Chinese Comedian Joe Wong Jokes about Immigration & “Cultural Confusion”

The World

We’d like you to meet Joe Wong.

He left China some 18 years ago to study biochemistry at Rice University, in Texas.

Then he landed a gig at a pharmaceutical company.

But now, Joe Wong lives in Massachusetts and is in a very different line of work.

He’s a stand-up comedian.

But for all of Joe Wong’s success as a comedian here in the United States, he didn’t exactly boast about his new career to his family back home, in China.

He says, “I didn’t tell them too much about it. And then my dad heard State Radio one day, after I made an appearance on the Letterman show. My dad was cooking lunch at the time and he was like, ‘oh, that sounds like my son. Going to America in ’94 and studying biochemistry.’ And then they reported my name and that’s when my dad really knew.”

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