Jesse Appell is a Fulbright scholar, bilingual comedian and tea guy who has found that the best conversations happen over tea with interesting people.
By sharing tea from his own tea shop with guests of diverse cultural and experiential backgrounds, Teatime With Jesse lets you be a fly on the wall of Jesse's Teahouse when interesting friends come by to visit!
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Jesse Appell is a Fulbright scholar, bilingual comedian and tea guy who has found that the best conversations happen over tea with interesting people.
By sharing tea from his own tea shop with guests of diverse cultural and experiential backgrounds, Teatime With Jesse lets you be a fly on the wall of Jesse's Teahouse when interesting friends come by to visit!
Bilingual Comedians, Comedy Clubs, and Community in China vs. America
Teatime With Jesse
39 minutes
1 year ago
Bilingual Comedians, Comedy Clubs, and Community in China vs. America
On this week's audio-only Teatime with Jesse, we have Rachel from Crazy Laugh Comedy and Shawn from Chinese Comedy at Silicon Valley.
Rachel, Shawn, and I sip on some pretty decent Moganshan green tea and talk about the differing comedy landscapes in China vs. America. We talk about getting started in comedy, how bad ChatGPT is at writing jokes, and how not ALL comedians have to be depressed.
0:30 Meet Rachel (Crazy Laugh Comedy) and Shawn (City Comedy)
0:47 Moganshan Green tea is decent
01:25 Seeing the growth of China’s comedy scene in the US
01:41 How to get started in comedy in America
3:27 Doing comedy online isn’t that fun
4:32 Standup provides a voice for you
5:10 You need a creative outlet
6:17 Be yourself, everyone else is taken
7:29 American vs. Chinese political infighting
8:58 No serious problems are easy to solve
9:19 Businessmen fail all the time
11:40 Finding a sense of community in New York
12:21 Finding community in Silicon Valley
13:00 Tech advertisements are pretty niche
14:08 Coming back to America after living in China for 10 years
16:00 Doing jokes as an American who was a foreigner in China
16:25 No one is looking for a white guy who speaks Chinese
18:00 Rachel quit her job
24:10 Comedy is expansive
26:00 Bilingual translators and bilingual comedy
26:32 Translating with ChatGPT
26:54 ChatGPT can’t tell jokes
27:40 You still need human taste
29:45 Putting together comedy shows in China
30:41 Using online content to drive offline growth
31:07 Using online exposure to attract attention to comedy clubs
31:35 How do comedians come together at comedy clubs
32:55 Comedians aren’t all depressed
33:08 You don’t have to suffer to be a comedian, but you might have to be anxious
35:48 LGBTQIA+ comedy in China
37:24 Being outside of the mainstream
#foreignerinchina #bilingualcomedy #teatimewithjesse #jessesteahouse #chineselanguagelearning #mandarinlanguagelearning
Teatime With Jesse
Jesse Appell is a Fulbright scholar, bilingual comedian and tea guy who has found that the best conversations happen over tea with interesting people.
By sharing tea from his own tea shop with guests of diverse cultural and experiential backgrounds, Teatime With Jesse lets you be a fly on the wall of Jesse's Teahouse when interesting friends come by to visit!
