Joe Wong, Ronny Chieng and the rise of Asian voices in comedy
Asian comedians were once forced to resort to stereotypes to find a platform – but a wave of pioneering stars is changing that
The crowd erupts, and he’s off.
“I’m an immigrant parent,” he begins after the laughter dies down. “They say that two wrongs don’t make a right, but two illegals can make a legal …”
The Jilin-born comedian moved to the United States at 24, carving out a career in one of the hardest fields for a non-native speaker, let alone a Chinese man in America. Doing stand-up in a second language demands the cerebral dexterity of conducting a symphony from memory. It also requires navigating nuance, cultural complexity and the risk that one misjudged punchline could get you cancelled faster than J.K. Rowling at a gender studies conference.
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It’s a striking change, especially given the road has been anything but smooth. During the pandemic, a surge in anti-Asian hate crimes swept across the US and Europe, and at the 2016 Oscars, Chris Rock infamously introduced three Asian children dressed in suits as accountants, a throwaway joke about Asians being good at maths, the moment underscoring how often Asian identity was still treated as a punchline. How did these performers move from stereotype to storyteller, and what has it taken to challenge the culture of comedy?
This week, Joe Wong returns to Hong Kong to perform his Twin Tariff show in both English and Mandarin, one of the few stand-ups to regularly delight audiences in the US as well as China.