Speaking of Joe Wong, one cannot fail to mention CBS’ The David Letterman Show. This show, which is known as the most watched late-night program in the United States, has made Huang Xi one of the hottest stand up comedians in the United States.
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On the evening of April 17, 2009, Americans were surprised to see a completely unfamiliar Chinese face appear on the Letterman show. He had a quiet temperament and was not tall. , with a slightly dull expression, reserved movements, wearing glasses, and speaking typical Chinese English (Chinglish), which fits everyone’s stereotype of Chinese immigrants who come to the United States with a background of international students. Then, he waved his hand timidly and said: "Hello everyone, I am Irish." ?The whole audience burst into laughter, and Letterman couldn’t close his mouth from ear to ear. This sentence made the audience accept Huang Xi immediately, and also opened Huang's humor.
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In a performance that lasted less than 6 minutes, Huang Xi quietly shook one bag after another. The audience was filled with laughter and applause, one wave after another, and the atmosphere was It was so enthusiastic that Letterman, who was not surprised at all, couldn't help but walked up to the front stage after the performance and shook hands with Huang Xi again and again, congratulating him repeatedly in front of the cameras and the audience. The video of the performance currently has more than 480,000 views on Youtube.
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Since then, Huang Xi has been invited to perform continuously, and has interviews from American and Chinese media almost every week. He appeared on the famous "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" twice and was successful. He told jokes for an hour at the "Punch Line" club in San Francisco. He also represented Ellen DeGeneres. Lun goes to Los Angeles? Music Awards? to interview and entertain red carpet stars. During the Chinese Spring Festival on February 15, Huang Xi will once again participate in the recording of the David Letterman Show, which is scheduled to be broadcast on the 19th.
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What is even more exciting is that, at the invitation of the Radio Television Correspondents Association in Washington, D.C., Huang Xi will speak at the association’s 3rd annual conference this year. At the annual meeting in October, he was the only comedian invited to perform jokes for President Obama and national media representatives. If these 15 minutes can be as successful as Letterman's show, Huang Xi will undoubtedly become the darling of the mainstream media and captivate all American comedy stars.
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Before Huang Xi became famous
After Huang Xi became famous in the first battle, his personal information quickly spread on the Internet, such as interactive encyclopedia, Wikipedia and other large information His detailed introduction is available on the website. In addition, readers who are interested in Huang Xi can also log on to his personal website to check his performance information. Huang Xi's latest performance will be held at Boston's long-established Cheers Comedy Club on February 12th and 13th before Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year.
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In 1994, Huang Xi came to the United States to study for a doctorate in biochemistry at Rice University and began to experience American humor firsthand. It was also from that time that he tried to write and publish He made some jokes and conveyed the ridiculous, sad, and deplorable stories that international students commonly experience but rarely express to mainstream society in a humorous, self-deprecating, ironic, and thought-provoking way.
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In 2000, Huang Xi found a job at a biopharmaceutical company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, engaged in cancer research. In his spare time, Huang Xi began to pursue an attractive but distant dream: becoming a comedian.
?There has never been a shortage of Chinese people in academia, but the comedy world has not yet had the voices from China’s first-generation immigrants. This has become Huang Xi’s famous saying. He first participated in a "joke writing training class" and was exposed to the comedy circle in Pau. Then he collected jokes and kept creating, and finally got an opportunity to perform on stage in a club in 2002. During the 5 minutes of his first performance, he was a little nervous. He spoke very fast and had a serious accent, which made the audience confused. However, he continued to improve and finally reached the finals of the Boston International Comedy Festival in 2003.
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Thousands of people tell jokes in clubs, bars, and theaters every night in this country, but very few of them last for three or five years. Huang Xi also had setbacks and troughs, but he still persevered. Slowly, he gained recognition and welcome from the audience with his unique style, and established a foothold in the greater Boston area. After three years of comedy performance, in 2005, Huang Xi finally found the one in his life.
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That year, Letterman Show talent scout Eddie Brill watched Huang Xi’s performance and thought he was a promising talent, so he asked Huang Xi to send him Some personal information and performance videos were never heard from again. Another three years passed, and Huang Xi still insisted on being on the stage, telling the audience interesting stories and discoveries about himself as an immigrant, husband, and father. Brill appeared again in 2008. This time, he thought Huang Xi was on the Letterman show. The time is ripe. Under Brill's guidance, Huang Xi arranged the selected jokes in a certain order to make them more rhythmic. Thus, on April 17, 2009, Huang Xi made a blockbuster performance on the Letterman show that made everyone laugh.
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Looking back on the seven years he has spent on the road of acting, Huang Xi said that there are no tricks or shortcuts, but hard work and perseverance. Over the years, he has maintained the habit of jotting down interesting things and inspirations and creating them on the fly. He quoted the famous comedian Jerry Seinfeld to reporters: If one out of ten jokes can make the audience laugh, it is considered a success. Huang Xi himself has accumulated more than a hundred successful jokes over the years, which shows his richness in creation. Years of performance experience also allowed him to be calm and confident at critical moments when he walked onto Letterman's stage. He was not very nervous that time because he was sure that he could finish his speech smoothly.
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Huang’s Humor
Many people think that Huang Xi’s long pause and innocent expression between shaking the baggage is a carefully arranged comedy Effect. He said that this had something to do with the atmosphere at the scene. Some people understood the meaning as soon as they heard it and opened their mouths to laugh. Some people took a while to react and then laughed.
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Anyone who has watched Huang Xi’s performance video can feel a unique style. Huang's Western-style humor has no large dancing movements, no exaggerated expressions with straight eyebrows and staring eyes, no props, and it can be said that it has no form. The essence of Huang's humor lies in the content. The real struggles, mental journeys, difficulties and discrimination faced by Asian immigrants are not well known or paid attention to by mainstream society. But now, through Huang Xi's excavation, collection, arrangement, and creation, these bits and pieces that have always existed but were not taken seriously have attracted the attention of the American people with a new look and stimulated their interest in learning more.
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Humor requires the courage and ability to laugh at oneself. Huang Xi's jokes are full of self-deprecation, but this is not a way to belittle oneself in order to please the audience. Self-deprecation is a sign of maturity. Huang Xi cited the journey of black comedians to prove his point. Black people make jokes about the discrimination they have suffered so that the mainstream society can understand their experiences and inner thoughts, so that they can receive sympathy and fairer treatment.
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As a comedian with high IQ and high education, Huang Xi’s baggage is very intelligent and a bit brain-teaser.
For example, when asked in the immigration exam who is Benjamin Franklin? Huang Xi’s reaction was: Ah, he is the reason why the store in our community was robbed (Franklin’s portrait is on the hundred-dollar bill). Asked again what is the Second Amendment to the Constitution? Huang Xi’s reaction was still the same, but the meaning was different (this amendment guarantees citizens’ right to bear arms). Those who reacted found it extremely interesting and laughed endlessly, while those who didn't react were still confused. Of course, those who don't know much about American life have no way of knowing the mystery.
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In Huang Xi’s view, telling jokes to shake off the burden is an evocative intellectual game. Therefore, he does not agree with comparing him to the American ?Little Shenyang ?. Although many of the stories and jokes he told were about Chinese immigrants, they were ultimately American jokes, a tradition inherited from Mark Twain, full of wisdom, thinking, and the power of irony. In addition, there was a bit of Woody Aye. Lun Shi Shen Shen Nao's temperament is very different from the kind of domestic stand-up comedy that frequently performs operas and songs. Perhaps last year's smash hit Zhou Libo's "Shanghai-style Qingkou" is more in tune with Huang Xi's American jokes.
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Huang Xi is still working hard to write more jokes, and he feels pressured by more and more performance invitations. Huang Xi himself still doesn't know whether he will devote himself to comedy full-time in the future. After all, he has a house to provide for and children to raise. Faced with reality, he can only work hard on both ends. He is one of the thousands of Chinese people around us who are pursuing the American dream. It’s just that his dream is very unique and was once out of reach. However, he is getting closer and closer to that dream step by step. This is what sets him apart from others. The difference. I am very grateful to have such an opportunity, sitting next to a warm and interesting person on such a hazy snowy day, chatting about a legend that is coming true in ordinary life. This truly unattractive but impressive man taught not just the American people, but ourselves, that we can be so silent, but we can also be so humorous.