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.
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Follow Blank on Instagram
Follow your host Kuan-wen on Instagram
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Bonus episode in Mandarin
Intro
A Chinese national considered having a Taiwanese accent?
More British than American influences
Unsolicited feedback on her accent from audience members
Mandarin stand up comedy performer before English stand up
Coming from a “third-rate” Chinese city
Comedy New Act Competitions and Gong Shows
Comedy censorship in China
Turning into a more unique performer in the UK
Separate comedy materials between Mandarin and English stand up
Blank’s stage persona in Mandarin stand up
Ethnic minority comedy performers and hack jakes
Blank’s racially self-deprecating jokes and the principle of fairness
No longer performing Mandarin stand up in the UK
Why “Blank”?
Why “Blank404” for Instagram>
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Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe