S02E10 Blank Peng, Mandarin speaker - From Fujian province, China 🇨🇳
Making headway to big comedy clubs’ paid spots within two years of arriving in the UK, Blank got into almost all the major Comedy New Act Competition finals and collected gong show wins like a dedicated Pokemon player collecting the Poke gym badges.“Blank is an incognito bilingual stand-up comic,” so goes her comedy profile on some of London’s top comedy clubs’ websites. It is not by accident she’s named Blank; it’s a deliberate choice of a stage name to keep her quite literally incognito - for understandable reasons, given part of Blank’s stand up incudes commentary on her native China. Your host to this day does not know her full real name in Mandarin.Blank shares a more nuanced picture of her home country’s censorship on the burgeoning stand up comedy scene, how comedians work with the script pre-approval compliance requirements and why places like her more obscure province’s scene allows more leeway.Having started performing stand up comedy in Mandarin first (and already doing very well), Blank is one of the fewer guests of this podcast who did not start performing in English. Instead, she had to transition into an English stand up comedy performer. She talks about why her Mandarin and English jokes are separate and why she is happy to stick to just English stand up comedy in the UK, despite the growing number of Chinese students and immigrants.---------------------------------Follow Blank on InstagramFollow your host Kuan-wen on Instagram---------------------------------If you like the episode, please share it and leave a review. For any comments or suggestions, please contact us on Instagram or email comedywithanaccent@gmail.com---------------------------------00:57 Bonus episode in Mandarin01:25 Intro02:24 A Chinese national considered having a Taiwanese accent?04:00 More British than American influences05:31 Unsolicited feedback on her accent from audience members06:12 Mandarin stand up comedy performer before English stand up08:34 Coming from a “third-rate” Chinese city10:54 Comedy New Act Competitions and Gong Shows13:40 Comedy censorship in China22:12 Turning into a more unique performer in the UK23:17 Separate comedy materials between Mandarin and English stand up24:56 Blank’s stage persona in Mandarin stand up26:29 Ethnic minority comedy performers and hack jakes31:05 Blank’s racially self-deprecating jokes and the principle of fairness32:20 No longer performing Mandarin stand up in the UK35:51 Why “Blank”?36:40 Why “Blank404” for Instagram>--------------------------------Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe