Last weekend, in beijing's CBD, I watched Huang Xi's talk show offline, and he was polishing his strips in preparation for a national tour. At this point, it had just been a month since he appeared at the Talk Show Convention.
Originally, I invited a friend to come with her, she had just returned to China shortly after staying in the United States, and she was both familiar and unfamiliar with the domestic talk show, and she was a little surprised to hear that Huang Xi was going to take the stage: "Huang Xidu began to talk about Chinese talk show!" ”
Many people know Huang Xi because in March 2010, at the annual White House press conference on the other side of the ocean, Huang Xi performed a 15-minute talk show as the first Asian face-of-a-life stand-up comedian on stage.
He ridiculed then-U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden to his face, satirized class differences... From the perspective of a bystander, the self-conflicting and contradictory parts of American society are accurately struck.
My son sometimes asks me, "Dad, why do I have to speak two languages?" I told him, "Son, once you become president of the United States, you need to sign the legislation in English and then discuss the debt with the creditors in Chinese." ”
Decades of keen observation in the face of culture shock, at this annual meeting, was presented in a very intelligent way, Huang Xi became a popular talk show star, including Li Shi, many domestic talk show actors were inspired by it.
Huang Xi (left) and Biden (center)
Years later, Biden took office as the 46th president of the United States, and Huang Xi's experience was particularly precious. However, the discussion of him by the outside world seemed to stay that night.
Going deep into the small circle of talk shows may be able to hear Huang Xi's dynamics sporadically, but the public's vision is filled with emerging talk show stars who have a more network sense and more in line with the trend of public opinion.
Where did Huang Xi go? What have you done in these two years? Why isn't it on fire? We met Huang Xi and tried to discuss these questions with him from the outside world, but Huang Xi didn't think so, and he told me: "Fire is not fire, this is not my standard."
So what are his criteria?
Presence
When he first came into contact with talk shows, Huang Xi was a doctoral student at Rice University. In order to get into the university, he memorized the dictionary eight times in advance, 85% of which could be memorized, and often used difficult vocabulary when chatting.
On a talk show, Huang Xi once gave the simplest example, he always used "Hello" to say hello, but did not know that the more authentic term is actually "What's up", so in the process of greeting each other with friends, he made a joke.
Americans felt that he was unsociable, did not take him to any extracurricular activities, and for a long time, Huang Xi did not have a single friend around him. Later, after being exposed to comedy, an English teacher told him: "Don't use difficult words, it will make people sound boring." ”
Photograph of Huang Xi's youth
This made him once very afraid to express, "always worried that he said wrong", he told me, in the classroom, in the face of the professor's questions, even if he has a good idea, he will always be because of "English is not good" self-persuasion, often to tell the idea to the American classmates next to him, the other party will be praised.
Previously, in China, Huang Xi was one of the few scientific research talents in that era who took scholarships to go abroad to study for a doctorate, and was admitted to the Chinese Academy of Sciences with full scores in organic chemistry.
The huge gap made him start to lose himself.
Even after work, this situation has not improved. At that time, Huang Xi's English was already the best among international students, or the only one in the company to get a patent, and many white students who had just graduated had been promoted, but he never moved.
This neglected feeling is familiar to Huang Xi. When he was a child, he went to school early, 5 and a half years old, others were still in kindergarten, he was already a primary school student, the classmates around him were more "mature" than himself, huang Xi felt that he was out of place.
Someone gave him an idea: "Keeping a diary soothes his mood." Huang Xi did so, insisted on it for a year, and then he looked back at his diary, "It is not like that at all", in his memories, keeping a diary will not bring ease and relief for the rest of his life, but let the pain be repeatedly branded.
So he planned to turn the pages of the sad things and write down the happy things. From then on, he began to sharpen his humor through writing.
The school newspaper published An article by Huang Xi describing college life: "The cockroaches here are in Saeder, and I think their diet should be similar to mine." Chinese stereotypes of not being good at words and not understanding humor were broken, and Huang Xi's English teacher commented on him: "God knows this Chinese student is so interesting!" ”
And this interesting gets a more appropriate placement, but also from the talk show appeared in Huang Xi's life.
In 2001, a friend took him to a talk show, and Huang Xi felt that this form was very good: "Standing on the stage, you can put your own confused things, things that cannot be explained, and inferiority emotions through a baggage, all of which are vented out, feel the resonance, and the audience will laugh." ”
Huang Xi was at the scene of the performance
Huang Xi gradually realized that talk shows are something that gives people a sense of existence.
If it was the first time that Huang Xi felt accepted by the cultural environment in that small sports bar called Hanna, who won a $20 meal ticket on a talk show; then stepping on the stage of the Annual White House Press Conference and receiving applause from 2,500 politicians and journalists was the moment when he began to enjoy his presence.
In a later interview, he recalled how he felt at that moment: "The place where the performance was relatively high, and when I came out, I could look down on the city of Washington, and it felt particularly good, as if I had reached the top of the world." ”
outlet
The performance at the White House made Huang Xi usher in the peak of his talk show career.
The media rushed to report on him, and his news was often heard both in the United States and at home. This yellow-skinned man suddenly became an office red man. Some colleagues will print out Huang Xi's photos and paste them in the canteen; some company boards of directors will run to Huang Xi's office to greet them before the board of directors.
A large number of performance invitations poured in, crowding out almost all of his weekends. During that time, he was either performing or on his way to the show. When the schedule is particularly intensive, he also has to take a day or two off from the company, work until the end of the performance, and then go back to another job.
After a long time, Huang Xi was worried that he "could not take care of fish and bear paws."
So, at the end of 2010, Huang Xi quit his job at the company and became a full-time talk show actor, which gave him more time to devote to talk shows, almost 15 days in a month, his reputation is getting louder and louder, as long as Huang Xi appears in San Francisco, casually push the door into a club, the boss is willing to let him perform in the finale.
Stills from "Everybody Loves Raymond."
In the United States, talk shows say yes and then go to make sitcoms, which is almost a natural path. The logical humor and personality humor in the talk show are very compatible with the idea of sitcoms. Two of america's three hottest sitcoms, Everybody Loves Raymond, Seinfeld, and Friends, are the work of stand-up comedians.
Before the pandemic, Hollywood had about 300 sitcoms a year. Watching sitcoms has long been the norm for locals. The market is promising, and Huang Xi also regards sitcoms as an outlet for his talk shows. Soon after he became famous, he formed a partnership with the producers of "Everybody Loves Raymond" and planned a sitcom of his own.
But when he really got to Hollywood, he felt how small the space given to Asians was. The other party had told him directly that Hollywood could not have family dramas starring Asians. This view is not without evidence, as mentioned in a university of Southern California study that only about 5% of all U.S. film and television dramas in 2014 had lines belonging to Asian actors.
And that's just the public level. Huang Xi told me that more often than not, it is the kind of invisible, more subtle discrimination that surrounds your life. It is hidden in all corners of American society, even systematic.
"It's not so much that he was deliberately ostracized, but that no one cares at all," he remembers talking about talk shows at the beginning, and on stage, the audience laughed happily, but offstage, he couldn't even remember his name. "The audience can only remember the names of white people". Huang Xi felt helpless.
People's points of interest often have the characteristics of profit-seeking, and they may pay close attention to those related to their own interests, but they have little to do with themselves, and even novel things may not be able to attract attention. Huang Xi told me that in American society, everything about Asians is precisely in this position, "The history of Asians is rarely mentioned in history books." ”
Huang Xi once ridiculed this in the passage, and one day his son came home and suddenly said to him: "Dad, the school taught American history today, and black people are really pitiful." The conversation turned and sighed: "Fortunately, I am white..." Huang Xi said, "Wait a minute, you're not white, you're yellow." ”
In the absurd social environment of dividing the right to speak according to the "color number", the younger generation has no place to find its own source. Huang Xi felt that an invisible ceiling was pressing down on him, "Maybe I will do it like that again."
He remembered the situation before he entered the major universities in China to give speeches. Although in this land, the geographically close Beijing-Tianjin cross-talk, sketches, and northeast two-person transfers have penetrated into various circles. But talk shows that rely solely on logic, the life experiences of performers and personalities to amuse people are still loved by those college students.
Importantly, this is not a form of comedy based on any one dialect. Without relying on a certain emotional grip that quickly closes the distance, it can occupy the audience, and the talk show may have its own logic.
It was also at this time that CCTV's newly established program "Is It True" invited him to serve as the host, and Huang Xi left his talk show career in the United States, took his wife and children, and returned to China to start his first personal program. Everything seems to be moving in a good direction.
internet
At home, his talk show career is facing a whole new environment, with the excitement of breaking new ground and the difficulty of going from zero to one. "Is It True" is not a real talk show, a talk show, more like an element in it, with its own entertainment color, to help this science and education-based program close to the audience.
Huang Xi still wants to do an ideal talk show, or sitcom.
A sitcom on hand, which he has been doing for several years since he returned home, has never been made. "I'm embarrassed to talk too much", in the face of the media, this work that has been delayed in taking shape makes Huang Xi feel embarrassed. He laughed at himself for "not working hard enough" and lamented his bad luck.
During that time, the cultural industry was catching up with the "IP fever", two national sitcoms "Family with Children" and "Love Apartment", successive sequels were launched under the support of capital, but they did not receive too good feedback in the market, this status quo made the platform have doubts about sitcoms, Huang Xi looked for the past, and no one even treated his project as a drama.
Huang Xi at the Talk Show Conference
On the stage of "Talk Show Conference", the passage that Huang Xi told really happened in reality. Investors who originally planned to support him in the drama turned around and invested in the blockchain. Not long after, the other party felt that the talk show was hot, and he found Huang Xi: "I heard that the recent talk show is very profitable, can you borrow me?" ”
It seems that everyone is in a hurry, more efficient, and prefers things that have immediate results.
At that time, Huang Xi performed in offline clubs and bars for nearly eight years in order to make a name for himself on the talk show. In fact, the scouts found him very early and would regularly investigate, but they never acted easily.
Insisting until the fifth or sixth year, in addition to himself, the people around him have already been on the show, and Huang Xi thought about giving up. If the same situation is staged in China, it may be performed by the 6th month, and it will already be competed for by the platform and the club.
"But can this be called art?" Huang Xi has always felt that doing talk shows still depends on whether the passages are written maturely and whether the views are clear and unique, "If a practitioner can be popular all over the country for 6 months, it can only mean that what he does is not art." ”
The environment is impetuous, and the time for everyone to concentrate is getting shorter and shorter. Even Huang Xi himself, it is difficult to set aside a fixed time every day to concentrate on creation. "One moment is WeChat, the other is the phone", all kinds of information are like countless noisy voices, surrounded by. "You say that billions of people are creating spam, how much time must be wasted," he lamented.
In the past, people always fantasized that in the era of advanced science and technology, life may show another wonderful appearance: from one place to another place, material transmission can be carried out directly; two people on the phone, appearing in front of each other is not only video, but also holographic projection...
But now, all this seems to have not been realized, and the development of the Internet has only made more people stare at the small screen of mobile phones anxiously. Huang Xi and I discussed the situation of being surrounded by spam information on a daily basis: "You must have also been drawn closer to a lot of WeChat groups, where 95% of the information is fake. ”
If it's just entertainment, it doesn't seem like a big problem. But what about when people have deeper needs, especially when they relate to some of the larger propositions, to ask more essential questions? Huang Xi felt that talk shows should perhaps take on this responsibility.
In the Internet era, people spend a lot of time looking for the ideal state on the Internet, but they ignore the real life. Between people, the distance on the Internet is getting closer and closer, but in reality the distance is getting farther and farther, and the whole world is moving towards a flat state.
Everyone becomes lonely, everyone craves communication, longs for connection, and in talk shows, people collide ideas based on the same dimension, which becomes possible. Everyone laughs at the same frequency, finds a sense of presence, and can also convey some ideas.
"In the past, the spirit of an era may have been embodied through books or philosophies, and in the new era, it may have been reflected through talk shows." In Huang Xi's view, compared with other carriers, talk shows are more suitable for the current environment, "talk shows have a strong appeal, that kind of instant impact, will be more powerful." ”
Everything seemed to show him that there were bigger opportunities for talk shows.
variation
Huang Xi is also making other attempts.
The era of short videos has struck, and his talk show variety show has new possibilities. Huang Xihe and the team, on the one hand, are trying to change the content to be shorter and closer to the requirements of the short video platform in terms of duration; on the other hand, they are also exploring a new form of program that is more suitable for talk shows in addition to competitions.
Recorded audio lessons have a certain score, on the Zhihu platform once occupied the first place in sales, although in the United States, the means of transportation is relatively single, when everyone is stuck on the road, audio as a universal pastime, is not new. But in China, with the blessing of the Internet concept, this track is still in the field of blue ocean.
Huang Xi's new book "Get Out of The Egg And Inferiority" is based on the development of this audio program.
Huang Xi's new book "Get Out of The Egg Bar Inferiority"
Even "Laughing Fang" is also on the road of video, "We have some good offline things, thinking about getting online through short videos or live broadcasts." As a talk show club created by Huang Xi after returning to China, "Laughing Fang" has existed for many years, and has been located in Fangjia Hutong, affected by the epidemic, and is still looking for a new venue.
Huang Xi admits that the transformation of the media will cause a certain loss to the energy contained in the content of the talk show.
Different platforms, characteristics, habits are different. The most critical thing is that the problems solved are different. Performing on stage, the laughing audience may be placed in a more important position, while writing a book offstage may emphasize more on providing solutions to the problems encountered by readers in different situations.
Similarly, talk shows in different scenes feel different. For example, the stage of variety shows and the stage offline, not only the performers, but also the feelings of the live audience are also very different. "After the voice goes out, the gas is dissipated", before the interview began, in small talk, Huang Xi expressed his discomfort on the stage of "Talk Show Conference".
"Change" is probably becoming his most important topic. At the beginning, I took the initiative to realize this, it was the change in the surrounding environment, when I had just returned to China to work, Huang Xi witnessed the earth-shaking changes in this familiar land in more than a decade. "I used to be in Haidian, I never saw the highway at all, I remember a classmate in the Olympic Village, we want to see him, we have to prepare good food and drinks in advance."
This overwhelming freshness brings a strong stimulus, and as an individual, it may be more painful to feel. Whenever this time comes, people face a psychological pull: do they accept change, or do they stick to themselves? Maybe before you think it through, newer things are catching up, and this change is dizzying. It's like being in the middle of the ocean, always in the midst of ocean currents.
Even the topic of "change" itself presents a fluidity.
He wasn't alone in the experience, it was probably an anachronistic sentiment. I proposed the term "sense of drifting", and Huang Xi agreed. China's rural population has dropped from 90 percent to 50 percent, and these people feel adrift when they come to the cities. "Even if you are a local in Beijing, if your home moves from the second ring road to the fifth ring road, you may have a sense of wandering," Huang Xi quipped, "as long as you live in modern life, many people have this feeling." ”
He wanted to look at the problem as optimistically as possible. Pain is not only painful, it can also keep people awake.
Americans in the 60s and 70s had to move every once in a while, in order to earn more money to support their families, and now, the whole country is almost unmoved, in Huang Xi's eyes, this is the key reason for the decline in american social vitality and creativity, "when the sense of drift is strong, everyone does not look at the background, and it is easier to resonate with each other." ”
He told himself early on to accept this "sense of drift." Back to the beginning of this feeling, before and after talking about talk shows, "At that time, I gave up some things and then began to accept, probably not a very perfect, ideal person." 」 ”
It was also from that time that he let go of his baggage and gradually realized that the meaning of life may not be the definition at the beginning, but to find it little by little. "I used to hate the elders, especially my father, and told me about the words 'if you come, then be safe', but now it makes sense to think about it, it is impossible to live without change, and when change comes, you should also adapt to it." 」
This may also be the reason why Huang Xi is determined to do talk shows. "Talk shows are like this, it 'detaches' a performer from life, you have to observe life. But at the same time as detachment, you are still living in the process. I think this state is very good, not isolated from the world, but still able to maintain a certain distance from life. ”
Just like the point that Huang Xi has always emphasized, talk shows give people a sense of existence. The matter of "working for eternity" is left to time.
Near the end of the interview, Huang Xi's eyes shone with brilliance:
"It's a tragedy and a comedy, see what you think. All things, you can see it as a tragedy, you can also look at it as a comedy. They say the core of comedy is tragedy, I don't feel. Comedy is tragedy, tragedy is comedy, they are one. So the whole life is a very grand comedy, constantly looking for some smaller baggage, step by step towards their own 'baggage'."
This is not a story of a wanderer returning to his homeland and reintegrating into his homeland, but we are telling the story of a person living with change.