Michelin Star DIM SUM w/ RONNY CHIENG from The Daily Show (Crazy Rich Asians)

You've spent a lot of time in Australia, spent a lot of time in America. Which country would you say is more racist? Ha ha ha! You want me to get attacked on this motherf***er? Is that going to come after me? We're trying to get you popping on Reddit. Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to a very special episode of Fun Bros Food. Today, we are with comedian Ronnie Chang. What's up, guys? Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for being here, Ronnie. We are meeting up at what is known to be the most affordable but one of the best Michelin star restaurants in New York. Ronnie, you're on The Daily Show. Ronnie Chang, everybody! Today, this is sort of our version of comedians getting coffee. Asians getting yum cha. Asians drinking tea. I mean, there's so many different variations. We could go so many different ways with this. Ronnie, for the people out there who are not familiar with your work, how can you describe what you do? I'm a stand-up comic. That's my primary profession. We invented chopsticks because forks are too easy. I don't know about you, but I enjoy a challenge when I'm doing a daily activity that's required for my survival. I was very fortunate to get hired on The Daily Show. Now, we tell dick jokes, but we try to make it sound like it's political. For $6,000, I expect to be able to f**k. The first thing I saw you from was an Australian stand-up special that went viral. Because I went to an elite law school. I don't lose verbal arguments, okay? Let's break down what Kanye West is saying, okay? First of all, Kanye West is saying, have you ever asked your b** for other b**s? It's a hypothetical, okay? It didn't even happen. What are you doing? Are you punishing for his thoughts? Or your big brother from 1984? And then another thing with Fox News, right, where you went to Chinatown, and then you went back at Fox. Yeah, yeah. Is it the year of the dragon? Rabbit? No, it's actually the year of go f**k yourself. Man, what a surprise. As soon as I got out of the car in Chinatown in New York City, it's literally as soon as I walk out of the car, there was like a line of people around the block to s**t on the piece and the guys. And what was interesting was the response I got back was a lot of people who had a lot of bad experiences when they were younger, a lot of Asian people in America. Oh, thanks for, you know, kind of speaking out because... So often, Asians kind of get dealt a blow immediately and don't strike back, whether it's due to lack of desire to or lack of ability to. Before we continue about you, you're a very interesting guy, but the dim sum is also very interesting. Deep fried pork and shrimp dumpling is... Here we have the... It's our version of pan-fried turnip cake. Over here, we have a steamed egg cake. We have a beef ball, traditional with beaker skin. Bottom, we have beaker skin with shrimp and pork steam. It's a... And then our version of... Which is a braised chicken feet in abalone sauce. Of course, last but not least, it's congee with braised pork and preserved egg and salted egg. I'll twist. Oh, and this is our fried milk sticks. No one else has this. Oh, oh, oh, oh. I might even eat those right now. I think people don't fully know what your background is, right? Because your accent sounds like a lot of things. My personal background is I'm ethnically Chinese from Malaysia. My mom is Cantonese, and my dad is Ho Chi Minh and Fuzhou. The Cantonese side, we do yam cha. Dim sums are the dishes. This is the dim sum dishes. Yam cha is the experience. So you were talking about how you was gaining your voice in Australia. So I was doing standup in Australia for maybe eight years before I moved here. And before that, I was living in Singapore for 10 years. And before that, I was living in Malaysia. Then I went to Australia for 10 years. I went to law school in Australia. And after I graduated, I started comedy in Australia. So I was working in comedy for about eight years. And I was very lucky to kind of get opportunities in Australia and get a job. So when I came to America, one thing about America is that I found in America, they don't care what you do outside of America. It doesn't matter. You could be the biggest Bollywood guy. In Bollywood, you come to America, they stop you at the border and ask you if you're a Muslim. Even British comedians, they could be like the biggest thing in England. And literally people be like, why are you talking funny? You talk funny, bro. Why do you think it was almost like you made a jump up when you got to America? While a lot of people feel like maybe coming from a foreign place, they make a drop down. TV in America is still the MBA of TV. So anytime you work in TV in America, you most likely are taking a step up. But that's the reason I'm here. All my comedy heroes are from America. All the TV shows I watch are American. Correct me if I'm wrong. The Daily Show, since Jon Stewart left and Trevor took over, took a much more international spin. Oh, absolutely. Even it is international, but I've noticed that if you don't talk about issues with an American perspective, Americans just don't really care about it. Right, well, you can't pull a BBC and be an Algen Zero Plus and be all ultra international, right? Guys, that eggplant and shrimp, that is probably the best version I've had of that dish. Now, this is the famous pork bun, the chashu bao, but it's not just a regular chashu bao. A lot of people think that's the pineapple topping. That's actually not. It's custard. Oh, man. Dude. I gotta say, I did Reddit search your name, okay? Okay. And we did this with Jimmy O. Yang. I think in the first season, there was some criticism. The comments on Jimmy are a lot more harsher than your comments on Reddit, though. Jimmy, we talked about it. Jimmy, do you know what I'm talking about? I don't think people understand what you represent because like you said, you're a Chinese guy who was ethnically Chinese who grew up in Malaysia and Singapore, moved to Australia, started an Australian comedy career and was able to make a lateral, slightly upward jump to the internationalization of The Daily Show. They can't roast that. They're just like, what? My first segment on The Daily Show, I was so excited to be on The Daily Show, very first time on The Daily Show. I got on, I think it was an in-studio segment of VR, and I was like, oh, man, let's go look at The Daily Show subreddit. I looked at it, oh, it was so brutal. I swear, I haven't been back to The Daily Show subreddit since the first episode. What'd they say? Man, I hope this guy gets fired from the show. It was just brutal, like his accent is making us look bad and blah, blah, and so I just like, okay, well, I can't look at this. I think your segment of snapping back at Fox, that won over a lot of people. All my comedy, I try to do it from a very dignified, strong point of view. I mean, if you come watch my stand-up, you know. Well, you don't play the meek Asian guy to appeal to his audience. Why do you think it takes somebody from Asia to be strong? I don't know, because you guys are pretty confident. It's a big question. Yeah, you guys are confident performers as well. I think that if you come from Asia, you know who you are a little better than if you're Asian-American. Maybe, that's it. Because if you're Asian-American, you are probably trying to navigate both sides. And I found that this is an Asian-American issue of like, is the Asian-American agenda supposed to be, we're promoting Asian cultures in America, or are we promoting, we're not ******* Asian, we're American, you know? It's really funny because you'll see two Asian-Americans on the same Asian-American representation panel. And then, let me just say that I made Ronnie spit up his teeth. And they'll have completely differing baseline philosophies, but they're almost answering the same question, but they're not addressing that they have completely differing philosophies. Part of it is just giving Asian, regular Asian-Americans, not super crazy, ridiculous personalities necessarily, just regular Asian-Americans a platform, you know? And just to hear what they say, because I do think that even when other people see these videos of Asians speaking out, they're like, oh, Asians do have thoughts. What is the current status of America? Because you run a show that's about the status of America. Five words, America is great, again, now. America is a ******* big country. It is a huge country. And America isn't just geographically big, it's big in terms of the different cultures. I'm not saying Asian or white, I'm saying state by state, the different cultures, there's a wide range of people in America. We are in our own bubbles, you know? And they are in their bubbles, too. Whether you're in the Social Justice Warrior bubble, the PC bubble, the Bernie Bro bubble, America has too many bubbles right now. And you need the bubbles to merge a little bit and get some interaction between people. Any funny ideas, any cool ideas? Oh, to unify America? I think Roseanne Barr is unifying America a little bit, right? You know what, hey, this sounds a bit wanky and pretentious, but yo, culture unifies America, man. When you make cool content, or you show food, or you let people into Yum Cha, or whatever the experience is, I always go like, yeah, you can't hate another culture if you like their food. You know, no one's had the best burrito and gone, hey, you know what, **** these Mexicans. You start international food halls in every city. And just serve authentic versions of that food. Movies like, I don't know, Black Panther, I feel like, can you watch that and not feel something for people who don't look like yourself? I don't know, you know? Maybe you can. Maybe if you really got a lot of hate in your heart. I always say, like, people who say they hate Trump and want him to get elected, and I always go like, how much do you hate Trump? Do you hate Trump enough to have a conversation with a Trump supporter and convince them? Or are you just gonna yell at them and call them stupid? Because you don't convince them by vilifying them. I think a lot of people in America will vilify people to get the hits. Keyboard warriors are only gonna do so much. It's important to have that, too. The freedom to insult the government, you know, that's something that's crazy back home. You couldn't do- Especially in Singapore. Yeah, every day on the daily show, we're talking shit about the president. Not only is it allowed, like, we get paid to do it. You're bullish on America. Yeah, I think so. I'll be damned if I wait 10 years, get on a daily show, and this country goes under. It took a long time for me to get here. You spent a lot of time in Australia, spent a lot of time in America. Which country would you say is more racist? You want me to get attacked on this mother- Is that gonna come after me? We're trying to get you popping on Reddit. Preface this, we made a video with another Australian Chinese girl. I saw that, I saw that. We essentially said that Australia is more racist due to them being possibly more outspoken about it. Someone who has traveled around the world and lived in different countries, it's always easy to pick the worst examples of that country. I think that Australians are more vocal about their thoughts, almost in kind of a naive, like, we just speak our mind in Australia, type situation. But Americans, in terms of execution, is more oppressive. The powers here are more low-key, actually oppressive. But over there, they just more say whatever they want, but they might not be that oppressive. I think the reason that is, in Australia, they don't have the history of racism that America has. So they're more outspoken, because they didn't have blackface. They didn't have all this stuff, so they don't know- They don't have slavery. Right, they don't have the context of that stuff. So when you say that they're more outspoken of racism than America, it's because America has all this shit and they've learned from it. So they've learned to, okay, this is how we have to- To almost be more low-key about it sometimes, yeah. Basically, I'd retract that video, America is more racist than Australia. That is actually my final answer. I got a TV show in Australia. It aired in Australia already. It aired on the BBC one, and it's coming to America, Comedy Central. It's called Ronny Chieng International Student. It's about Asian international students studying in Australian universities. Do you have a more mainland Chinese fob in there? Yes. That is really interesting, because when people think of international students, I knew some that were from Malaysia and Singapore, but most people's brain goes to a fob-wearing Balenciaga in a Ferrari that goes to NYU. You've got nothing to lose. Like our parents paid for us to be here so we could get a better education, so we could go back and get reputable professions and or take over cushy family businesses. We literally have everything to lose. Showing Asian men a position of strength, showing Asian people good at sports, showing people all that kind of stuff. I kind of put it into the show so hopefully people like it, and hopefully, as you were saying, it changes culture a little bit, and we have some of that representation. Support it. And stop hating on Reddit. Come on, go make something to your life, okay? Don't be idiots. Keep shitting on Reddit. Make something for yourself. Before you criticize, go make something. Go make something and see it. If you think something is terrible, make a better version. The tools are there. Brandon said, if you can't make it better, you gotta tone down on the jerking off in front of the computer. It's, yeah. We gotta end off. Crazy Rich Asians is coming out this spring. 12th of August, 2018. You really should have told me that you're like the Prince William of Asia. That's ridiculous. Much more than Harry. White women blew up the book. I mean, what you said, for whatever reason, Asian people don't have the clout to make shit blow up. White women blew it up, you know? So hopefully they blew it up for us. Hey, you know what? Me and Andrew make a background cameo in the movie. Richie's in it too. Yeah, Richie's in it. And I just hope the bokeh, you know, the depth of field didn't blur me out. It really speaks to how international the world is becoming. How international America is becoming. How Asian? Yeah, how Asian the world is becoming. Culturally, there's a shift, right? There has to be a shift. Again, it comes from everyone's hard work. Everyone's making videos. You guys are showing that there's an audience for this and you guys are making interesting content. You're not just doing it cynically for numbers. What I've learned about storytelling and comedy and running a TV show is authenticity resonates. And when you can't tell an authentic story because of censorship issues or it's too controversial or it's too whatever reason, it's very unfulfilling. And that's why we come to America to tell stories because you can literally tell if it's good, if it's dope, you can make it here. Equally, I'm always inspired by you guys making stuff yourself. You know, three friends here who've been holding cameras for about four hours now, like this the whole time, like just really working out that quad. Your whole career, you've had to be your own producer, creator, writer, manager, agent. And that's incredibly difficult. That's why a lot of YouTube is not as good. Cause you got to produce it yourself. Yeah. Anyway, I'm just saying that you guys inspire me by making your own shit all the time and not making excuses. Just go, you know, just go doing it. Cheers to the yum cha experience and cheers to Asian comedians from around the world, man. Man, huge shout out to Tony at team Ho Wan. This place is amazing. Definitely check it out. New York East village. They're gonna opening another one in the West side. Definitely check out Ronnie and all his information down below. Yo, that was such a cool episode. And thank you so much for shedding a lot of light on a lot of issues and having that discussion with us. And guys, yo, we are in New York city at Tim Ho Wan. Until next time, everybody, we out. Peace.