Last week a piece in The New York Times Magazine by Christopher Beam headlined ‘Can China Take a Joke?’ featured the comedian Joe Wong. That took me back to an inordinately long two-part interview I had done with him on December 10 and 11, 2011. Since I interviewed him Joe, who came to America in 2001 to do a PhD in biochemistry and made an extraordinary name for himself as a standup comedian, has moved back to China. There is some minor pleasure in knowing that I had a head start of four years over the Times. Here is my interview. (I have slightly recast the intro for reasons I am in no mood to explain.)
I do not quite remember how I discovered the “All American comedian” Joe Wong but ever since I did, I cannot forget him. Immediately after watching his 2010 performance at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner (RTCD) on YouTube, I sent him an email in September this year to set up an interview.
Joe Wong is unquestionably the most wickedly funny Chinese American comedian ever. This, I assert with such finality because if there was a fellow comic of comparable talent, America’s humor industry would have found him or her by now. No, Margaret Cho is not of Chinese origin. She is an American of Korean descent.
Not that comics have instantly identifiable markers that reveal their talent but Joe Wong has one that helps a great deal. He has a half smile that heralds a joke. The smile would suggest that he has quality tested the joke and it is guaranteed to be funny. The funny thing is that the jokes which he deadpans are even funnier.
Sample this one, for instance, from the RTCD where Washington’s movers and shakers come down every year to share a laugh or two or three depending on the comedian. In Joe’s case there were too many to count. Vice President Joe Biden was in attendance and, inevitably, Joe had a joke for that.
“I am honored to meet Vice President Joe Biden here tonight,” he said with as much genuineness as it is possible to muster with the knowledge that a joke is following right behind that sentiment.
“I actually read your autobiography and today I see you,” he said, priming and sautéing the audience like a gourmet chef utterly self-assured that what he is about to dish out will bring the house down. And then boom… the punch line.
“I think the book is much better..”
As humor goes Joe keeps it biting and mainstream without generally resorting to ethnic foibles and stereotypes. But when he does, he does it more to coopt mainstream America than to mock ethnic minorities. Take this one about taking the citizenship test where he offers his own unique perspective about the questions that are asked to test the applicant’s knowledge of American history. I reproduce this bit verbatim to give you the flavor.
“Who is Benjamin Franklin?
Aah…The reason our convenient store gets robbed.
What is the second amendment?
Aah..The reason why our convenient store gets robbed.”
These are bitingly funny in themselves, but then Joe kills (as the expression for a brilliant comic routine goes) with the following two.
“What is Roe V Wade?
Aah..Two ways of coming to the United States.”
Later I read so much about American history that I started to harbor white guilt.”
Here are the excerpts from my interview. I am breaking them down in two parts. The rest will follow tomorrow.
Joe Wong (Pic: www.joewongcomedy.com)
Part 1
Q: Humor is not something Westerners suspect the Chinese of having. Why do you think that is? (I am from India and they think we have even less.)
A: I remember after I published an assay on a Rice campus newspaper, my friend and English teacher said to me, “Who knew a Chinese can be funny?” Whereas most Chinese learn American culture through movies and books, most Americans learn Chinese culture from their observation of Chinese immigrants and media portrait of Chinese immigrants in America. Most immigrants face enormous amount of pressure to make a living, they don’t have the luxury of participating in pop culture and politics.
More importantly, new Asian immigrants are not that comfortable and relaxed in America to begin with, and one of the most uncomfortable things in the world is not getting the joke, right below telling a joke that nobody laughs at. So why risk it? But as Asian groups are getting more comfortable and relaxed in America, more and more of us are telling jokes.
Q: You came to the US when you were 24. Having spent your formative years in China, how did that shape your worldview and,particularly, humor?
A: When I was in China, I wrote and performed some sketches in college. I did several with various degrees of success but I never planned to one day perform comedy. Growing up, I always thought people around me were funnier than me. My college roommate would sleep in the school library and say to people, “Success is 1% inspiration and 99% drool.”
In college, I wanted to find the meaning of life and of the universe on my own. I read a lot of Western philosophers such as Cant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sartre, Bacon, Dewey, and so forth. I believed that there is a common humanity everywhere in the world regardless of the language and the cultural background. I still believe in this commonality even in humor.
China is actually more open to Western humor than Western countries are to Chinese humor. We have Mark Twain’s writings in our text book, even though it’s translated into Chinese and needs footnotes to understand, but you can get the humor. Later more American magazines and books became available, a friend of mine read the jokes on Readers’ Digest, understood every word in the joke but couldn’t get it. I had to explain to him why the joke was funny. I guess I may have a keener understanding of humor than some people.
Because I grew up in China and came to the US at such a late stage in life, I was obsessed with making people hear and understand me. As a student I often feel that non-white immigrant students were easily ignored in conversations because our cultural background and languages were so different from American students that most of them didn’t bother to listen what you have to say.
I remember when I first told some jokes, my friends would go, “Oh that’s interesting. I never thought about that.” Because they would not expect a guy like me is telling jokes. Later on when people laugh at my jokes, I feel this connection with Americans that a lot of immigrants want or proclaim not to care.
Americans are famous for being humorous in China, so making Americans laugh gives this extra sense of “beating them in their own game” After I published an assay at the campus newspaper, I sent the clipping to home and wrote in the letter, “Foreign students here are voiceless. I am proud to make people notice us.”
Q: It takes particular gumption to come that late to the United States and pursue humor as your profession. How did you go about it?
A: Work work work. There is no secret to it. Everyone is a nervous wreck when they first step on the stage. The number one fear among Americans is public speaking. Some comedians would throw up before they went on stage. But through hard work you learn to work with the nerves.
Q: Describe to me a little bit about the humor scene in China.
Traditional Chinese standup comedy is called crosstalk, done by two performers. One is the straight guy doing the set up and the other doing the punch lines. It has existed since the Qing dynasty. Besides crosstalk, there are a lot of regional singing comedies and vaudeville troupes speaking various dialects. Because crosstalk is done in mandarin, the official language in China, it gets more air time on national TV and radio stations.
Crosstalk was hugely popular in the 80’s, then it died down in the 90’s. There was a revival of crosstalk in 2006 after Guo Degang became popular. In the meantime, Zhou Libo in Shanghai became popular in 2008 for his more western style standup comedy shows.
An even more popular form of comedy is sketch. Every year, Zhao Benshan’s sketch is the headlining act in the Chinese New Year Gala, which is the biggest television variety show in China watched by over a billion people.
Besides standup and sketch performers, there are a slue or TV hosts who are famous for their humor, notably Cui Yongyuan and Wang Han, as well as great comedy movies from directors like Feng Xiaogang.
In summary, China has a very vibrant comedy scene covering the slapstick as well as deadpan humor.
Comedian Joe Wong (Pic: www.joewongcomedy.com)
Part 2
Joe Wong tells jokes that would very likely make him laugh too if he was in the audience and someone else was telling them.
He also takes care to see that in a public context people see him as a comedian and do not go beyond what he has to offer publicly. His website lays out some of his quirks.
“Joe goes to the post office and grocery stores a lot. These activities make him feel very competent.
Joe likes his rooms white. This way when he takes pictures there, he saves money on printer ink cartridges.”
I think the best quirk is his dream job, which is to “work on TV announcing losing lottery numbers.”
The concluding part of my interview with someone “who hold liquor well” but “throws up everything else.”
Q: From what I have seen on your site and YouTube, your humor has subtlety that requires the audience to pay attention. Has that been a challenge in establishing yourself?
A: Yes. A lot of comedy clubs are at bars or restaurants where you have to be kind of loud to get attention. Fortunately, the American comedy scene is mature enough to have clubs that place more emphasis on alternative or intellectual humor.
I also got some advice from fellow comedians. A veteran comedian Tony V once said to me, “Joe you gotta slow down when you tell jokes. Your jokes are smart and you have to give the audience some time to think.” When you pause on stage, people actually pay more attention to you and think more.
Q: Do you ever feel that half the time your just being on the stage primes the audience for laughter? Not that comics have a particular look but the fact that you don’t even have that seems to accentuate your impact. Do you agree?
A: It’s kind of the other way around. When people see someone who looks like a comedian, they will laugh right away. But that laugh can’t last long, you have to have jokes to keep the audience going.
In the beginning my presence did give the audience, and sometimes even the comedians and bookers, a sense of suspense. I remember one comedian told me after a show, “When I brought you up to the stage, I thought, ‘This is gonna be a train wreck’ But I was really surprised.”
But now I am booked as a headliner at most comedy shows and the audience know they have the most established comedian that night on stage so they tend to laugh from the beginning more.
Q: What is your sense about the comedy scene in China? Is it possible, for instance, to say the kind of things you said at the RTCA dinner in the presence of Wen Jiabao in Beijing?
A: Zhou Libo’s routines sometimes mention political figures such as Wen Jiabao, but not in a critical way. I don’t think (Chinese) comedians can make the type of jokes I made at the RTCA dinner. There is more reverence toward the government than the US. It’s just the culture there.
Q: It appears from your material that you do not take the easy way out by focusing too much on ethnic humor. Was it a conscious decision? For instance, when you speak about having read so much American history that you have developed white guilt is a sharp departure for a recent immigrant.
A: It is a conscious decision. There are already many Asian comedians doing ethnic humor. I want to do something more challenging to me.
Q: Do you perform in China at all? If you do what kind of care would you have to take not to end up in prison?
I went to a comedy club in China once back in 2008 but I can’t say I perform standup comedy in China. Standup comedy is a language art and it takes a lot of practice in front of audiences to get better. There is no Chinese language comedy club in the US.
Q: How much role do you think America’s receptivity to humor and the fact that there are no sacred cows here play in helping create your material?
A: In every country there are people who are into different types of humor, vulgar, intelligent, slapstick, etc.
Americans see humor as part of a person’s intelligence and personality. When I came to the US I struggled with my identity in a new world. In a sense that struggle pushed me more toward comedy and self expression.
Q: Do you still encounter those annoying people who cannot recover from the fact that you speak English at all, not to mention words such as demagoguery?
Before I came to the US, I memorized an Oxford dictionary. I used to use big words such as demagoguery in my conversation because I assumed every American knows every word in that dictionary. And that did get some people amazed. I remember once I said to a white guy at the campus bar after learning that he doesn’t drink, “So you are a teetotaler?” He said to me, “See that’s the reason you can hang with us.”
Later on I learned that people think you are pretentious using that kind of vocabulary all the time. And that white guy was not well liked by people. So I started to stay away from those words when I speak. I am not pretentious and I don’t want to be perceived as such.
I used that type of words at the RTCA dinner because the audience are made up of reporters and politicians who play with words for a living. I enjoyed writing for that show.
Q: Do you see yourself branching out beyond stand-up comedy? If so, where?
I am working with David Letterman’s production company World Wide Pants to develop a sitcom. And I am having a book published in Chinese soon.
Q: And finally, an unrelated question about Tibet and the Dalai Lama. How do you look at the issue?
I will take a pass at this one. I hope everyone lives a happy life but politics is not my forte. That’s partly why I’m a comedian I guess.