BY MIYA YONGER SHEN
It’s been three years since Kate Hu left her job as a quantitative analyst in finance to pursue stand-up comedy, a monumental career change that her traditional Chinese parents still know nothing about.
Though she earns a seventh of her previous salary – her first paycheck as a comedian was just HK$400 – Hu couldn’t be happier.
These days, the comedian has nearly 20,000 social media followers, and recently performed her largest comedy show to around 400 people at Y Theatre, Youth Square in Hong Kong.
“You never know where life will lead you. Now that I have some savings to keep me from starving, why not take a chance to see if comedy works out for me?” the 30-year-old told NüVoices in a noisy café in Hong Kong.
Having lived in Hong Kong for 12 years with Indian boyfriend and fellow comedian, Sathish Kumar, Hu’s comedy blends provocative topics like identity crises, racism, culture clashes, and interracial relationships.
In one of her viral reels on RedNote, a Chinese social media platform similar to Instagram, Hu told a joke about how Hong Kong people tend to assume mainlanders can’t speak English well.
Her jab? She practiced English to date white guys and improve her social status in Hong Kong. The joke poking fun at regional and racial stereotypes got over 3,000 likes.
Comments on the post compared her style to that of Ali Wong, a famed Asian-American comedian and actor known for her hot takes on racism, sexuality and gender stereotypes.
Wong is Hu’s idol, and she too dreams of having her own solo comedy special.
Clips from Wong’s latest stand-up show on Netflix, Ali Wong: Single Lady have been widely shared on social media in China, which has seen a rise in homegrown female comedians over the past five years, following Yang Li’s appearances on Rock & Roast, a popular Chinese comedy show.
A turning point
But Hu’s path to stand-up was no laughing matter.
Originally from Chongqing in China, Hu was every Chinese parent’s dream daughter. A model student, Hu got her bachelor’s in mathematics and engineering from the Chinese University of Hong Kong before working as a quantitative analyst in the harbour city.
At the time, a finance job meant a fancy title, an excellent salary, and the admiration of strangers.
It didn’t take long for the novelty to wear off.
“Work meant spending all day on things I don’t enjoy,” she said. In fact, it was “boring as hell.”
Swiping through dating apps after work also felt hopeless. She wasn’t even sure why she wanted a relationship in the first place.
“It’s like everything was crashing down on me at once,” Hu said.
It took a life-threatening health scare to change the trajectory of her life.
In the summer of 2020, while waiting for the result of a biopsy on a suspicious lump in her left breast, Hu was hit with a sudden realisation: she hated her job and her life.
So much so that the thought of getting cancer gave her a strange sense of relief and a valid reason to quit her job.
The lump turned out to be benign, but it left an indelible mark in Hu’s mind and she began questioning her life’s choices.
She started seeing a therapist twice a week. But the turning point came in April 2021, when a friend encouraged her to sign up for an open mic performance at Café Queen in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong.
She practiced all night before her first show, which had only a dozen people in the audience, mostly other comedians waiting for their sets and three of her friends.
She was so nervous during her five minutes on stage that she barely looked at the crowd. The only laughter, which sounded more like awkward chuckles, came from her friends.
Telling tales
But that night, something came rushing back. The thrill of performing brought back old memories, and she rediscovered the storyteller she had once been.
When she was ten, Hu watched a DVD of “Chongqing Pingshu”, a type of traditional Chinese storytelling. The tale follows a foolish woman in ancient China who married an official, leading to a series of absurd misadventures. Amused, she memorised the entire story at the time and performed it at family gatherings again and again.
Years later, in high school, she recited the same tale in front of her entire class after a teacher made her perform it as punishment for being late.
Her classmates were impressed. “Wow, we didn’t know you could perform Pingshu! That’s amazing,” she recalled them saying.
To Hu, she was just repeating old stories from others. Deep down, she longed to tell her own stories.
Even in the early days of her newfound career, Hu felt like she was imitating other English-speaking comedians, making boring jokes about American politics and United States President Donald Trump.
“I had no idea how to write jokes or what to talk about. I just ended up saying things that had nothing to do with my own life,” she said, recalling her first performance.
A week after her debut, Hu returned for her second open mic, and began talking about her experiences as an immigrant from mainland China living in Hong Kong.
It struck a chord with audiences.
A month later, she performed in front of nearly fifty people and got her first paycheck. It took another two years before Hu finally took the plunge to become a full-time comedian and handed in her resignation in November 2023.
The cost of comedy
Drawing from personal experiences, Hu’s comedy style easily resonates with her fans, yet it can come at a cost.
She once talked about how white people prove they’re better than other white people by speaking Chinese, while Chinese people prove they’re superior to other Chinese by pretending they don’t speak Chinese.
Though the live audience laughed out loud, many online users accused her of smearing Chinese and pandering to Caucasians.
Some online trolls on RedNote even made offensive stereotypes against her boyfriend.
“If mentioning race is racist, then what does that say about the people calling my boyfriend ‘stinky curry’?” she said.
At first, Hu thought the trolling wouldn’t get to her. She enjoyed replying to them to help add traffic to her content.
But she soon realised that reacting to all the hurtful comments was making her worked up and miserable.
“If I can’t control what others say, why torture myself by reading it?” Hu said.
Yet that is easier said than done, especially when a bulk of the hateful content comes from her own parents, who regularly send her offensive social media posts about Indian men.
To this day, Kumar is not allowed to visit them in their hometown in Chongqing.
Hu said she sees the humour that comes with her situation and channels it back into her comedy: “When I hear the crowd laughing, that’s my happiest moment.”
To learn more about Kate Hu, follow her on Instagram and RedNote.
About the author
Miya Yonger Shen is a youth reporter passionate about long-form and feature writing in both Chinese and English. Her work has appeared in the Paper, Initium Media and Annie Lab. View her portfolio as a fresh journalist and follow her on Instagram @miya_yonger
About the editor
Lin Taylor is a contributing editor at NüVoices. She has been a journalist, editor and producer for over a decade and currently works as a staff correspondent at the Thomson Reuters Foundation in London covering human rights.
Photo: Kate Hu (right) was hosting a dating comedy show in the Aftermath, Hong Kong. Credit: Miya Yonger Shen