“Don’t worry, I’m not here to buy your properties,” He Huang deadpans at the start of her Melbourne International Comedy Festival opening night set. Huang tells a series of jokes carefully calibrated for white Australian audiences: all Asians look the same to her; all the signs in Melbourne’s CBD are in Chinese; she didn’t need to waste her money learning English to move here.
In her full set, T.E.M.U. Joke Factory, Huang tells the jokes again, only to stop and explain she has been telling them for years and they leave her feeling dead inside. As a jobbing comedian in Australia, she says, she has learned to perform as “white Chinese” – and wants to stop.
