Comedian Jesse Appell Spills the Tea on Cultural Appreciation vs. Appropriation

KM: I really respect the work and dedication that you put into learning Chinese and actually trying to understand Chinese people and culture. I think anytime someone from one culture, usually white, tends to involve themselves in the cultural activities of another culture, it might raise eyebrows, especially in our current political moment that really heavily scrutinizes these cultural faux pas.

When you started getting involved in xiangsheng stand-up comedy, did you ever experience any hesitation about cultural appropriation or that there was a boundary you're overstepping?
JA: Everything that I've done in China ultimately comes down to the fact that my xiangsheng master Ding Guangquan took me on as a student. So this was a man who has studied Chinese comedy for 50 years—he was a disciple of Hou Baolin, who is probably the greatest Chinese comedian of all time—and he had spent the last 30 years of his life as the only master teacher to take foreign disciples.

But there were a couple things that he would not abide. One of them was you had to memorize your lines. You don't even deserve to be in the room with the expert if you haven't put in a little bit of homework. 

Another thing that made him very angry was when his foreign disciples were treated like they're white people or Black people doing xiangsheng and that's the bit. He was like, “No, that's not the bit. They're doing it well.” He would get very angry, and he would not take us on to TV shows where he felt the director was not having us do real comedy.

From a cultural exchange perspective, if I'm putting a real effort into it, if I'm really trying, people are super generous in that sense. I want to do well because if I'm going to make good art, I have to really put work into it.

One thing I think people get wrong with cultural appropriation or appreciation is that no one is born into the world being good at anything. Like being good at the thing is not what earns you the right to speak. In that video I did about cultural appropriation, this guy commented, “Oh, Caucasian guys shouldn't talk about Asian culture.” And I said, “No, I feel like I can because I went myself to the tea mountain, I learned from people who are willing to teach me, and I spend my time making videos.”

KM: It’s like the effort you've put in shows a level of appreciation that's not the superficial appreciation that makes people accuse others of cultural appropriation.
JA: Yeah. Good cultural exchange is done for its own sake. You don't go to your friend's house and learn how to make dumplings so you'll be the best dumpling person in the world. You go there because this is a fun thing to do. I'm going to have fun with this person, and learn while trying to make these dumplings.

If you go to learn dumplings to take meticulous notes and then start an e-commerce company making dumplings, you're going there to extract the knowledge as opposed to going in with an open mind and learning. If the why is “goal-oriented,” that can be unhealthy as well. So, you know, luckily, I think the learning and the experiencing is the fun part.

If you go to learn dumplings to take meticulous notes and then start an e-commerce company making dumplings, you're going there to extract the knowledge as opposed to going in with an open mind and learning. If the why is “goal-oriented,” that can be unhealthy as well.

KM: I love that you bring up this idea of extraction and genuine cultural exchanges. One of the things that I'm thinking about is the strain of polyglot videos on YouTube with sensationalist titles like “White guy orders in fluent Chinese and absolutely shocks waiters.” They manipulate the situation in such a way that they can switch to Chinese randomly and get a rise out of random Chinese people.
JA: There's kind of a mixed feeling I have towards a lot of language for language’s sake content. I feel like language ultimately is a tool to help people talk to other people. Like if you met an academic that was really into reading Chinese poetry and knew Chinese poetry very, very well, but refused to speak Chinese in a social setting because they were intimidated or worried? That feels weird. Have you really embraced the culture if you're not willing to at least look a little bit silly trying to speak?

KM: If you have these interests like Chinese poetry or speaking the Chinese language without genuine engagement with Chinese culture or trying to give back in some way, then Chinese culture ends up being a prop for your ego or for your business. It's very exploitative.
JA: This is something I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about, especially as an Asian American. I saw an e-commerce company that was selling Chinese medicinal gummies; it had Chinese medicinal flavors in essentially a candy, but they were also trying to say it had Chinese medicinal value, but for Chinese medicine, how much you take, how it was created, how it was prepared, all that stuff matters to the people who prescribe something like this. It doesn't have any particular Chinese medicinal importance just because you used an herb.

But a lot of these things are usually made by Chinese Americans. No one's going to be able to ask the Chinese American person where it was legit and where it wasn't because they'll feel too intimidated to ask that question. Do you feel like sometimes these localizations are done poorly? Or do you feel like generally it's so hard to do that even a poorly done one is going to be better than nothing?

KM: I often see these attempts at localization as an attempt to kind of re-integrate oneself with their ethnic heritage. I take it in good faith, even if it's kind of inaccurate in the way that you're talking about, because I totally understand the impulse, especially living in America where your culture gets extracted for value and nothing comes back to your group.
JA: Yeah, that makes sense. It’s hard to be able to tell the motive. The motive being kind of this self-discovery journey makes a lot more sense to me than the motive being like, other people are extracting my culture, so why don't I extract my culture too.

I run a tea company now and sometimes people ask me, shouldn't Asian people be making this money? That's where I bought the tea from. Asian people are making money. But at the end of the day, I'm also profiting from making the tea as well and it's a little bit tricky to tell who's profiting from where.

KM: I've seen videos where you address these call-outs for being a white dude that makes and sells tea. As an Asian American, I understand the defensiveness. It's different for Asians in Asia. Realistically, they're not going to be harmed by you trying to involve yourself in their culture because they are the dominant group in that country. For Asian Americans, they can feel very protective of themselves or older Chinese people who try to make a life in America, but don't fully understand the complex racial dynamics in the U.S.
JA: I think white Americans don't recognize how difficult it can be as that first generation immigrant to get into society. I get that sense of protectiveness because they are very vulnerable in the American system. And Americans may not even realize how vulnerable they are.

KM: On that topic, I know that you respect Chinese culture on a deep level, but I think to the less discerning eye, people are going to rage and say, “Oh my God, white guy making Chinese tea!” When you get these accusations of cultural appropriation, what is your first reaction before you respond? How do you eventually go about forming a response to these accusations?
JA: Every time I get these comments, I will take a look and ask, “Is this legit?” And usually, because I've spent 12 years being a professional cultural ambassador, usually what they're saying is not legit. Sometimes there's a more legit angle to it. For instance, if somebody's like, “This guy is stealing my culture as a Chinese American,” I might not think that's accurate. But what I do take from that is this was a sensitive thing for Chinese Americans and I should be respectful of the fact that it's sensitive, even if I believe I'm doing something that's okay. And so I'll try to address that part, because usually, that's the most interesting part. Okay, you yelled at me, which I think you're wrong for, but why did you yell at me? That's the more interesting question.

KM: I've seen you respond to people's paragraphs in your comments, too. You genuinely attempt to address these things and create a dialogue.
JA: Yeah. The dialogue is really important. You need to start from where people are. It's not like the audience being “dumb” or “bad,” or that they're “ignorant people” if they don't know, it's just an unreasonable thing for me to expect other people to know. If you live in a place with no Chinese people and no Chinese culture, maybe very few immigrants period, you're probably not going to have a very sophisticated take on whether what I'm doing is cultural appropriation. You're probably going to be working off of emotions that are not based on that much experience.

KM: Lastly, I wanted to switch gears and ask some questions about your tea shop. What made you decide that gongfu cha should be more than just a hobby?
JA: I had the hobby of drinking tea for many, many years. Back when I was originally studying abroad in China, I went to find places where I could practice my Chinese and I found out if you go to the wholesale tea market, none of them speak English. And so that was actually how I got into tea. It was always in the back of my head that, if the universe were different, or comedy cratered or wasn't working, that I could try to start a tea company, but it really didn't happen until 2020.

When the pandemic hit, I basically had more than a whole year where I couldn't perform. So I had 2.5 million fans in China, but as a foreigner, I was basically legally blocked from most of the ways that people monetized comedy online.

So I had the idea of starting a subscription tea club for my followers, but it'd be like an online cha guan'er or teahouse where we’d do online cultural events and shows, but I wouldn't be selling show tickets. I'd be selling tea. It sounds a little bit wacko, but this is my Plan G during the pandemic after plan A, B, C, D, E, and F fell through.

I started making videos and putting them on the Western Internet and people started getting really interested. They'd ask where they could buy the tea, and I thought maybe I should open up a teahouse in America. And if you could manage to get people to know it existed, it obviously would be much more valuable in the States. In China, the tea was a way around the law. In America, people were actually really interested in the tea.

I thought why not take some of the savings and start the tea company. And so that's kind of how it became more than a hobby.

KM: There are a lot of Chinese Americans out there that are disconnected from the culture for various reasons but are curious about their cultural heritage. If they wanted to explore this heritage through tea, where would you recommend they start, especially if they’re primarily English speakers?
JA: If they're English speakers, obviously I'd recommend they follow my account. I also think that, even if they or nobody in their family is a big tea drinker, there's got to be people in your local Chinese community that are into tea. Asking around in a couple of groups could be a good way to start. 

For anybody, whether they're Chinese or not, if they're interested in Chinese culture, learning the language is a great way in. It’ll be hard to get up to the point where your Chinese is really useful, but if you enjoy the process of it, I think that that will be one great way of reconnecting with the culture.

Of course, don’t be too hard on yourself if you don't know what's going on. Look, I'm Jewish, and even if I grew up in a Jewish family, there's still going to be stuff I don't know, and that doesn't mean that I'm bad at being Jewish. Similarly, if you're Chinese and you're growing up in a land that's far from your ancestry, that's just the way history worked out. 

I think the trick is like, you can't be too upset at yourself for what you don't have. So if you don't speak Mandarin, it's not really your fault. But it means that you may need to humble yourself and learn from scratch or learn from English sources, which are sometimes not as good as the Chinese ones.

I think learning the language is really key because it’s the gateway into doing everything involving the culture. If I wasn't able to talk to these people, it would be a much less soulful experience to be doing the tea work. I don't think I would have the push to do this much work with tea if I wasn't engaged with the people and speaking their language.