Self-introduction

I am Jesse Appell, 艾杰西. I grew up in Boston area and went to college at Brandeis University where I joined the Brandeis GCC Chapter. I did two main things throughout high school and college. One was learning Chinese. The second was doing comedy, going on stage with no script or prompt. We just perform and figure out a way to make it funny. When I was in my junior year at Brandeis, I studied abroad in Beijing for six months. I did all those intensive language course and we made a pledge that we would speak no English in six months. By the end of six months, I travelled around China a little. I felt like I was starting to be able to really live there as opposed to just struggling with the language. 

Could you please share with us your experience as a professional comedian? 

When I graduated from college, I got a Fulbright scholarship to go back to China and research 相声. Specifically, I was looking into intercultural comedy and how Chinese humor in comedy was different from Western humor in comedy. In order to do that, I apprenticed to master 丁广泉for one year on Fulbright. Because I was having so much fun, when the Fulbright ended, I decided that it was something I wanted to keep doing. Now, I have been doing Chinese comedy eight years since college. It is great because comedy is this window into Chinese culture that is very important. It helps me connect with people on a deep personal level and gives me a better angle for looking at China than a lot American who go to China and only think about those big ideas like international relations and finance. Those big ideas may get people upset quickly, whereas if you want to make people laugh, you start with the idea that let’s try to have a good time together. I think it’s a much better way to live and it’s more productive than a lot of other ways I’ve seen people communicating with each other. That’s the story up until January. Since January, I’ve stuck here in Boston. For the last ten months, I’ve been here in America doing videos over the internet. I did a charity show to raise money for Wuhan back in February. My new things have become looking into how the Internet can be used to connecting people across culture. Especially now, when the world is gone so crazy, Internet is more and more blocked off from regular people being able to do things. It’s a lot of fun but it’s also very challenging. I’m looking forward to getting back on stage to do real shows. 

What are some challenges you met during your role as a comedian and your pursuit of this path? 

There is a challenge in trying to understand the way the audience sees you and another challenge in accepting that as a reality when your personality tells you, “no, I want to be me.” This is an artistic challenge. I think all artists want to be themselves. My job as a comedian is that if I want that to happen, I need to be good enough in making jokes that people come away with a sense of who I am. That really makes me answer the question “who am I.” If I want to be known as me, I need to know myself. 

How did you overcome the challenges you mentioned?

You will find that exact problem in America too. This may happen to people other than artists as well. What I found useful is to remember two things. One is that most people are doing it not because they are mean or bad people. They’re doing it just because they don’t know any better. In America, people have met a lot of Chinese exchange students. However, how many do you they know really well, had over to their house, and spend years of time with? Not many. So sometimes, forgiving people for not knowing because they just don’t know. The second thing is that I think it’s not a coincidence that I help solve this problem by performing. Doing something creative to tackle that challenge is important. Why would you expect anybody to really get to know you if you just know them through your job or classes? It takes another step to do something creative. When you take that extra step, you will find that there are a lot of people that can connect with you. You just need to put in the time in a way that is not purely intellectual. It has to do with culture and how you spend your time enjoying each other like going to dinner and watching movies. All that sorts of stuff make it easier to live in a second country. 

How has your experience with GCC helped you in your career or life?

For GCC, the biggest thing has been that I still keep in touch with a lot of people I met in college at GCC. I still kept in touch with the president when I was there who gave me great advice for applying to Fulbright. I kept in touch with Tyler Godoff who is the Vanderbilt chapter founder. Even with the people I haven’t kept too much in touch with, it’s amazing to see where they went to in the world. A lot of them have done really amazing things and it is a network of people that I can call up and ask about things. Now things keep moving. Why I am doing the interview? Now, this period of time has been very challenging for the US and China. I feel like I am looking at GCC in a new light. GCC was a solution to a problem that hasn’t emerged yet for me in 2012 while I was in college. It was valuable back then, but it’s more valuable now. For the solutions to all these problems between China and the U.S., I believe they are going to come from people who actually live in the other country. We need to take the responsibility for helping to solve the problems and, luckily, we are the right type of people to do it. The mission of GCC is more important than ever.