How to American Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Jimmy O. Yang

  Photos courtesy of the author. Page 206 photo courtesy of Jason Fredrickson.

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  Da Capo Press

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

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  First Edition: April 2018

  Published by Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Editorial production by Christine Marra, Marrathon Production Services. www.marrathoneditorial.org

  Set in 12.5-point Dante MT

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress

  ISBN 978-0-306-90349-6 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-306-90350-2 (e-book)

  E3-20180202-JV-PC

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Foreword by Mike Judge

  Prologue

  1. How to Asian

  2. How to Immigrant

  3. How to Thuglife

  4. How to Get High

  5. How to Stand Up

  6. How to Strip Club DJ

  7. How to Make It

  8. How to Silicon Valley

  9. How to Hollywood

  10. How to American

  Epilogue

  FOREWORD

  When we first cast Jimmy O. Yang in Silicon Valley, I didn’t know anything about him. I just had a good feeling about him based on his audition. I had no idea that the accent he was doing was not the way he normally spoke and that his persona was very different from that of the character he was playing in our show, Jian Yang. I also didn’t know that he had graduated with a degree in economics from UCSD, the same school I graduated from many years earlier, or that he graduated in 2009, the year that I gave the commencement speech, and that he had attended it and apparently had been somewhat inspired to go into comedy by what I said. I found all this out after we had been working on set for a couple days.

  Jimmy and I hit it off right away and became fast friends. As you’ll notice when you read this book, he’s a funny guy with an interesting and unique perspective on things in this country. You don’t often hear the stories about Chinese immigrants. At least it seems that way to me. I think maybe it’s because we Americans just don’t ask. Jimmy and I hung out quite a bit and I became interested in his story. It’s an interesting one. He’s had quite a journey. From being a child Ping-Pong star in Hong Kong, to coming to America and becoming a stand-up comedian, achieving his dream of being a strip club DJ only to discover how sad and depressing that is, to becoming a successful TV and movie actor, Jimmy has really experienced America like few have.

  When we were shooting the first season of Silicon Valley, we had no idea if the show would become a hit and go on for more seasons, or if it would flop and be quickly forgotten. We were all just working away trying our best to make it good and hoping it would work. Jimmy always had a great optimism about him, and when we’d talk about the show it would make my cynical ass believe that maybe it could be a hit.

  And then it was. And as we went on to do additional seasons, Jimmy’s character quickly became a cornerstone of the show. He also became my favorite character to write for around season three. There’s something great and stoic about Jian Yang that Jimmy embodies perfectly. I know that sometimes language-barrier jokes can be considered easy by comedy snobs, but Jimmy makes it all work in a really great way.

  I was already getting a sense that Jian Yang was becoming a favorite character on the show, but it really hit me when we were doing a panel at Comic-Con San Diego in 2016. We were in one of the big rooms with a couple thousand people (I’m bad with crowd numbers but it was at least that, maybe three or four thousand), and someone asked if there was going to be more Jian Yang next season. This was followed by thunderous applause, which was followed by even more thunderous applause when I said yes. Jimmy was officially famous.

  Part of my inspiration for the show Silicon Valley came from back when I was working as an engineer. And at my first engineering job, I had an Iranian friend who worked there too, who said something that always stuck with me. He said that this really is the land of opportunity, but most Americans just don’t see it because they’re simply too used to it. They don’t appreciate it and they don’t take advantage of it as much as people who move here from other countries do. When you come to America from a place like Iran, you get here and you just marvel at all the opportunities and the freedom. Reading this book, you get the sense that Jimmy had that same experience, and he did not waste the opportunity at all. He worked his ass off for everything he has.

  Jimmy’s experience is uniquely American. You just don’t hear these kinds of stories from other countries. Okay, somebody slap me. I’m getting too patriotic.

  Here’s something I’ll never forget about Jimmy. Before the first season of Silicon Valley had aired, Jimmy and I were sitting at the bar at a restaurant in Santa Monica. (Now when I’m out with him, we are often interrupted by fans who recognize him and want to take selfies.) I was asking him about China. He was saying that if you’re an ordinary American and you go to China, it’s like being a movie star. Everyone stares at you and wants to be around you. He said it’s the same if an American goes to Cuba. Then he paused for a second, looked down at his drink and said, “There’s nowhere I can go.” Well, Jimmy, now there’s nowhere you can’t go without being recognized like a star. Welcome to America, Jimmy O. Yang.

  Mike Judge

  PROLOGUE

  “I eat the fish.”

  I said this to my roommate, in my thick Chinese accent.

  “I know you eat the fish, but when you clean the fish, you can’t just leave the fish head and guts and shit in the sink, because the whole house smells like a bait station. So you got to put it in the trash, then take the trash out. Do you understand?” my big, curly-haired American roommate explained to me, pointing at the leftover fish parts in the sink.

  I stared at him, confused. And I replied, “Yes, I eat the fish.”

  “Motherfuck!” he howled in complete frustration.

  The whole crew burst out in laughter. That was my second day on the set of Silicon Valley, an HBO show created by one of my comedy heroes, Mike Judge. It was my big break in Hollywood. My character, Jian Yang, is a fresh-off-the-boat Chinese immigrant whose struggle with the English language often leads to comical misunderstandings with his buffoonish roommate, Erlich Bachman, played by the impeccable T. J. Miller. It felt natural for me to play this character. I was once a fresh-off-the-boat Chinese immigrant myself. I was Jian Yang.

  When my family immigrated to America from Hong Kong, I was a thirteen-year-old boy who looked like an eight-year-old girl. I didn’t even speak enough English to understand the simplest American slang. On my first day of school in America, a girl came up to me and said:

  “What’s up?
”

  I stared at her, confused. I had never heard this term before.

  She repeated, “What’s up?”

  I looked up into the sky to check “what is up” there. There wasn’t anything. I looked back down at her and replied, “I don’t know.”

  She finally realized I was either foreign or severely mentally handicapped. So she explained:

  “‘What’s up?’ means ‘How are you doing?’”

  “Oh, okay. I’m up. Thank you.”

  Then someone in the distance screamed out, “Heads up!” I turned to reply, thinking it was another American greeting. Instead, I was greeted by a weird oblong object flying right at me and hitting me straight in the gut; I later learned that was an American football.

  This wasn’t an episode of Silicon Valley; this was my life.

  CHAPTER ONE

  HOW TO

  ASIAN

  My life growing up in Hong Kong was like a bad stereotype. I played the violin, I was super good at math, and I played Ping-Pong competitively. In China, people take Ping-Pong seriously. It’s not just a drunken frat house game; Ping-Pong is a prestigious national sport. The Ping-Pong champs in China are national heroes, like Brett Favre without the dick pics. Everyone from your five-year-old neighbor to your seventy-year-old aunt knows how to slice up some sick spins. My parents signed me up for Ping-Pong classes early on. I had quick feet and a lightning backhand. Soon I was competing in the thirteen-and-under Hong Kong championship leagues. I always had good form, but I was always smaller and weaker than the other kids. My dad would give me a pep talk before every match:

  “Jimmy, even though you are short, even though you are weak, and the other kid is way better than you… You are going to do okay.”

  He wasn’t exactly Vince Lombardi, but thanks, Dad.

  My tiny size eventually paid off when I was asked to test out a brand-new line of Ping-Pong tables with adjustable heights. They invited pro players to play with the kids and it was broadcast on the local news. It was a big deal. That was my big TV debut; I was ten years old. My perfect form and tiny stature made for an adorable display at the Ping-Pong table. The news camera found its way to me and gave me a personal close-up interview. The reporter asked me:

  “How do you like these new tables?”

  “I like them, because you can adjust them to be shorter, and I am short.”

  It was soooooo cute.

  The next day, the news station called my family and asked me to come back for a full studio interview. This kid was a fucking star! I went on the show with my dad and crushed the interview. There were three cameras in the studio and I was a natural, swiveling my head from A camera to C camera, charming seven million people in Hong Kong with every line I uttered. Everyone thought I was the star Ping-Pong prodigy. I became the coolest kid in school and the pride and joy of my family. Everyone called me the golden-boy TV star. I felt like a celebrity. A few months later, I competed in a youth tournament representing my school. I was the favorite to win it all. But I faltered in front of the whole school. I lost 21-3 to a no-name newcomer, two matches in a row. Everybody was shocked; it was like Mike Tyson getting knocked out by Buster Douglas. The boy they once believed in was just a fraud. I couldn’t back up my hype with my skills. I was definitely more a looker than a player. I was an imposter destined to be an actor.

  I’ve always felt like an outsider, even as a Chinese kid growing up in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was a thriving British colony with its own government, and people in Hong Kong often looked down at their neighbors from Mainland China. Even though I was born in Hong Kong, my parents were mainlanders from Shanghai. I’d speak Cantonese in school, Shanghainese back home and watch TV shows in Mandarin. These Chinese dialects sounded as different as Spanish and Italian. My schoolmates in Hong Kong always called me “Shanghai boy.” I had to stand up for myself when kids made fun of me for speaking to my parents in Shanghainese, wearing clothes from Shanghai and eating the Shanghainese food I brought to school. I didn’t mind the teasing, but I’d always felt out of place, even in the city I was born in. This turned out to be some early practice on fitting in when we immigrated to America.

  Everyone in Hong Kong has a legal Chinese name and an English nickname. My legal name is a four-character Chinese name. My family name is a rare two-character last name, , Ou Yang, and my given name is , Man Shing, which means “ten thousand successes” in Chinese. It’s a hopeful name that is sure to set me up for failure. No matter how successful I become, I can never live up to my parents’ ten thousand ambitions. Jimmy was my English nickname given to me by my parents.

  I grew up in a tight-knit nuclear family with my parents and an older brother. My mom’s name was Amy, because it sounded close to her Chinese nickname Ah-Mee. My dad named himself Richard “because I want to be rich,” he explained to me. And my brother was named Roger, after my parents fell in love with Roger Moore’s portrayal of 007. Roger Ou Yang never liked his English name; he thought it sounded like an old white guy. So he changed his English name to Roy, an old black guy’s name. I asked my parents why they named me Jimmy. They didn’t really have an answer. My dad said, “It just sounded pretty good.”

  My mom is a fashionable lady who is too ambitious to be just a housewife. She was the stay-at-home mom turned career woman, becoming the general manager at a high-end clothing store in Hong Kong, aptly named Dapper. Mom is a people person but she is also very blunt. It’s definitely a cultural thing. Asian ladies will tell you exactly what is wrong with your face, in front of your face, as if they were helping you. I always have to brace myself when I visit my parents. My mom often greets me with a slew of nonconstructive criticisms: “Jimmy ah, why is your face so fat? Your clothes look homeless and your long hair makes you look like a girl.” After thirty years of this, my self-image is now a fat homeless lesbian.

  Mom has always been a shrewd shopper. She’s not cheap but it’s all about finding a good deal. I once bought a fifty-dollar T-shirt at full price; she almost had a stroke.

  “Jimmy! You spent fifty dollars on that shirt?! Are you crazy?! I can buy you five shirts in China for ten dollars!”

  Then my dad tested the quality of the material by rubbing his thumb and index finger on the shirt. “Not even a hundred percent cotton. Garbage.”

  It took me a long time to come to terms with buying anything outside of Ross.

  My dad is a sharp businessman and entrepreneur. He started a thriving medical equipment business in the early nineties in Hong Kong and then later became a financial adviser at Merrill Lynch when we came to America. He is the ultimate critic. He is a food critic, a movie critic and a people critic. Every restaurant we go to, he complains about the food, the service and even the utensils. He’s like a walking Yelp review:

  “The beef is tougher than a piece of cardboard. This is worse than the crap I ate during the Communist revolution.”

  “How are you going to call yourself a high-end restaurant if you use disposable chopsticks? I feel like I’m eating at Panda Express.”

  “The waiter is such an asshole. Why does he have red hair? He’s fifty years old. He looks like a degenerate gambler.”

  The only restaurant he never complains about is Carl’s Jr. He can devour two six-dollar burgers in one sitting, an impressive feat for anyone, especially a seventy-year-old Chinese dude.

  Food is the glue in every Chinese family, and ours was no different. Chinese people are the biggest foodies in the world; there’s a saying in China: “People put food first.” We took dinner very seriously. There are always four homemade Chinese dishes and a gourmet soup du jour with a side of freshly made rice. Dad was serious about dinnertime. Every night at seven, he would yell at the top of his lungs, “Come eat dinner!” If we were a minute late, he would storm into me and my brother’s FIFA game: “Do you want to eat or do you want to starve to death? Dinner. Now!” We wouldn’t dare hit another button on the controller.

  Dad was the head chef of the family. He special
ized in Shanghainese cuisine, like his perfect recipe for red braised pork. Every day, Dad got off work at four and started cooking at five. My mother was a decent cook too, but every time she made dinner my dad would criticize her cooking. “Amy, this is too watery. You need to broil the mushrooms in high heat, not simmer in low heat.” He relegated her cooking duties to an occasional simple tofu dish. Dad was actually a bit embarrassed by his cooking prowess. In the patriarchal Chinese culture, the woman is supposed to be the stay-at-home housewife and do all the cooking. Once in a while, Dad made sure to remind me, “Don’t end up cooking in the kitchen like me, that should be a woman’s job. But what am I supposed to do? I cook better than your mom.” Some might call this misogyny; in my family it was irony.

  My brother and I were responsible for cooking the rice. And there was nothing that made my dad angrier than fucking up the rice. The amount of water I put in the rice cooker could mean life or death. Cooking rice is an art form. If I put too little water in the cooker, the rice would be raw inside; if I put too much water in the cooker, the rice became a mushy porridge. It was a lot of pressure to make it right, because the entire five-course meal my dad whipped up depended on the consistency of the rice. Every night I felt like the pit crew member who had to change the tire of a Formula One race car. It was a thankless job, but if I fucked it up, I blew the entire race for everyone. I’d be nervously sitting at the dinner table, waiting for my dad to take the first bite of the rice. If it was cooked right, there would be no compliments, but if it was not cooked right:

  “Motherfucker!” my dad would scream to the high heavens in Shanghainese. “This rice is raw. Who made the rice today?” And I’d shamefully raise my incapable hand. It was always my fault; my brother cooked the rice perfectly every time.

  We never had space for a proper pet growing up in the small apartments in Hong Kong. When I was five, my brother and I got a couple of tadpoles, and we managed to raise them into frogs. That was our puppy. Then when I turned eight, my dad surprised us with a few fluffy warm-blooded pets: he came home with three pet chicks. They were the cutest little baby chickens. We put them in a spacious cage on our twentieth-floor balcony with a sweet view of the city. We weren’t allowed to take them out and play with them because their pecks were rather painful. But we got to pet them through the cage and I used to stare at their cute fluffy yellow feathers for hours. We even gave them English names. My favorite was Gary; he was the smallest but the most energetic one. He reminded me of myself. Watching them grow was like watching a tadpole slowly transform into a frog. I was so proud of our progress. One day, I came home from school to visit little Gary and his friends, only to find the cage was empty. I panicked. I checked around the balcony, the living room, the bedrooms, and I couldn’t find them anywhere. Oh my God, did they fall off the balcony? Then I went up to my dad in the kitchen: