's a friend of mine. You can go to the Howell Premium Archives and hear longer interviews with him on episodes 22 and 204. I just had him come over a couple weeks ago to talk about his new book, Digging Up Mother, A Love Story. This is me and Doug. his new book, Digging Up Mother, a love story.

This is me and Doug. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Calgary is an opportunity-rich city home to innovators, dreamers, disruptors, and problem solvers.

The city's visionaries are turning heads around the globe across all sectors each and every day. They embody Calgary's DNA. A city that's innovative, inclusive, and creative. And they're helping put Calgary and our innovation ecosystem on the map as a place where people come to solve some of the world's greatest challenges. Calgary is on the right path the like for a lot of people are listening either like digging up mother a love story Doug Stanhope because I remember hearing you talking about your mother but what was how's it how's the narrative of the book work is it essays or is it straight up memoir the the suicide itself was at my house with us roasting her and you know

making a right because she was ill yeah she was on hospice care yeah emphysema dying dead pan couldn't get out of bed right uh so that's what i worked into my last special right so i me assuming that because i had it on a special, every single person in the world knows it. Yeah, that's what we do. No one has seen it or knows it. I front loaded. The first chapter is basically the extended detailed version of that bit. That's great.

So I started with what I assume everyone already knows and then go back to being young and young and yeah remembering her jacking off the dog yeah she's just a weird caustic this is your mom yeah why did she jerk off the dog i don't know she thought because they like it was her why does anyone jerk off a dog but i was 12 so i thought it was fucking hilarious yeah i knew one other kid i saw that i saw a kid do that once jerk off a dog and i'm like this doesn't seem right. But they were laughing. Yeah. My mother was laughing.

I was laughing. And because I was laughing, she continued to do that through my life up until my adulthood. Jerking off the dog. Ralphie May was at the apartment when I lived in L.A. once. She started jerking off the cat, trying to get, like, breaking out an old bit. It's not as funny when you're not 12. Or when it's a cat. It's a little trickier to jerk off a cat.

Dogs are waiting. They're ready to be jerked off. What's your problem? They like it. She would always say that. That sounds like some good mothering. Was your dad around? He wasn't.

Yeah, my dad was around. He was of little or no consequence. He was just a... They divorced when I was like seven, but he was just a big happy, dumb... It was like the dad from Happy Days, but a little dumber. Oh, really?

Yeah. Right. So your mom was a character. Yeah, yes. And what is the love story element? Just we were best friends in a very awkward way. You and your mom? Yeah. All and your mom? Yeah.

All the way through? She actually talked me into doing comedy. Oh, yeah? Yeah. You should be a stand-up comic. You're funnier than these cocksuckers on fucking evening at the improv. How old were you when that happened? Probably 20, 22.

And my mother, she got sober in AA when i was about seven oh really yeah so i spent a lot of time growing up in the back of aa meetings uh hearing the stories yeah and i think that's where i got a lot of i got an adult sense of humor way too young that makes sense uh and i would bring all that shit to to school and they thought i was a fucking psychotic it all adds up to me now because like the beautiful thing about aa and i imagine you learned how to drink in a like here it was it was an advertisement for alcohol because you know those fucks sit around in a circle yeah and it's all glorifying their worst stories and you know talking it up with a small spin at the end yeah yeah and fortunately through

the you know grace of god i never have to live like that anymore you just yeah you were high fiving each other in the middle of this story and then i've never seen you so happy aside from the first five minutes of that story yeah uh so and storytelling itself i mean there were aa headliners basically oh yeah my mother would take us in and go hey indian jim is speaking tonight and you're And storytelling itself. I mean, there were AA headliners, basically. Oh, yeah. My mother would take us in and go, hey, Indian Jim is speaking tonight, and you're going to love him. He's fucking great.

And that's so funny. So instead of getting a babysitter, you just go to the meeting with her. Yeah. So that whole sensibility, that must have informed your brain a lot. And they would treat me just like I was an adult. Right. They talk to you the same way. They don't give a fuck of kids here.

Yeah. I'm lucky to be alive. What do you think? I'm going to tone it down for some fucking 10-year-old? Yeah. And also like 90% of them, not necessarily great parents during the using period. Yeah. They're all your crazy uncle.

Yeah, exactly. That corrupts you. Yeah, exactly. There's another one of those little fucks. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would bring that all to school. And I wasn't a class clown.

I was like a school shooter with jokes. They were terrified of me because even the teachers, like how would a kid that age even know about that? Right, right. Talking about shooting heroin or something. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's hilarious.

There's a piece of homework from when I was like 11. And it was like use a word and a sentence, and it was five different sentences. Yeah. I can't remember verbatim, but it was about, the National Guardsmen took great aim when they mowed down the protesters in a hail of bullets. The baby's head crushed easily in a vice.

I'm 11 years old. the wrong things well when i look back i just found that when i was going doing research for the book my mother was a hoarder thank god or i wouldn't have been able to write this right i wouldn't have the uh and i i look back and i go well that's shit that was going on in the news and it was dead baby jokes were all the rage. So, of course, that's something about a baby's head in a vice. Yeah, why not? You had a dark sense of humor angle on it. But they sent me to a school psychologist.

They were terrified of me. I had to go to counseling and stuff just because I had that sense of humor. Just because of my jokes. And she got, like, there's a picture in there of you and your brother and her letting you feel her fake boobs, her new boobs. Yeah, yeah. She was all about anyone who gets fake tits, they always want to whip them out.

Yeah, my mom has them, and I didn't know for most of my life until she got new ones. And, you know, it was too old for me to be like, well, let me check them out. You know, it didn't know for most of my life until she got new ones. And it was too old for me to be like, let me check them out. It didn't feel right. But you guys looked pretty old, you and your brother, when you're feeling it too. Yeah, we were about 21 or so. But that was her second pair too, I believe. Yeah, she must have got the same ones my mom did.

I remember being in friendlies when she got her first pair and she's squeezing them in a booth going, ah. We thought it was funny like she was the perfect mother if you were a beavis and butthead kid she let you smoke let you read hustler magazine yeah vulgar and yeah she's a truck driver for a while was she bartender for a lot of years she could sneak me into bars i remember seeing what now i know was the remnants of the guess who but but they still used the name and she was working you know the guess who and she's she got him to let me in to watch him and i was thinking it was the who right oh right it was like just randy bachman and maybe

not even bachman it was probably the other guys who knows i thought it was the who and i was just i was just happy that i recognized one of the songs after the disappointment of, oh, wait, this isn't The Who. You recognized American Woman. And you're like, this isn't The Who. The one song. It's close enough. Yeah. So I can't imagine.

She had been sick for how long by the time? The first time when I was doing the man show. So 2004. Yeah. The first time when I was doing the Man Show, so 2004, Comedy Central asked me to do a cruise ship with DePaulo and a couple other people to film wraparounds for their comedy awards, the commies. So it was free first-class airfare and a free cruise. So I brought my mother.

And that's when I found out she had come off the wagon because she had been sober since I was about seven. Oh, wow. And then I found out she'd been secretly drinking the sauce. And I go, well, if anything, I want to get hammered with my mother one time, so this will be a good time. And we sat in first class

and they brought over trays of champagne back in the good old days of first class. Yeah. And we both took one. I didn't say a word. We both started drinking and we we drank for a week straight uh ended in uh uh was it not fort lauderdale wherever they had an improv west palm beach west palm yeah i had to do a gig when we landed back uh and i got her to do blow

for the first time got a waitress chopping up lines in the ladies room toilet and showing her how to do it she like it yeah she liked it she liked it she liked to talk and drink so yeah that worked out i can talk more yeah i can over talk you into your grave yeah and when did she find out she had the emphysema well it was on that trip where i knew she had shitty lungs yeah when she first moved here from florida she had been a nurse and she did one of those blow into this thing to gauge the strength of your lungs. And they told her at that point she had the lungs of 127 year old person. I knew it was bad.

But on that trip, just going through the airport, she would have to stop for air on flat ground with a roller bag. She'd have to stop every so often. And I'm like, this is way worse than I knew. So what was the decision-making process around her exit? I was doing a five-week tour. At that point, I'd kind of written her off. She had gotten life-flighted a couple times from Bisbee up to Tucson.

But she was living with you? She was living in the same town when i moved out of town she she had a bunch of false flag suicide attempts so one of them i had to drive out and pick her up and bring her to bisbee and get her an apartment there she had left a post-it note yeah that's why i say in the in the end of the book i go the real title of this book is Mother, the Long Version of a Suicide Post-it Note. All she wrote is a post-it. Doug, pain is too much. What else do you have to say? To the point, yeah. But was it physical pain mostly?

That's what she was. Her drinking just spiraled out. She wasn't good at it. She'd be funny for an hour and then straight into maudlin depression. Why was it bad, mother? I'm a burden to you. Oh, yeah. So I drove her out.

She got life flighted. One time we were in Costa Rica and we get the call, hey, your mother just had a helicopter up to Tucson. She had tubes in her lungs sucking the gunk out oh yeah so she was just dying yeah and but she she was making no attempt to help herself so at some point i just had to detach like if you're just gonna keep yeah doing this to yourself you can't yeah i can't be the responsible party you're being a dick right i mean i'll still help you out when you need it but i'm not going out of my way for you right and who decided to what was the conversation around the assisted suicide she'd been talking about suicide forever right uh and she had attempted it not even

for health problems so when her health got that bad and she's on oxygen she said uh i went to this i had this five-week tour of europe and uh i asked the the nurse lady her caretaker and they said she probably has a 50 50 chance of being here when you get back right so we had a close enough relationship where i said i'm not canceling the tour uh i said I'm going to call you every night from stage, and if you're alive, I know you're going to do the Monty Python, I'm not dead yet. Yeah, yeah. Monty Python, we grew up with that, so we were always quoting.

We had the bits, and she would always. And if an EMT answers the phone phone i guess we'll have our answer but i'm gonna do it live on speakerphone on stage every night and you did that yeah we did that and i and we also i also had her tell us what she bought today i go you have a ten thousand dollar limit on your visa card you can't take that with you and you have no estate for them to take it out of jack up your credit card so she'd do i'm not dead yet and then she'd tell us some silly shit she bought out of the sky mall catalog i gave her and uh uh so she was alive when i got back and uh she knew she called me up and said yeah

it's uh it's time to go and had a doctor doctor that... She had hospice care. And hospice will set you up with the amount of drugs if you want to hasten the process. Yeah. And so she figured out that she had enough of the medication, the morphine. Right, right. Well more than enough. Yeah. That she could have left some behind.

Yeah. But she didn't. She took them all. Yeah. And you all were just there? You all who? She came over to my house because where she lived was just filthy hoarder estate. Yeah.

Spider webs and bugs and shit. Yeah. But she wouldn't let you clean anything up. Right. Because you're going to throw away something important. Yeah. Yeah. So she came over to my place without a date.

She didn't give us a specific date. Yeah. And I told her, listen, hey, if you're going to do this, it was a date. She didn't give us a specific date. And I told her, listen, hey, if you're gonna do this, it was a Thursday, I said, you gotta do it, I said, you can't do it on Sunday or Monday, because that's football. And that's just a dick move. If you're doing this

on your own, you don't ruin someone else's pre-planned event. And you have to do it before two weeks from now, because that's when Brian Hennigan's coming back and he doesn't have this stomach or sense of humor for this kind of shit yeah and so she just came over she came over thursday and then we just hung around and waited for her to you know cry uncle and uh on saturday night after bingo and i had you know spent the whole

day going i don't know what the fuck to do and had some cocktails and took his annex to go to bed. And I was on MySpace or whatever, and she's like, it's done. Get me my drink and my pills. It's done? She already took it? And I thought she meant like her beverage. She always had like an 89-ounce Bubba Keg kind of thing with diet soda.

Big gulp. And she was on 85 medications yeah and i thought she meant that she goes no the other drink and the other pills because she had been sober four years at that point three years yeah a little while uh-huh and i told her when she came over to kill herself i go you're not gonna do it sober right you can't take those chips with you. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So we mixed up. She was a black Russian drinker back in her prime.

So I had black Russians, but she said, make it white Russians, because she thought the milk would coat her stomach for eating all those pills. Right. Very motherly. Yeah. Chicken soup for the suicide. I don't want to be too hard on my stomach. Yeah. She didn't want to throw them up and so she just did it yeah she uh she ate almost 90 morphine pills slowly because she had a hard time eating them and we just busted her balls and just

you and bingo yeah yeah as she's coming in and out of consciousness ma wait they found a cure i wish i could remember all the lines. It's one of those, oh, fuck, we should have taped that. Yeah, of course she's laughing. She had a really dark sense of humor and was very logical and rational about death. Yeah. So it's just... How long did it take for it to...

A long time. For some reason, I was guessing 30 minutes. Yeah. Based on absolutely nothing right no research right but yeah she she she was alert for i'd say an hour after she took them all while she's taking them that probably took an hour right again the timeline is fuzzy but we you know we were busting her balls and then you know said, I was a good mother, right? No, you're a terrible mother.

How else would you raise a son that's going to mix you cocktails while you're killing yourself? So when she did, when it finally happened, was, well, obviously, it was the right thing. It was her choice. And, and you know you were there for her and she was in agony she also had horrific back pain she'd been addicted to vicodin for god knows how many years or a decade yeah a little bit yeah that's good yeah we try to keep it you know as much gallows humor as we could yeah but eventually i'm a dick it's all right uh yeah sorry my cell phone went off i'm not saying i'm a dick for killing my mother no i don't want to be misunderstood but you did have the feelings you were able to grieve and have that moment yeah bingo and i we put on some music

which as soon as mother was you know unconscious because she hated music and it was always too loud yeah uh so but then we'd like mirror under the nose kind of i can't tell if she's dead or not you felt try to feel the pulse and stuff yeah we had a a caretaker a friend of ours that was would come in and out and she came in at one point said no she's still breathing and at some point she uh i remember her last words were uh uh because my mother would just if she could get a laugh she'd grind it into the ground she'd over tag it and keep telling the joke and repeating it trying to like my you're ruining the joke you were just funny and now you're too much you know comics like that oh yeah yeah yeah shut up Quit ringing the bell. And she's just pounding drinks.

And at some point I said, wow, you're really hammering those white Russians. And she said, there's times to be dainty and there's times to be a pig. And we fell out laughing. And you could see her mind scrambling to how to tag it. And I go, shut up. Don't say anything else. Because those are perfect last words. And she didn't say anything else because those are perfect last words and she didn't say anything else had a couple more sips zonked out and that was it and that was it and

we tried to wait for till we knew she was dead and at that point we'd been drinking and taking a xanax so you bought everyone to fall down and in the morning we woke to fall down. And in the morning, we woke up. It was like 6.30 in the morning or so. And not EMTs, but guys from the morgue, the funeral home, and the nurse, caretaker lady, were all in there. And the morning where you have to figure out, where am I? What do we do? Oh, that's right. Oh, yeah.

Mother dead. Yeah. Evidently, while we were sleeping, we were sleeping on two couches in the living room and she had a hospital bed in a small room yeah not much bigger than this and the emts or the morgue guys had come in and gone directly to bingo to lift her and betty's going no it's her dead yeah and they were mortified and humiliated well that's like this sounds like a brutally honest uh dark and and sweet somehow uh fucking book doug and it's a hell of a story and i i wish you the the best of luck with it it deserves to be uh to be read by me and i will do that and by everyone else as

well thanks and i wish you it's doing pretty good yeah yeah it's great that's great how do you know uh because this stupid stupid guy from decapo called me up and he said wow you just see your amazon sales ranking and i go i didn't know to look for it and now i can't not yeah now you're like just know that that changes hourly yeah yeah and also based on if someone buys three books in in 10 minutes you could go i'm not diminishing well that's why he called me because he was like i've never had a book rank this high well it turns out it was just after we put out our mailing list on my website right and he was yes right so it was at 57 of all books he goes

I've never had any Hitchens hit 90 and that was my best ever oh that's hilarious and then I had to go wow it's gonna be a huge hit and then I watched

next hour it's 78 next hour it's 150 I'm just losing all my self esteem I'm actually

excited to read it because I have a lot of respect for you I think you're funny and it because I have a lot of respect for you. I think you're funny and it's always good to talk to you. Thanks for having me on. Is this the seat the president sat in? That's it.

Does everyone ask that? Yeah, eventually. Does every guest you've had since suck? There you go. I thought I had the president. No, man. Neil Young's great, but the president. No, but the funny thing

was is like in my mind i knew having talked to politicians before like you know i i was honored and it was an amazing event but i you know i knew that the the conversation you know it wasn't gonna he wasn't gonna start crying or anything yeah so people are like well what are you gonna do now and i'm like i don't know we got rich voss you know coming i want to hear that one that's a good episode listen to that i will all right thanks man all right stan hopes digging up mother is available wherever you get those books. All right? And it's a seriously, probably the most disturbing and dark memoir ever written by a comic in a very specific way. And speaking of books, the very funny writer Amber Tozer, also a stand-up, has a book out now. It's called Sober Stick Figure, a memoir.

Amber will be on a WTF in the near future, so I wanted to let you know that you can get her book now because I like her. I like Amber Tozer. Now, coming up here, we've got Joe Wong. Now, Joe Wong I'd heard about in Boston, but Joe's story seemed very interesting to me, to actually do Stand Up in China and to tell me about China.

Like they're just there's like I don't I don't know a lot about the world. So I'm always excited when I have a guest who is able and basically tell me about the comedy scene, you know, on mainland China. I got to get out, man. I got to travel. I got to travel. I've got to stop being afraid. I got to figure it out. I got to do it.

But I think I'd like to go to Poland. I'd like to go to Russia. I think I'd like to see Germany. I'd like to see those parts, the more kind of abrasive, sausagey areas. I'll try to travel. All right, I'm going to do it. And I don't know why I'm saying that like you've defied me to do it. But let's go now to my conversation with Joe Wong. I actually did comedy in Beijing and Hong Kong. Yeah. For expats. Oh, I see.

I didn't have a translator or anything, but it was like... Expats are nice, though. They really appreciate comedy. Yeah, they're like, oh, thank God. I'd never been there to China. And it was like going... I mean, it was an entirely other different world oh yeah beijing isn't it's insane isn't it or is it my making 24 million people oh my god yeah

and then not to be like weird but like there seems to be a lot of different type of hand-driven vehicles oh yeah oh yeah that's why i still don't have a car in Beijing. I drive everywhere in the United States, but once I'm in Beijing, I was like, I can't say the fuck word here. Yeah, you can. Yeah, you can. Oh, okay. Yeah. I was like, I'm not going to get a car. I'm going to run over somebody for sure at the minute. There's so many people there. So many people and so many different types of bicycles and weird kind of like, I was like, this is insane. And it was hard to breathe a little bit.

Well, it's a lot worse now. Really? You know, I didn't see the sun for like two weeks before I came to LA. Really? Yeah, once I got in LA, I was like, wow, it's so clear. And then we were jet lagged.

We got up like two o'clock in the morning. The whole family packed into a car and we drove all the way to Vegas. For what? We just wanted to see the open space in the desert in the morning. The whole family packed into a car and we drove all the way to Vegas. For what? We just wanted to see the open space in the desert and the sunrise.

And then I met a writer friend of mine, you know, Chuck Sklar. I know Chuck. I started with Chuck. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah.

You can ask him, you know, we were hanging out and I started to take pictures of the sky. He was like, Joe, what are you taking a picture of?'m like just the sky i want to have it as evidence that there is a sky but uh yeah i i found it pretty fascinating you know my experience because it i always feel like as an american i feel like i'm relatively open-minded

but like i don't know if i would travel to china if i didn't get the opportunity to go there yeah it's a long right it's a long flight but like you go i went i saw you know the forbidden city i saw a tiananmen square and i went to the wall and it's fucking fascinating i mean it like and then like and then you start to think like this is really the biggest and oldest culture in the world yeah existing in the world and i don't fucking know anything about it yeah do you not really because i lived in beijing for five years you know i stayed there for three years before i came to the U.S. back in 1994. And then now I'm in Beijing for two more years. I have never gone there by myself. It's always, oh, a friend is coming over.

They want to see the Forbidden City. Oh, right, for those things. Yeah. And for a while, there's a Starbucks in the middle of Forbidden City. Oh, really? Yeah. Just like the emperor wanted. I mean, the Chinese are okay with it, but all the Westerners got upset you know they're like

they came all the way here to see us we're so Starbucks that's hilarious yeah so you like the last time I tried to uh to talk to you I I knew you were in Boston now like let's go let's go through the life because you know quite honestly and and, and to my own fault, for me, it becomes sort of how even in comedy, you know, communities get insulated. You know, there's like, there must be a lot of Chinese comics that I don't know. You know, there's a lot of every kind of comics that you have your own and there's you have your own career that is not you know mainstream american comedy yeah yeah so it's it's hard for me to know it's like i don't how did i know that guy he's got a tv show in china yeah exactly but you were but you were an american comic and you are an american comic yeah i i was on the letterman show for a time yeah yeah

i remember i saw one of those show yeah and also hosted the radio and tv correspondence dinner you did the big one oh yeah 2010 oh yeah how was that it was great you know the obama didn't show up but then uh joe biden was there so what do you mean obama didn't show up what was he doing oh he was uh he was doing some uh health care thing during the time yeah yeah so two weeks before the the show there my called me, hey, Obama's not coming. Did you say like, well, that's bullshit. He would have come if Will Ferrell was doing it again. Yeah, I know.

Did you have that feeling? A little bit. Is it because I'm Asian? Yeah. But where did it start? Were you born in China? Yeah, I was born in China and then came to the US when I was 24. But where did it start? Were you born in China? Yeah, I was born in China and then came to the US

when I was 24. Like where in China? Northeast part of China, close to North Korea. Do you have family there? Oh yeah, I still have family there. What's the part called?

It's called Jilin province. Uh-huh. Yeah. And is that like a big province? It's a tiny province. Oh, it's a small town. Oh, it's a small town? Yeah? Like what's the tiny province? What's the town? Oh, it's a small town. Yeah. And what's the industry there? What goes on there? Oh, it's basically corn, um, and lumber, coal, that kind of thing. Uh-huh. And, and growing up,

like how much time did you spend? You grew up in China till you were 24. Yeah. And is it, see the thing that I noticed when I was there briefly in my dumb American observations were, You grew up in China until you were 24? Yeah. And is it... See, the thing that I noticed when I was there briefly in my dumb American observations were I don't see anything familiar here. And there's really not much effort made to make me feel comfortable at all. Oh, really?

I'm surprised. I go there, I see McDonald's. But that's it. But that's it. But that's it. Exactly. I'm looking at the landscape of Beijing, the city's landscape, and I'm like, there i was i see mcdonald's but that's it but that's it yeah that's it exactly the only like i'm looking at the landscape of beijing the city's landscape and i'm like oh that's a kfc bucket yeah

exactly i recognize that yeah but like anything else there's no there's no translation they're like transportation it's not like in english too oh yeah and i imagine it's because there's not a big tourist industry yeah that's back in 2002. Right. Starting from 2008 after the Olympics, there are English signs everywhere. Oh, really? Yeah, but then they messed it up in a big way. You know, like the Department of Proctology. They call it

the Department of Intestines and Anuses. Is that true? That's true. They had a big sign there for a while. They realized, oh, this is not right. It was a big sign? Yeah. There are a lot of those. It's like slippery move that. They will translate that into please slip carefully or something. That's interesting because I guess I don't have any sense of how the Chinese language works,

but that just must be someone's most straightforward translation. Exactly. Or they did it out of some kind of program. Right, right. Oh, we got to put English signs for foreigners. They didn't really put much thought into it, like get a guy working on this. Oh, no. Yeah, there's still a little checking.

They saw some English and then they just put it up there. Well, growing up in that type of government, I mean, you know, what was, did you feel, I mean, I don't know, what was your parents' business? How did you grow up? Did you grow up like, you know, poor or like? It's kind of poor. Yeah. But our family was in a countryside, right?

But my family is still better off than my neighbor. I still remember going to my neighbor's house as probably five, six-year-old when I was. And I go there, there's no electricity. It's in the winter. It was really cold. No electricity. And the whole room was cold.

The kid was eating raw potato for lunch. The kid was. Yeah. And I was like, potato for lunch. The kid was. Yeah. And I was like, wow, this family is great. You know, his parents will allow him to do this.

Eat a raw potato. Yeah. Yeah. When I was a kid, I didn't understand it because everybody was poor, but that family was even poorer than us. Yeah. But at the time,

so wow, this kid has a lot of freedom. Right. Well, that's always, I guess the question that, you know, I, you know, that maybe I'll speak always, I guess, the question that, you know, that maybe I'll speak for some Americans,

is like, what is the quality of life in terms of that sense of freedom? Because I remember when I was there, there was some activity in Tiananmen Square. You know, they corralled a bunch of Falun Gong protesters. Like, and it just sort of happened. Like, and it happened very quickly. There's just some trucks pulled up, put these people in them,

and drove away. But were you aware that you were living in that type of oppression? Growing up, you know, I was educated to grow up to be a communist. You know, every kid is. We're the inheritors of the communist endeavor or whatever. Endeavor.

That's a good word for it. So when you're like a little kid, there's pictures of Chairman Mao. Oh, yeah. In the house. Yeah. In the house. Every house has a few. And I remember one woman made a comment.

She was like, you know, it's weird. I just feel Mao's eyes are following me even when I'm using the bathroom. Yeah. And then she got arrested. Really? Yeah.

She said that publicly? Yeah. Maybe she's, you know, blabbed it out. But not on TV or anything? No. Maybe to a neighbor

and the neighbor said something? Yeah. Did that happen? Oh, yeah. It happens in the past a lot. Then where you get ratted out? Yeah. Yeah. But now things are slightly better. So, yeah. It happens in the past a lot. Then where you get ratted out? Yeah, yeah.

But now things are slightly better. So, right. But they must have been changing a bit throughout your childhood. I mean, because like how old are you? I'm 45. Oh, so when you were a kid, Mao was still alive. Maybe for a couple years, right? Yeah, he died when I was six. Wow.

So, do you have memories of... That's the first time I saw TV, television, because I didn't grow up with television. And then when Mao died, the whole school organized us to go to this huge hall to watch his funeral. Really? That's the first time I saw television.

No kidding. Yeah, I'm not kidding. How old were you, six? Six, yeah. So no TVs in the houses? No, no. What was the entertainment? Oh, nothing.

A lot of times I was standing under a telephone post and there's a speaker mounted on the post and there's some songs or there's some Chinese cross talk which is kind of like vaudeville comedy. Oh, really? on the post. And there's some songs or there's some, you know, cross, Chinese cross talk, which is kind of like vaudeville comedy. Oh, really?

Yeah. I would stand under a telephone post and listen to some entertainment. In town or on the corner? Where was the

television post? Oh, just on the road. And it just blare out at weird times? Yeah, yeah. Everybody can hear it.

The whole village or whatever can hear it. And that's the entertainment? That's the entertainment. Oh my god. Yeah. And then every day we will hear this weather report. Yeah. And not just the temperature. Like would it wake you up? No, it's

during the day. Okay. Yeah. So there wasn't sort of like out of nowhere you just hear, wake up! No, no. No, just basically maybe sometime in the afternoon they will broadcast some stuff it was scheduled like every schedule yeah yeah so you'd get weather reports weather reports crosstalk crosstalk some songs and news songs like um what kind of songs oh it's you know it's the love for the country the love for for the party. Anthems. Anthems, yeah. No kidding.

And that was when you were like younger than 10? Yeah, a lot younger than 10. So after 1978, 79, China starts to open up. Yeah. And we can gradually listen to foreign radio stations. Because before that, if you listen to a foreign radio station, you can get reported and arrested. No kidding. Yeah. And then after that, if you listen to a foreign radio station and you can get reported and arrested. No kidding.

Yeah, and then after that, you know, I started to, I remember the first American song I heard is Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Really? Yeah, Cyndi Lauper. I still have a very fond memory of it. Tell me about this crosstalk though because I imagine, you I imagine having performed in America and having the root of...

I talk to a lot of comedians, and we all have an experience of what comedy is and what is funny. And I have absolutely no sense at all of what... If you went to an entertainment, not necessarily a comedy show, because they didn't have stand-up comedy then, or you were sort of like you wanted, all cultures have some sort of, you know, clowning or comedy or something. Yeah. But what was crosstalk?

What's the structure of it? It's basically two guys on stage. One being a funny guy. The other one is basically he he is the audience so I got a straight man of his sort yes we met for sword and it's a safer form of art you know it's like stand-up comedian on stage you tell the joke right bombs it's all on you sure okay if two guys on stage, if a joke bombs, the other guy can say, oh, well. Right, right.

They didn't take that way. Yeah, exactly. So he represents the audience in a way. He's like sort of a middleman. That is sort of a straight man in kind of a pure sense. Yeah. Where he'd set up the joke, and then if the audience doesn't laugh, then he can say like, well, I guess we didn't like that one.

Yeah, exactly. And what were the topics? Oh, they usually tell a long story in 20 minutes. One story. One story. It's a completely made-up story. Everybody knows it's fake, but they kind of go along with it. And the audience are different, too.

Like, in America, stand-up comedy is based, in a sense, it's a way to sell liquor in a, in a, on a club level. Yeah. Yeah. But in China,

they usually do this in a tea house. People drink tea, you know, and eat sunflower seeds. The whole family could be sitting at a table. Family entertainment.

Yeah. Some food maybe or just sunflower seeds? Some sunflower seeds, you know, some peanuts. That's a snack. No wings. No wings. Sunflower seeds, you know, some peanuts. That's a snack. No wings.

No wings. No hot wings. Yeah. And what was the other, like, where, like, I'm trying to get a sense culturally,

like, what you would do as a family, you know, to sort of build your brain out around entertainment. I mean, were there, there was obviously movies.

Yeah. Oh, movies are huge in China. It's just like. But when you were a kid, there was obviously movies. Yeah, or movies huge in China. It's just like... But when you were a kid, there were Chinese movies, all Chinese movies. All Chinese movies.

It's a lot of propaganda movies. With a theme. Yeah, with a theme. But then later on, they opened it up. A lot of Japanese, Indian movies came out. Before American movies. Before American movies. Now in recent years,

American movies became huge. All the blockbuster movies. Yeah, the American film industry is very happy about that. Oh, yeah, I know. A lot of writers and producers were in China. Oh, yeah? Trying to get a handle on it? Exactly.

There's a lot of people here. A lot of ticket sales. I know. The growth is like 30%, 40, 50% a year. You know, just every year it grows so fast. I know we say billion,

but there's got to be more than a billion. It's probably 1.4 billion people. It blows my mind. I know. So when you were a kid, the propaganda, like what essentially

were you taught in terms of the rest of the world? Oh, yeah. This is America. Americans are living in a hellish place. The capitalists are using the whips to get them to work harder.

Oh, really? Yeah. And then I came to America and found out that was true, actually. I'm just kidding. We're all being whipped here by ourselves. That's the sad part about it that's the part they didn't tell you it's like the people that were doing the whipping were us oh yeah we have

to get more we have to get more if you don't get more we're gonna move the business to china yeah so you were taught to distrust and and maybe you know dislike or judge America. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But that's the, you know, Russia does it, China does it, North Korea does it, you know, but then after...

And you were on the border of North Korea? Yeah, yeah. I've been to North Korea once. Yeah. Did you do a show? No. Tough crowd.

Yeah, I know. The opener got shot. Yeah, but there. The opener got shot. Yeah, but there's a... Actually, there's a social media site in China. It's dedicated to Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader. Every day they have pictures of him. They make fun of him, you know, because he looks so weird and funny, you know?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. And that's in China, that site? That's in China, yeah. Your family's, you know? Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. And that's in China that that's in China? That's in China, yeah. Your family's Chinese, though? Yeah, yeah. And do you have family in Korea as well, or you don't know? Yeah, we lost touch a long time ago.

Probably three generations ago. You know, I may, my ancestors may have lived there. Yeah. You know. Right. I grew up in China. So what, how did you find a way out was it just a matter of the culture changing and there being opportunities and and

a sort of there was when you how did it come to pass that you know you were able to leave both mentally and physically oh physically i have to take a lot of tests. You know, I took the TOEFL exam, the GRE. I went to graduate school in America. Yeah. So, like, how does that happen, though? Like, so you go to school. What were you studying when you were a kid?

I mean, how does education work in China? Yeah, you basically go through, you know, elementary school, high school and stuff. And then you have to decide a major before you graduate. Before you graduate high school. Yeah. To study in college, you mean. Exactly.

Yeah. So there's a college entrance exam. What'd you study? What'd you decide? Biochemistry. Oh, so you're a smart guy. Well, my dad wanted me to study biochemistry. He said, that's the science of future.

You do that. Really? Yeah. What'd your dad do? He's biochemistry. He said, that's the science of future. You do that. Really? Yeah. What did your dad do? He's an engineer. Okay. Yeah. And he worked for, obviously, the government.

Yeah. He works for a steel factory. That is owned by the government. Yeah. Of course, everything's owned by the government at the time. Yeah. He worked in the same factory for like 30 years or something. Uh-huh.

Making steel. Yeah. Mm-hmm. for like 30 years or something. Making steel. Yeah. And they even have a sleigh to look for iron ore in the mountains because the technology was so backwards

back in the 70s and 60s. They have a what? A sleigh? Yeah. People drag a sleigh and walk all over the mountains. Just looking for ore? Yeah.

Wow. I know. It was so cold in the winter. Sometimes they had to sleep in the woods. Did you ever get the sense that the idea of communism and the sort of, you know, the mission of the national agenda didn't really care about people? Like, you know, because it seems like, you know, when you tell a story like that, and you sort of, when I hear about that,

when you hear about, you know, factory conditions and stuff, that it must feel like human life is a little bit disposable. Yeah, but that's in the era, you know. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a lot of people, you know, just suffer and die, and that's okay. But now, you know, it's unacceptable. But at the time time it's normal you

know everybody lives like that right it's just the way it is yeah yeah but a lot of people kind of uh uh has a lot of uh they became nostalgic about in the air about the era or when when things start to open up what before things start to open up. Because everybody's the same. Everybody wears the same clothes. Right. People knew there was not a lot of decision making. Exactly. It's like there was probably less competition.

Yeah, exactly. But right now, you live in a shabby little hut and your neighbor has a Mercedes. Right now, it's like this. Right. So, yeah. See what capitalism does? now, it's like this. Right. So, yeah. See what capitalism does? Yeah, I know. Exactly.

That's exactly what it is. Exactly. It ruined everything. Yeah, it's hard to keep up with the Junzes anymore. Now I got to buy clothes. I know. It was so much easier when the government told us what to wear. Exactly, yeah.

Well, that's kind of fascinating. So by the time you finish high school, you decide on bioengineering. Now, how many sisters and brothers do you have? I have one younger brother. Uh-huh. Yeah. And was all that stuff really true about population control in China? Oh, yeah, yeah.

You could only have how many kids? You could only have one child. The policy just changed last year. So how... Now you can have two and they encourage you to have two kids now.

So you have a very young brother? Yeah. Yeah, because we're ethnic Koreans so we're allowed to have two kids. Oh, you're ethnic Koreans.

What does that mean? My ancestors came from Korea. So you got in under in a loophole. Yeah oh yeah exactly you could have a brother in a loophole exactly but most families only have one child yeah bizarre right i know a lot of only children i wonder if they have ever done a study on you know i guess if you really want to know you know the psychological realities of an only child you can go to china yeah exactly yeah so that's weird so like all of your friends were probably like you know they just didn't have any

brother or sister to influence them or i can't yeah yeah i know but you have cousins and stuff again oh that's right bigger families yeah bigger families is it in the family units pretty important in terms of oh he's a's very important. Oh, yeah? Yeah. So that's how it's structured. So, like, you know, you have a large family? I have a fairly large family, but then they kind of got scattered around the country, or even the world now.

Yeah, yeah. All right, so how do you get from high school to, you know, American graduate school? Oh, then I went to college in China. For bio? For biochemistry. They have to take all these exams, English exams, and memorize the Oxford Dictionary like eight times. Really?

Yeah, I have to just, because the GRE has so much, you know, archaic words. For the American exam? Yeah, for the American exam. Okay, so you do undergraduate in China. Mm-hmm. And, but how are you afforded the opportunity to go to school in America? How does that happen? Oh, you, I just do, I just, you know, prepare a lot and then.

Oh, so you can leave. Yeah, I can leave. Yeah. Yeah. So after the 80s, you can leave. So there's a big wave of Chinese students coming to America to study. Right. Yeah, back in the 80s and 90s.

So you were memorizing the Oxford Dictionary just for the GREs? Just for the GREs. And that kind of screwed me up a little bit. Why? Because for some reason, I thought every American knows every word in that dictionary. And I came here, I would talk to people like, wow. You're so wrong. That was so wrong.

I was like, man, today I feel lugubrious. People say, what the hell are you talking about, Joe? This is what happened when you went to graduate school? Oh, yeah, yeah. And some people just wouldn't hang out with me. I was like, why? He said, you're pretentious or something. I'm just, you know.

You're just trying to integrate. Yeah, exactly. But I thought everybody knows these words. It's all words in the dictionary to me. The Oxford Dictionary, nonetheless. Not even Webster's. I know. The big one.

The two-volume one. So where did you end up? I went to Rice University in Texas. That's a good school. Yeah, yeah. To do graduate work in biochemistry. Yeah. And did you finish? Oh, yeah, I Texas. That's a good school. Yeah, yeah. To do graduate work in biochemistry. Yeah. And did you finish?

Oh, yeah, I finished. I got a degree there. And what was it like, that transition of living in Texas, outside of alienating people with the word lugubrious? Lugubrious, yeah. What were your immediate feelings about being in America culturally? Oh, it was painful. I still remember to this day.

I looked into the mirror and said to myself, oh, I swear to God, I will never go to another culture and try to adapt. It was so painful. How so? Because I can't communicate with people. I know a lot of words. But then when I say something,

people don't quite understand because because of the heavy accent right and I don't understand what other people's are talking because Americans they joke around yeah and we're telling a joke I can understand every word in it but you can't understand the tone I don't understand the tone and more importantly I don't understand why it's funny you were right everybody else is laughing I was, what the hell is going on here? Was it like sarcasm? Yeah, sarcasm is a big thing because I always take it literally.

Yeah, right. So you were the guy not laughing. Yeah. For example, I work in the lab. If I borrow some equipment, I can't even use this. They're like, oh, it's $20. I said, okay, I'll give you $20. But they're like, no, no, we're just kidding.

So you felt you were very vulnerable because it was like you couldn't, this sort of cultural norm of how people communicate with comedy was lost on you. Yeah, yeah. So you were made not on purpose but to feel like an idiot all the time. Yeah, feel like an idiot. And then when I tried to learn from that,

then people see me as a serious person. Right. So then when I tried to tell a joke, they took it seriously. You know, like once another person tried to borrow some stuff from me, I said, oh, it's 20 bucks. Yeah. And then my landmate landmate got really mad she was like joe you can't charge money for that i was like i was trying to be sarcastic yeah i know but then people thought i i'm always serious well that's a weird thing in that you know because i i can only speak for myself but it it is a completely different cultural language.

Yeah. You know, even though, you know, we're all people and I understand that. But I wasn't encultured. I didn't have an experience with Asian people, you know, in my life growing up. It always seemed like, you know, weird. Oh. You know, not bad, but like, I don't know what's happening. And when I went to China, I was like, not only, again, not only do't know what's happening and when i went to china i was like not only again

not only do you know it's happening but clearly whatever's happening here has been happening a lot longer than anything else that i understand so who am i to judge but i but i felt you know i felt stupid you know what i mean yeah and then you get to that point where it's sort of like well what what what what do they like what what what do they think is funny? You know? Yeah. And I have to assume that the learning process, when were you able to, and I used they, I was being sarcastic in a way, but that's the, it's not necessarily racist,

but it is just kind of naive. You know, like, how the fuck am I supposed to know? Yeah. You know, see, like, because it seems to me that your experience, not only until you started to relax culturally into American ways

were you sort of seen as a whole person. Exactly. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And what bothers me is

my experience in America, you know, it's only the first three months of experience could be understood by people in China. What do you mean?

Because after that, you know, when you… Oh, you're like an American. Yeah, yeah. You dig into the American culture, they don't understand it anymore, you know. So now you're a stranger in both lands. Oh, yeah, I know. That's, yeah, in a way, I kind of bother. I feel like there are probably only five or six people in the world who understand what I'm going through, you know?

For those three months. Yeah, I know. It's like, I did comedy here in the United States. Well, let's get to that. So you get the degree. And, you know, over time, I imagine what happened. You did have a few American friends. Yeah. And through that, you know, because, well, I think that is really the thing is that, you know,

we make an assumption that people who come from an Asian background who are not Americanized in any way, that that's their personality. Oh, yeah. But it's really we don't have access to it. Oh, yeah. Do you know what I mean? We're making assumptions based on the's really we don't have access to it. Oh, yeah. Do you know what I mean? We're making assumptions based on the fact that we can't communicate emotionally. Yeah, yeah.

I totally get this. You see an Asian person, you feel, oh, he's from another country. Or just that, like, how do you make him laugh? How do you know if he's sad? Yeah, I know. Is he understanding this properly? Yeah, there's not a lot of facial expressions in Chinese culture. Is that true? Yeah, I know. Is he understanding this properly? There's not a lot of facial expressions in Chinese culture. Is that true?

Yeah, yeah. So a lot of time I have to explain, look, this is my sad face. This is my happy face. But it's the same. Is that really true, though? Kind of. But in China, it's subtler. Right, right.

When we're talking, you hand gestures you know you're making faces but in china it's very rare right so it's it's about um you know emotional visibility in a way yeah exactly that like you know americans you know whether they're um you know repressed or or or cagey or angry that the the cultural dialogue is sort of like i need this i need that and i'm this guy and here i am and make a lot of noises yeah kind of yeah but the chinese culture is opposite you know if a chinese person got into trouble the first thing they think is oh i'm gonna go to the woods well go into the woods and see some nature you know and feel good about what kind of trouble would drive someone to the woods you mean oh if somebody got an emotional difficulty yeah yeah i gotta get out and be alone exactly you know oh you know

is there a relationship troubles or you know money troubles or you know career wise they would go into a place where there's good scenery you know they would that's how they oh really that's how they have their um that's how they deal with their problems right right right that's how they have their... That's how they deal with their problems. They go... Right, right, right. That's how they process. Exactly. But where does that come from, do you think?

Growing up in communist China, how did they deal with interpersonal problems? Was it just forbidden to have relationship problems? I imagine there were laws, but was there some, you know, way to, did they somehow address sort of like,

if you're sad, you know, go do this? Or was it? Not really. If you're sad, you know, I had,

people very rarely talk about emotion. Right. During that time. It's capitalistic. You know, it's bourgeois. You know,

it's just bad. Right. Right. You just suck it up. You know, it's bourgeois. You know, it's just bad. Right, right. You just suck it up. You just suck it up. You know, like a lot of marriages were arranged by the government or by the party. Yeah. Oh, you two are single. You know, you get married.

Right. And that's it. That's it. Yeah. So when did you start to feel, you said three months, that you became sort of corrupted in a way, maybe pleasantly so. So you spend the first trip back to China after going to graduate school. I mean, obviously you speak Chinese, but what were the noticeable differences? What did your family and friends in China say?

Like, you're different. You do this now. What was it? You laugh. What was it? You laugh. What was it? Yeah, well, it's more like, it's hard to say. Like, you know, when you go to a restaurant in China, you know, it's very normal to split the bills in America. But in China, especially the part where I was from, it was really frowned upon.

The proper way of doing it is we have a meal together, and afterwards, we fight for the bill. You fight for it. Yeah, exactly. It's still this way. How does that fight unfold? It doesn't get violent, do you do it? Sometimes it gets violent.

This is a real true news, true story. Last year, two guys fought over a bill, and one guy broke the other guy's arm. And this other guy got arrested. The guy who broke the arm? Yeah, yeah. Just because they're fighting for the bill. You know, I'll pay for it. No, no, no.

I got to pay for this. What is it, a pride thing or not? Yeah, it's a pride. And also, I feel better if I'm paying for the whole thing because it, a pride thing or not? Yeah, it's a pride and also just like, I feel better if I'm paying for the whole thing because we're friends.

Uh-huh. They're probably not friends anymore. Yeah, no, once in jail, the other, arms broken.

And fed. Yeah, exactly. Free meal and a broken arm. Yeah. But he's not in jail. So,

when does, when does comedy in the form of stand-ups you know sort of uh get on your radar when how does that happen well this probably after i graduated from college and then i started working a friend of mine took me to a comedy club in houston i think it's the laugh stop Stop. Yeah, I remember that place. Yeah, yeah. And the first guy I saw was Emo Phillips. Oh, yeah?

Yeah, and he didn't even do this weird hair thing. Oh, he's back to that now. Oh, really? Yeah. But there was a period where he was wearing glasses and he had the regular haircut. Yeah, yeah. That period.

He basically sat on a stool and told jokes and it was great, you know. But then, of course, I only could have the jokes. Well, he's hard to understand anyways, in a way. But, like, I would imagine as far as tone goes, you know, he's sort of a surrealist. So I would imagine, actually, he'd probably be easier to understand

than some other comics. Yeah. Because it's like poetry. It's very much, there's a logic to it. Yeah, there's logic and every word means something. You just grab onto it, but still. And you were laughing?

Yeah, I understood probably half the jokes. But then I still was really impressed. I was like, wow, I should watch this more. So I started to watch more stand-up comedy. Who connected with you oh then later on it's just more tv stuff you know and then so when you came here and you were watching american television for the first time it must have been sort of like oh my god like did you always like when you first came to graduate school did you spend a weekend just watching tv oh we watch a lot of TV. In the beginning from PBS.

Because PBS, you know, they speak relatively slower. And then they, I don't know, they pronounce every word. They use really formal English language. So that's something I can understand. Right. Then I watch Leno or Letterman.

Too fast? Yeah, it's too fast. I don't know what those celebrities are. I don't or Letterman. I just... Too fast? Yeah, it's too fast. I don't know what those celebrities are. You know, I don't get the references. Why are they laughing? Yeah, why are they laughing? You know? But did you find,

was there a sense, like, could you... Because, like, in the conversation culturally about China and about the United States, there's this idea that, you know, freedom versus non-freedom.

Yeah. Did you have a sense of that when you got here? Did you, were idea that, of, you know, freedom versus non-freedom. Yeah. Did you have a sense of that when you got here? Did you, were you kind of like, you know, is this, you know, does this, is this what freedom feels like? Yeah, you do feel that, you know, I just, when I first got here, I feel that, oh, there's nobody watching over me, you know, like. No pictures of Mao. No pictures of Mao, that's for sure.

Yeah. A lot of pictures of Washington. Sure. On the money. On the money. Yeah. It seems like the only pictures their leaders are on is the money exactly this makes perfect sense yeah yeah like what were some of the things that you did sort of like i can do this now uh that i and i couldn't do this was it just a matter of of people not you know

watching you in the same way or were there things you wanted to eat? Yeah. Watching is one thing, and I don't have to worry too much about what I say in public. That's another thing. Also, there's strip clubs. I'm not even kidding.

I came to this country, and I was already married to my wife. Yeah. But then still we have friends who got married and I kind of, you know, I'm a married guy. Maybe I shouldn't go to a strip club. Right. My wife's like, that's okay. You know, I'm going with the girls anyway. Oh, really?

She's going to go to the male strip club? Yeah, exactly. And so you were married when you got here? Yeah. And did you talk about the experience when you got home, the two of you? Oh, yeah, yeah. We checked some notes. I guess that's okay.

It just depends on how often you went. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. If some guy's married, it's probably okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was a pretty, I guess that's an amazing experience. Do they have strip clubs in China now? No, they don't. Well, there's probably okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was a pretty, I guess that's an amazing experience. Do they have strip clubs in China now? No, they don't. Well, there's underground stuff.

Oh, yeah. There's some things are crazy. You know, they even have strippers in funerals now. In China? Yeah, just really a remote part of China. Nobody quite knows where it is. You know, it happens, I guess.

And then somebody made a video of it and then put it on social network. That's how people knew. Wow, then they do this. At a funeral. Yeah, I know. It's an interesting approach. I guess that's one way to handle the grieving process. So you see Emo Phillips.

You're watching stuff on TV. What other comics did you like at that time? Oh, I loved Woody Allen. Yeah. Yeah, because I always wanted to learn English. Yeah. I joined an English class, and the teacher just said to me, hey, you seem to like writing humor, humor stuff.

So she gave me a book of short novels and essays. Without feathers, Or which one? No, it's a kind of compilation of a lot of different authors. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, Woody Allen was one of them. Oh, I see. Not a Woody Allen book. No.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and then later on I bought Without Feathers. Side effects. Side effects, yeah. And so that taught you sort of the sensibility of writing comedy. Yeah, yeah. And then I watched George Carlin. Later stuff?

Yeah. When I watched him, I was like, why should I do comedy? This guy did everything. It's kind of discouraging in a way. But I figured, you know, I have to do this. Really? You were possessed by it? You were like, I have to do this. Really? You were possessed by it. You were like, I have to do this.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting to me that, you know, to come from a culture where, you know, speaking publicly was, you know, possibly punishable, that you were like, I'm going to not only speak publicly, but I'm going to do it in front of a lot of people. Yeah, I guess one motivation is, I have i have of course everybody has different motivations yeah one thing is uh sometimes i would think of think of something funny yeah and say it among my friends i got no laughs but i always have a feeling that if i say this on stage it could be funny well that's that's the big leap from you know that that's the confidence that you can't really explain that it takes to be a comic. Yeah.

I don't know why I got that feeling, but I just feel that I need to say something in public, even if it's at a street corner. I want to do it, you know. But the idea, that's an interesting thing, because, like, I knew guys, like, a lot of people assume that comedians are just naturally funny people in life. But I've known a lot of people that were, you know, socially awkward. Oh, I have anxiety. Right. Yeah. In real life.

But they get on stage and they have this confidence of like, you know, I know this is funny. Yeah. And sometimes it takes a while for them to figure it out up there. But I've known a lot of people that were sort of categorically in some ways you wouldn't think were funny. But they figured out how to be funny on stage yeah yeah and i'm not saying you weren't funny but yeah but the confidence required to to say like well i know this is funny you know fuck you guys you know you know what do you know and do it so how where'd you first go on uh that was back in 2002 in boston somerville oh i used to live in somerville

yeah it's a hannes but what how'd you get to boston oh from from graduate school yeah after graduated from school i got a job in texas and then that company went under uh-huh It's a small startup company. So this is something I didn't notice myself until then. I have this attachment to people. I don't even realize this. And then even people I don't like. Like what do you mean? What kind of attachment? I don't know. I just- You like- We work together. So we're friends. Yeah. I don't even probably I don't even like you you don't like me

but when you're leaving I feel really bad right so when the company is going under every week I'm seeing somebody off

it just oh getting fired yeah sad yeah so I decided to work for a bigger company that's more stable

so you wouldn't have to deal with the emotional pain of people leaving yeah and I try not to make friends at work. This is true. You're a sensitive guy. Yeah.

I just try not to make friends at work and just do my job and go home. That's my plan. So I moved to Boston and then I figured- To work for a bigger company. Yeah. To work for a bigger company. What were you in? Like research?

Research. Yeah. To work for a bigger company. Yeah, to work for a bigger company. What were you in, like research? Research, yeah. I worked for Sanofi Aventis, which is the second largest company, pharmaceutical company in the world. And then I went to a comedy writing class in Brooklyn. Brookline. Brookline, yeah, sure.

Who taught that? It's Tim McIntyre. He's a comedian. Yeah, he's a comedian, yes. So you take a class in stand-up writing or just- Just stand-up. Where I learned you need to have a set-up and a punchline. I didn't even know that before.

Right. Even after watching, you never really sort of deconstructed the joke. Oh, no. And then how to hold the mic, where to find comedy clubs. Oh, practical stuff. Exactly. It's really practical. And I made some friends, comedian friends,

and we'd go out. And you started doing mics. Yeah, open mics. And also we went to Greg Howell's barber shop in Malden to practice on Sundays. What is that? They had a show there?

No, there's not a show. It's just he runs this barber shop. And when- A comedian. Yeah, customers leave. We go in, he sweeps the hair off the floor. We set up a mic, which is quiet. And you just practice?

For each other? Yeah, for each other. And then we critique each other. But sometimes, you know, we're all new. It's really hard for us to critique each other. there's just three of you well they're probably five or six but the three of us are the hardcore guy and you do this like weekly yeah every week every Sunday like it was it wasn't a show it wasn't a show yeah we just just you know was that helpful helpful for a while but we did did this

for about three or four months and you discuss jokes yeah discuss say like that would work better if you did this and yeah exactly so that sort of engaged you in a collaborative process and in sort of understanding other people's point of view and comedy exactly well that's something i've never heard that before and i've talked to a lot of people really never heard that where a group of comics got together and, you know, regularly, you know, just did their acts for each other. Yeah, yeah. We did that for a while. And every week we heard, oh, these are new jokes.

They were the old jokes that didn't work. Why? So you would go on stage at open mics and you'd have jokes that were sort of like, I like this joke, but I can't get it to work. Yeah, yeah. Huh. So it's like a little writer's room. Yeah, yeah. But then that kind of tapered off,

and then we just kind of go out and do our own thing. So you were just doing open mics mostly? Yeah, yeah. And when did you do the comedy union or the comedy studio? Comedy studio, of course, yeah. And, you know. Jenkins. Sure.

And was most of your comedy at the beginning making light of the fact that you were Chinese? Yeah, yeah, a little bit. Then I try to stay away from purely ethnic jokes. I just feel that it's a little bit too easy for me to do that kind of jokes. A lot of the ethnic jokes are kind of hacky to me. So. Right. Yeah.

So I try to, you know, add more. Yeah. You got to start with that. Yeah. To get comfortable. Yeah, exactly. And then kind of build it out. Yeah.

But then I have to do it in the beginning because. Sure. There were so few Asian comics in Boston that I have to say something about the fact that I'm Asian and being on stage. So I later on figured out a great way of doing this. Yeah. Because there are a lot of Irish guys in Boston. Yes.

Yeah. Everybody before me goes on stage, hey, I'm Irish. Yeah. The audience cheers, you know. Right. Then I went on stage, I was like, fuck it. I'm just saying, hey, I'm Irish. They got a big laugh.

That's funny. And a lot of the comedy clubs in Boston are in a Chinese restaurant. Not just- Kowloon. Kowloon. That's a big place at Kowloon. I remember when that opened, buddy. Yeah.

That's like 400 people, man. Yeah, yeah. And before I go on stage, the host always introduced me like oh i met this next guy from the kitchen yeah right and then yeah and then the second a couple of comedians who did this and then one comedian finally just said to me oh gee i feel so bad i said why he said i saw other comedians introduce you that way yeah i just remember i used to introduce you that way too so they knew it was being yeah yeah. Yeah, but I didn't mind. It's all for laughs.

But there must have been a moment where the audience was like, really? Yeah, yeah. Once I was on my way to the stage, one audience even raised his glass. It was like, some iced tea, please. They really thought I work in the restaurant. And that must have been sort of a fairly gratifying feeling too, because even as a guy who has my sensibility, you know, working for those crowds, for, you know, Boston sort of townie crowds, primarily white, primarily a lot of Irish, but there's definitely a cultural

thing there. It's unique to New England and Boston. Oh, yeah. And they're not easy. Oh, yeah. And they're not easy. Yeah, not easy and very in your face. Yeah. So it must have been pretty gratifying to figure out how to perform

for those people. Yeah, yeah. And actually, I didn't appreciate that until I started to do road gigs. When I went to San Francisco or Denver. Where you're like, this is easy. Yeah. But sometimes it turns people off. It's like, oh, that's a little bit too mean.

I was like, oh. People are actually nice here. I don't have to defend myself here. Yeah. So you start working the road. What was your break to sort of like start? Would you start as a middle or a feature? Or did you headline right away?

No, no, I started from, you know, opener, host, and I still remember once I was the opener

and then the middler was late. Oh, that's it. That's where you learn how to do time. I know. The guy was like,

okay, you do half an hour. I'm like, I'm used to like 10 minutes I still remember I was on stage I'm watching looking at my watch

I was like okay 27 minutes my last joke where was that this was another another Chinese restaurant yeah

in Needham or somewhere oh really yeah you know why they do the Chinese restaurants is a lot of those bigger Chinese restaurants have those huge rooms.

Oh, yeah, exactly. It's like, you know, they build these like almost function halls. It's crazy. Yeah, that restaurant has two floors. Right. You know, they can all watch comedy, you know. And do you like, maybe this is insensitive, but I mean, when you do a Chinese restaurant, do you get feedback from the Chinese people there usually?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they will ask me, hey, did you go to a comedy school here? Oh, really? They really think there is a comedy school. I'm a student from a comedy school. What is it like to sort of engage with, you know, American Chinese who have been here for generations that probably don't even speak Chinese like I would imagine? Oh, yeah.

Well, I had an experience once the town of Quincy has a huge Chinese population oh it does yeah and then the mayoral candidate that year wanted to have a fundraiser so he invited me to this dim sum place yeah and the 300 people packed with the with you know basically Chinese people yeah yeah and he want me to do a do a set there so I went up on stage did about 45 minutes got no laughs except from this

white mayoral candidates family right and after my show the one guy came up to me and said can you speak Cantonese

I was like nobody told me they were Cantonese at all I did the whole set in English and I was just oh my god but could you no I don't speak Cantonese at all. I did a whole set in English.

Oh my God. But could you? No, I don't speak Cantonese either. What dialect do you speak? I speak Mandarin. Okay. So, you know, even if I know

that they're Cantonese, I still couldn't do it. But they didn't speak English at all? Yeah. He had a big idea, right? Yeah, I know. What a great idea.

Get the Chinese guy. Exactly. It's a big idea, right? Yeah, I know. What a great idea. Get the Chinese guy. Yeah, exactly. The different dialects. So to this day, I'm still really jealous of Russell Peters. Oh, yeah? You know, he does stand-up comedy in English here, and then he goes to India, and people speak English there too. Right, so he doesn't have to cross.

He doesn't have to switch languages. Well, it's interesting you bring him up. He's able to cross over. Not so much in the States, but I mean like globally with an audience of anybody of any ethnicity because he speaks to the ethnic experience, to the experience of not being American. He. And he's Canadian, but, you know, culturally, it's just sort of a fascinating thing because I know a lot of Chinese people like him, Indian people like him, just, you know, people of other ethnicity

than just this American experience. And he's a huge star. Yeah. Everywhere but here. Yeah. Yeah, I know, but, you know, jokes are jokes, especially in the United States. It's the same.

But when I perform in San Francisco, 80% of the audience are Chinese Americans or Asian Americans. But when I'm performing in Denver, 100% are white. Sure. Yeah. But I imagine there's some sort of a sense of pride and connection. Oh, yeah. And comfort that you would feel with an 80% Chinese audience. Well, to be honest, the first time I saw that many Asian faces in the crowd, I was nervous. Yeah. Because all the jokes were tested only in front of white and black Americans. Right.

And I just had no idea how the Asian and Americans would take it. And how'd they take it? They were really great. Oh, yeah? They were really supportive. You know, they were like, oh, hey, we have, you know,

somebody of our own. One of our own. Yeah, yeah. So I didn't have that feeling for the first, you know, seven or eight years doing comedy. Uh-huh.

Yeah. And now you headline, obviously. You've done, have you done specials? no i didn't do any specials not yet country yeah i hope i hope to do one and but how did the um the you know like you've done a few lettermans and ellen was a supporter and you know you built up a a bit of a following which is great now you know you've made a decision to to go back to China and work. How did that kind of happen?

It's interesting. I was trying to get a sitcom in America for three or four years. I worked with Letterman's production company. Worldwide Pants? Worldwide Pants. And we worked a bunch of different writers. Things just didn't work out. And in the meantime, I just noticed that a lot of American writers don't quite know the Asian experience.

So I wrote up my experience. And as soon as I finished writing, some Chinese publishers contacted me. They were like, hey, we want to publish a biography. Oh, yeah, in China. In China. I said, fine.

I just translated whatever I wrote in English to Chinese and got published there. And it was on a bestseller list. In China? Really? Yeah. Now, did you have a good publishing deal? Did you make money?

Yeah, I made some money. Oh, good. Yeah. And then I went there and made some TV appearances. For the book? For the book. It was really nerve-wracking.

You know, I was on national TV. The host was like, hey, you're a comedian, right? Tell us some jokes. In Chinese, though? In Chinese. But I've never performed in Chinese before. So I just stood there and translated my English jokes into Chinese. Hopefully, I had it.

On the spot? On the spot. It was the most... Did it spot? On the spot. It was, was the most, Did it work? Some of them worked. Some of, some of them didn't.

Just because they, they didn't understand. Well, yeah, it's just that the culture is so different. You know, they don't get a reference at all sometimes.

Right. But other jokes are fine. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. For example, I had a joke about, you know,

just, you know, car accidents. If I were to die in a car accident, I wanted to be with a collision truck, no, a cement truck. Yeah. That way, immediately after the dying, there's a statue of me. You know, it's a silly, silly joke. But then that works in China, too. Sure.

Because people there understand, oh, this cement truck, you know, this statue. Yeah, yeah. If you talk about other things, it's hard, you know, so. So that was the first, so on the spot, you're translating your jokes. Was the Chinese TV industry excited about you?

They're like, I think we, you know. Yeah, they were excited for a while to the extent that they offered me a show there. Yeah.

So that's what I'm doing right now. I'm hosting a weekly show. It's kind of a comedy slash investigative reporting. So I do some monologue in the beginning, and then I will lead into a topic. There's some undercover investigation, and then I will come on stage again.

But not with criminal things, just with what? Yeah, just like food safety. Oh, really? Yeah, that kind of thing different China than you grew up in oh yeah yeah and for a while

they were like oh your your topics are a little bit too conservative you need to be more brave you need to open up

oh this is great you're the guy don't blame us if it doesn't go well yeah we'll bail you out of jail maybe if we can. Yeah.

Is the show popular? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was the number one show on the network. It's not a big network. It was not the biggest network, but still, it's pretty decent. How many networks? Oh, there were, I don't know, 20, 30 different networks.

Yeah. So it's really wide open now. Yeah, exactly. Interesting. Yeah, the Chinese work really hard. It's like 24-7 holidays, especially the people working in the media. They're always trying to get some shows going.

Now, what do you feel is the... How does the government stay in control now? I mean, what is left of what you grew up in in terms of rules and restrictions and the fear that it put in people? Yeah, as long as you don't talk about politics, the party, the leaders, you're probably okay. Oh, really?

Yeah, so it's opened up by a lot. I think every country goes through this stuff. Even in America, it's democracy, it's freedom, but they say that back in the 50s in the sitcoms, the husband and wife can't walk into the same room after a scene. Sure. Just in case people would imagine something.

Right. No, every country, even the ones that are supposedly free certainly here and you know there's definitely a lot of things we don't know and there but but in terms of social rules you know those are are kind of wide open but there still is a a mystery to uh how power is maintained and and what's really happening yeah yeah you know what i mean and that's still a dangerous place for some people to go. But, you know, it does seem the weird thing about the Internet, though, is in terms of

transparency or what we assume is true or isn't true or investigative is like, you know, it's hard with the amount of information that's available to ever know what's true. Oh, yeah, exactly. That's a very interesting point. You think everything's out there, the truth should come out, but it doesn't all the time. And even if it's out there,

people are like, nah. Somebody made it up. It's a weird time. Yeah. And another interesting aspect is China blocked Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. Right, I remember that.

Yeah. So for these two and a half years, the only thing that reminds me of America is spam emails. Every once in a while, I got an email, hey, do you want to enlarge your penis in two weeks? I was like, oh, God, yeah, I need to do something. So nice to be in touch with America. Yeah, I know.

So now what brings you to L.A. now? Oh, vacation. And also, I'm meeting some friends here, you know, some writers and producers. And hopefully, I'm still hoping to get a show here going. Yeah, right. Is there a stand-up scene in China? Yeah, I can take some credit for the stand-up scene in China.

Yeah. When I got there back in 2013, there was one comedy club in Beijing and they have a show about a week or every month.

And so, Once a month? Yeah. Now there's about four or five different comedy clubs and Oh, really?

Yeah. There's a comedy show almost every day of the week. Oh, really? Yeah, there's a comedy show almost every day of the week. Oh, really? Yeah, so we're actually building it up. And is it all Chinese? Yeah, mostly Chinese. There's English open mic too. Uh-huh.

Yeah. And the Chinese, do you find outside of references that structurally the American style jokes work. Yes, especially with a young crowd. Right, who watches TV now. Yeah, who watches TV, who watches American sitcoms and talk shows on the Internet. Those are the people who actually like stand-up comedy.

Okay, so they know the style, but it's still in their language. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it works. Yeah, it works. It works great. You know, I did about 30,

40 shows in like thousand people theaters. Mm-hmm. You know, it's amazing the feeling. So you're a big star there. Yeah, I'm okay. Not huge,

but I did okay. But there's no bigger Chinese stand-up comic than you oh they're in china is there there are a few guys one guy was huge for a couple of years and then yeah i'm i'm i'm on top but yeah yeah but i'm the biggest is is there still anything left of like the cross-talk audience? Yeah, the cross-talk is still big. Yeah?

Yeah, so they coexist right now. That's interesting. It's like coexisting with vaudeville. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the tea house circuit is still there. The tea house circuit

is still there, but then the coffee circuit is still there too because the Chinese stand-up comedy is mostly done in coffee houses. But these coffee houses in China sell liquor as well uh-huh so it's it's pretty interesting it's fascinating yeah i would say like americans if you go to china you got to check out these bars and there's no age limit you know my i took my six-year-old son to a bar you know play darts you know if i need if i

need lemon you know he will crawl under the little little door and get lemon for me behind the bar no child labor it's family business i guess you know well that's fascinating man so do you use your chinese name or do you use the american name in china the chinese name which is uh she it's spelled as X-I. Yeah. And last name is Huang. H-U-A-N-G. Xi Huang. Yeah.

And the woman just couldn't pronounce it. She was like, Z, Zai, Eleven. What is this? And you went, Joe. Joe, yeah. Yeah, I got the name Joe from an English class, actually, when I was in college in China. Yeah. The American teacher came, and he just doesn't want to remember the Chinese names.

Oh, really? So he handed us a list of American names for us to pick. Really? Yeah. I was like, oh, hey, Joe, this is simple enough. I just picked Joe. Is that true? Yeah.

So what was that class? That's an English class in college. Oh, English as a second language Is that true? Yeah. So what was that class? That's an English class in college. Oh, English as a second language? No, just English. But English period. It was an American guy teaching it? Yeah, yeah. And that was his first lesson? Change your name.

Change your name, yeah. Because I don't have the patience. Exactly. So everybody in the class got an American name. That's a very good introduction into the American way of doing things. It's a little Ellis Island that's brought right to you. Exactly. First thing we got to do if you're going to learn American is give you an American name.

But now the Americans are doing the same thing when they're in China. They always pick a Chinese name. They do? Yeah, they do. They somehow sounded like their American name but mean something different in China. They always pick a Chinese name. They do? Yeah, they do. They somehow sounded like their American name but mean something different in Chinese.

So they can do business. Yeah, exactly. That's amazing. Well, it's great talking to you, buddy. Yeah, same here. Thanks so much for having me here.

I'm glad we did it. Yeah, it was. I've been a huge fan, you know, like a lot of your podcasts, TV show. Well, I know we've been trying to do this

for a couple of years. I'm glad we did it. Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much. Thanks. Hui? Is that right? Xi.

Xi? Yeah. Xi Huang? Xi Huang. Xi Huang. Joe. Joe. Thanks, Joe.

Take care. Yeah, you too. Thanks. That was me and Joee wong that was interesting i'm glad he came over also go to wtfpod.com for all your wtf pod needs and maybe i'll play some guitar if it's not too loudBad Boy Boomer lives! It's winter, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No.

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