Jimmy Yang - How to American

“So you’re not here to visit family or anything?”

“I mean I have a friend in town that I’m planning to see.”

“What’s his name?”

“Shawn… Warner.”

“Sir, why don’t you come with me.”

Fuck.

She led me to a back room where, once again, there was a man holding an assault rifle. I was once again detained at the border. It was like déjà vu. It doesn’t matter which citizenship I possess, I should generally stop lying at any country’s border. She whispered something to the Teflon-vested man and she took a seat across from me. Her Canadian smile was gone. She said:

“Why don’t you tell me the truth?”

You know when your mom catches you in an obvious lie, but you still try to stand your ground because you don’t want to get caught lying? This was exactly that, except Mom doesn’t have an armed guard behind her.

“I was telling the truth ma’am. I’m here to get away for a little vacation. Here to have fun.”

“Nobody comes to Winnipeg to have fun,” she said bluntly.

I couldn’t argue with that. I guess I underestimated just how shitty Winnipeg was. I didn’t know what to say. She typed something into the computer.

“Are you a stand-up comedian?”

“Umm…” How did she know that?

“Are you opening for Shawn Wayans this weekend?”

What the fuck? Is she psychic?

“Umm… No…” I resisted with one last lie.

She turned the computer screen around and showed me.

“Then why does it say on your Facebook page, ‘I’m going to be in Winnipeg, Canada, this week — Rumor’s Comedy Club! Opening for Shawn Wayans. Get your tickets now!’”

That was the most embarrassing moment of my life. I wished the guard would shoot me with the assault rifle to put me out of my misery. I put my hands over my face, not sure if I should cry or laugh at my own stupidity. She pressed on:

“Why did you feel like you had to lie?”

The jig was up, now I had to beg for mercy. “I am so sorry, I’m just a stupid person. I have no idea why I lied. I’ve never been on a business trip before. I’m so sorry.”

She shook her head at this pathetic liar, and then she looked over to the armed guard. “What should we do with him?”

The guard said, “It’s up to you. You can let him stay, or send him back to where he came from.”

The same words the Tijuana border patrol said to me ten years ago haunted me again. But then I realized, this time “send him back to where he came from” meant sending me back to America, not Hong Kong. As twisted as it may sound, I felt pretty good about that sentence. Even though I was a stupid liar, for the first time in my life somebody actually saw me as an American citizen, not a Chinese immigrant. On the brink of getting deported from Canada, I felt more American than ever. America is now “where I came from.” I made it! I’m an American!

She decided to have mercy on me and let me through to Winnipeg, where I performed nine sold-out shows with Shawn Wayans. Who said nobody comes to Winnipeg to have fun? Winnipeg was a blast for this American.

HOW TO HONG KONG

I hadn’t been back to Hong Kong in seventeen years. A part of me had always avoided going back to the motherland. I was nervous it would ruin the perfect childhood I remembered; I didn’t want to risk changing the perception of the positive memories I had from Hong Kong. What if Hong Kong is nothing like I remember?

I finally had an undeniable excuse to go back to Hong Kong when I landed a role in the Crazy Rich Asians movie filming in Singapore. Crazy Rich Asians is based on the New York Times best-selling book of the same name, written by Kevin Kwan. It takes us into a semi-fictional world of the ridiculously fabulous lifestyles and first-world problems of the filthy rich billionaire families living in Singapore. Kevin wanted to “introduce a contemporary Asian to the North American audience.” When the movie was announced, it made waves in the Asian community. Crazy Rich Asians would mark the first American major studio movie in twenty-five years to feature a full Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club. The actors, the producers and the director, Jon Chu, all shared the same sense of pride and responsibility to properly represent Asians in mainstream media with this monumental opportunity. This was our chance to show the world that we are just as brilliant, just as good looking and just as funny as everyone else in Hollywood. This was our key to open the doors for all the amazing Asian talents in cinema.

The most talented, most beautiful and funniest Asian actors from every corner of the world came together for this movie. There were no egos or superstars on the set. We all understood that we were making something much bigger than ourselves. We had Chinese legend Michelle Yeoh; Chinese American actors Constance Wu, Harry Shum Jr., Nora Lum and myself; Korean American comedy superstar Ken Jeong; Filipino American comedian Nico Santos; Chinese British actress Gemma Chen; Japanese British actress Sonoya Mizuno; Chinese Australian actors Chris Pang, Ronny Chieng, Remy Hii; British Malaysian leading man Henry Golding; and local Singaporean A-listers Fiona Xie and Pierre Png. It was my first time working with all of these amazing talents, but there was an immediate familiarity among all of us. Even though we were brought up in different countries, where some of us were immigrants and some of us were second and third generation, we shared the same experience of growing up Asian. We had all experienced being seen as Asian before being seen as American, British or Australian. We all shared the same experience of calling every older family friend “Uncle” and “Auntie.” And we all grew up thinking it was a farfetched idea to become an actor. It was an incredible feeling to be among these amazingly talented Asian brothers and sisters who understood each other. Everyone made each other feel even more proud to be Asian. For once in my life, I wanted to flaunt my Asian side instead of hiding it to fit in as somebody else.

Ever since I immigrated to America, I tried my hardest to be American. I made it a point to make friends from every ethnic background, instead of just Asian friends. I fought so hard to not be grouped in with the other Asians in college. I didn’t want to be the Chinese kid who only hung out with other Chinese kids; I thought that was so lame and stereotypical. But after the Crazy Rich Asians shoot, I finally got it. It wasn’t about choosing to hang out with people of the same skin tone; it was about hanging out with people who shared the same point of view because they had gone through the same experiences. One of my favorite lines in the Crazy Rich Asians script was “I didn’t have to explain myself that I’m Asian here, I’m just another person.” During the Crazy Rich Asians shoot in Singapore, everyone saw me as who I am. I wasn’t just the Asian kid; I could just be the funny guy, instead of the Asian guy who is funny. I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. It was the first time in seventeen years that I didn’t have to prove to anyone, or myself, that I was more than the token Asian guy.

Crazy Rich Asians made me want to get in touch with my roots instead of running away from them. I flew to Hong Kong after we wrapped filming in Singapore. I went back to the motherland with a newly found sense of pride in my culture and myself. It had been so long that I got the same culture shock when I arrived in Hong Kong as I did the first day I arrived in Los Angeles. Instead of eight-lane boulevards filled with cars and strip malls, the streets in Hong Kong were packed with a sea of people and shops in a concrete jungle. The alleyways told the history of Hong Kong, with classic BBQ ducks hanging from the restaurant windows, century-old flea markets selling household items and mysterious fortune tellers preaching to the superstitious. I was captivated by the image of an old man wearing a wifebeater pushing an old wooden dolly in front of an ultramodern fifty-story glass building. The old Chinese culture blends perfectly with the new Westernized world. The city felt alive. In LA, I can walk for fifteen minutes and not see a single soul in a land of strip malls. In Hong Kong, you can’t help but bump shoulders with the hundreds of people crossing the streets with purpose. There’s an adventure in every corner of this controlled chaos. Even with all the people and stimulation in the streets, I felt a sense of ease in Hong Kong. It felt like home.