Chinatown 2.0

Ep. 24: Comedian Olivia Xing discusses her Party School special, ESL comics and how to handle bombing on stage

Olivia Xing is an actress, standup comedian, artist and student based in LA, and she recently did a one-hour comedy special called Party School where she told jokes about China, the US, politics in both countries, and the immigrant experience. 00:00 Teaser 00:44 Intro 02:48 How Olivia got started with her Party School comedy special 08:19 Chinese debate show 奇葩说 12:12 How Chinese comics and rappers deal with censorship 16:26 Olivia's biggest takeaways from her comedy special 18:38 Ri...

Ep. 23: (Mandarin) Weibo co-founder Indigo on China's startup scene, NFTs, life in Japan/Vancouver

Indigo was co-founder of Sina Weibo, or China’s Twitter. After Weibo, he started doing angel investments and incubating new projects. One of his main investments included the largest off-line art selling platform in China. Recently he got into the world of web3 and NFT. He writes a blog about frontier tech, and teaches online courses on stock investments in these areas. He is based in Vancouver. I spoke to him about China’s startup environment since 2009, his takeaways from doing angel inv...

Ep. 22: Comic Peng Dang tells American jokes like a native, learned English from listening to rock

Peng Dang is a standup comedian based in Texas. Peng moved to the US from China in his twenties, speaks absolutely impeccable English, and more importantly, tells jokes like a local pro. I find his sets funny, educational, and wholesome. I’m not sure if a comedian wants to hear their jokes described as “wholesome,” but I mean that as a compliment. We talked about how his English got to be so good, what life was like for him in Alabama, Atlanta and Dallas, how he honed his comedic skills, h...

Ep. 21: Bilingual comedian Amy Yu sees stand-up as life-changing, discusses role of AI in art

Amy Yu is a bilingual standup comedian based in Canada. We talked about how standup comedy changed her life, how she thinks about telling jokes in Chinese vs telling in English, and how to properly tell a dirty joke. I also had a pretty serious debate with her about the role of artificial intelligence in comedy. 0:00 Amy’s standup set 01:04 Debating the role of AI in art creation 22:31 How comedy helped Amy with mental health 28:17 How to deal with bombing on stage 31:48 Amy’s ...

Ep. 20: Magician Dan Chan Performed for Elon Musk, Plans to Build Magic Mansion in the Bay Area

Dan Chan is a magician that has performed at corporate events at fortune 100 companies and lavish parties hosted by celebrities. He recently got to perform for Elon Musk at the PayPal 20-year reunion party, hosted by Peter Thiel. Prior to his illusionist career, he was an employee at PayPal, where he met Thiel. Dan has also been grooming his 14-year old son to become a magician, who has been doing his own $1000 shows in the San Francisco Bay Area. We talked about how Dan decided to bec...

Ep. 19: Career coach Alec Sorensen helps dreamers of biz ideas take action via habit-building

Alec Sorensen is a career coach who helps people take action on life-changing business ideas they've been putting off. Alec is also a follower of the Mormon church, a Japan-living American at one point, a California-to-Texas transplant, among other things. We discussed how he got into career coaching, his faith, cultural shocks in Japan, why he moved to Austin from the Bay Area, and more. 0:00 Intro 1:20 Alec as a Coach: His thoughts about the coaching industry, and how he uses habit...

Ep. 18: Entrepreneur Karol Guan discusses creativity at art school and in her beauty AI startup

(Episode in Mandarin) Karol Guan is an entrepreneur. This interview was recorded in Nov 2020. At the time she was co-founder of HelloAva.co, a startup that recommends skin care products based on a combination of AI and doctors. Karol studied Fashion/Apparel design at Parsons School of Design in New York City. We discussed how the 2020 Covid both helped her startup grow and presented challenges to the way she worked, how she felt about being a woman in the male-dominated startup space, ho...

Ep. 17: Operations mgr Erin Cuellar moved between five states in 13 years for manufacturing career

Erin Cuellar is Director of Operations at STERIS, a manufacturer of medical devices. At the time of the interview, she was senior operations manager at the same company, and her role was essentially that of a plant manager. Her responsibilities included supervising teams, managing KPIs, and maintaining quality controls. Erin comes from a very different world than I do. She dropped out of college, worked at a local manufacturing site, joined an apprenticeship program, got her journeyman’s...

Ep. 16: Kunming-native American cowboy Bruce Wang speaks English with perfect Southern accent

Bruce Wang is a Chinese cowboy. Not an ethnically Chinese person that was born in Texas, but someone born and bred in Yunnan, China. He came to the US as a college student. He adopted a Southern accent, started dressing like a cowboy, and started making videos about how cowboys spend their time. We talked about why he decided to become a cowboy, why he felt the cowboy culture reminded him of his hometown of Kunming, how he felt different when speaking a different language, and how he dea...

Ep. 15: Restaurateur, Food & Beverage businessman Chris Tay hustled nonstop for three decades

Ep. 14: 🇺🇸 Crypto CEO Stephen Tse on community-development, culture-building, nongreedy parenting

Stephen Tse is the founder and CEO of a Blockchain project named Harmony. For those new to Crypto and Blockchain, Harmony is a protocol that allows trustless smart contracts. Think of it as a new technology stack on the internet that allows users of computer programs to verify the results by themselves, instead of trusting whoever is serving these programs to the users. At the time of recording, Harmony ranks top 100 in terms of market capitalization for all Cryptos. Stephen also runs a we...

Ep. 14: Crypto CEO Stephen Tse on community-development, culture-building, nongreedy parenting

Ep. 13: Government data scientist John Stevenson overcame homelessness and plans to run for governor

John Stevenson is a Black American who grew up home-insecure, but later graduated valedictorian of his high school. He went to Dartmouth and later graduated from the Political Science program at the University of Chicago. He now owns a yoga studio, does contracts for various government agencies. And he has ambitions to run for governor of Maryland. Today we talk about his experience as a homeless person growing up. So he would be adding his unique perspective from that particular angle as ...

Ep. 12: Conservative mayor candidate Ellen Zhou wants to end 50-year Democrat rule in San Francisco

On today's Chinatown 2.0, I speak with Ellen Lee Zhou, or 李爱晨, a two-time candidate for San Francisco mayor, in 2018 and 2019. She ran as a conservative in a city where the mayor had been a Democrat for the last half a century. On top of her “non-mainstream” political ideologies, she had zero experience holding public office and raised very little money compared to her competition. Despite all this, she won 4% of the votes in 2018, and 13% of the votes in 2019. And in 2019, she was secon...

Ep. 11: Howard Schultz communications manager Lin Yang started hometown newspaper to fight misinformation that harms local election

Lin Yang is a grassroot political organizer who also works in tech. Lin had a full-time job working for Howard Schultz, helping him explore a presidential run. For those unaware, Howard Schultz was the founder and previous CEO for Starbucks. Lin also participated in campaigns for President Obama and Senator Ted Lieu from California. He also worked as a journalist in Asia for a while, writing articles for various newspapers like New York Times when was stationed in Taiwan, and the Strait Ti...

Ep. 10: (Mandarin) Entrepreneur Wei Luo quit coding to build vertically-integrated home renovation business

Wei Luo quit his software engineering job to become a contractor in 2006. After 14 years, he had a business (based in San Francisco Bay Area) consisting of 50+ employees and multiple business lines, including home renovation, interior design, cabinetry and appliances. Wei shared with us how he persuaded his parents to pursue a new career with seemingly low barrier to entry, challenges and turning points of his business, a severe problem of labor shortage in the contracting field, a squeeze...

Ep. 9: (Mandarin) Stuyvesant ex-Principal Jie Zhang taught American prisoners, fixed U.S. schools, returns to China to lead two international schools

Jie Zhang has been an instructor, administrator and leader of American education institutions for more than three decades. She began her career teaching math to prisoners on Rikers Island (New York). Her most well-known positions included principal of the Ivy League feeder Stuyvesant High School, and principal of the now Chinese company-owned New York Military Academy, which US President Trump attended. She recently returned to China to run two international high schools. Besides recountin...

Ep. 8: (Mandarin) "Chinese son-in-law" 中国女婿 Morgan Jones talks being Black in China/US

Morgan Jones is a Black American that previously spent six years in China as a radio host, movie production assistant and EMBA English teacher. He is a “Chinese son-in-law” (中国女婿), a self-described Tiger Dad (“虎爸”) and a fluent Mandarin speaker. He got his EMBA from Cornell and bachelors from Middlebury College, or 明德大学 in Chinese. This episode was recorded in Mandarin. We discussed Morgan’s adventures in China, takeaways from his marriage to a Chinese woman, his relationship with Chines...

Ep. 7: China historian Anne Chao grew up on four continents, archives oral history of Chinese Americans

Professor Anne Chao is a Chinese modern historian that lectures at Rice University. She is also manager of the Houston Asian American Archive, an oral history archive that looks to document the challenges faced and contributions made by the Asian American community. As the daughter of a Taiwanese diplomat, Anne moved between Congo, Australia, Washington DC, and Taiwan as a kid. Her Ph.D. dissertation was on the social networks of Chen Duxiu, co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party and pu...

Ep. 6: China Tech Podcaster Rui Ma talks TikTok ban, Sino-US decoupling, female expat life in China

Rui Ma is an investment banker (Morgan Stanley) turned VC (500 Startups) turned podcast host (Tech Buzz China). Her show covers current tech trends in China, with a focus on power players such as ByteDance and Alibaba. Her diaspora journey included a childhood in the China countryside, college and grad school education in the US, a career of finance/tech in Shanghai/Beijing, and podcast operations from Silicon Valley. We discussed Bytedance ban, Niall Ferguson's "TikTok = China's digital i...

Ep. 5: (Mandarin) Children's Chinese Magazine Publisher Jing Cheng believes the power of print media

Jing Cheng is the co-founder and CEO of the largest North American Children's Chinese magazine, Pipa Magazine. She shares her inspirations for starting the publication, the challenges of running the business of print media against digital headwinds, and her philosophy and suggestions for Chinese immigrants raising bilingual kids. To learn more about Pipa Magazine, visit: pipamag.org You can also subscribe to their WeChat public account by searching for 小枇杷 Jing shared with us: * P...

Chinatown 2 0: East Asian Historian Sixiang Wang

Sixiang Wang is an assistant professor in Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA, specializing in Korea’s premodern history. He speaks fluent mandarin, writes Chinese poems and is well-versed in China's history and culture. Sixiang described his journey of attempting to self-distance from his Chinese identity to embracing and mastering the language and culture. He shared how studying Korean history somehow helped him reconcile a lifelong passion for Chinese studies with his American identity. ...

Ep. 4: History Professor Sixiang Wang reconciles his Sino-US identity from studying Korean history

Sixiang Wang is an assistant professor in Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA, specializing in Korea’s premodern history. He speaks fluent mandarin, writes Chinese poems and is well-versed in China's history and culture. Sixiang described his journey of attempting to self-distance from his Chinese identity to embracing and mastering the language and culture. He shared how studying Korean history somehow helped him reconcile a lifelong passion for Chinese studies with his American identity. ...

Ep. 3: Software Architect Nuo Yan on avoiding shortcuts in life and the appeals of living in Japan

Nuo Yan is a Tokyo-based software architect. He was previously based in Seattle and San Francisco, and was founding engineer at multiple tech startups, one of which was acquired by Pinterest. Nuo discussed his philosophy of avoiding shortcuts in software design and implementation, the purpose of life as completing a journey instead of checking boxes, and why Japan is a great place to live for him. Nuo shared with us: * Joining a startup right out of undergrad * Reluctance in taking shor...

Ep. 1: (Mandarin) PR entrepreneur Jingzhu Yang helps Chinese business-people meet US presidents

Jingzhu Yang started her PR company AmeriChina to bring Chinese companies to high-end and exclusive American events, such as Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and charity dinners with ex US presidents. In the peak year of her business, the company made revenues of 10M RMB (1.5M USD). Jingzhu covered these topics: * Why she started AmeriChina * AmeriChina business case: VidCon LA * More business cases, including charity dinners with ex-US presidents * How US-China relation affects busi...

Chinatown 2.0: (Mandarin) Cross-border PR Entrepreneur Jingzhu Yang

Jingzhu Yang started her PR company AmeriChina to bring Chinese companies to high-end and exclusive American events, such as Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and charity dinners with ex US presidents. In the peak year of her business, the company made revenues of 10M RMB (1.5M USD). Jingzhu covered these topics: * Why she started AmeriChina * AmeriChina business case: VidCon LA * More business cases, including charity dinners with ex-US presidents * How US-China relation affects busi...

Ep. 2: Quant Trader Robbie Yan talks algo investing, governance systems and China startup scene

Robbie Yan is cofounder of a quantitatively driven hedge fund based in China. We talked about the nature of quantitative investing, governmental efficiency in China and associated tradeoffs, argument for protection of privacy, China's startup scene, and more. Robbie shared with us: * What makes good quant traders * Mistakes that might occur in quant trading * Competitive landscape in quant trading in China * Motivations in starting a quant hedge fund * Advantages of Scandinavian ...

Chinatown 2.0: Quant Trader Robbie Yan

Robbie Yan is cofounder of a quantitatively driven hedge fund based in China. We talked about the nature of quantitative investing, governmental efficiency in China and associated tradeoffs, argument for protection of privacy, China's startup scene, and more. Robbie shared with us: * What makes good quant traders * Mistakes that might occur in quant trading * Competitive landscape in quant trading in China * Motivations in starting a quant hedge fund * Advantages of Scandinavian ...