Ahead of the Chinese New Year, we are rejiggling the podcast's format slightly. Our guest this week is Jesse Appell, a native English speaker from Boston, USA who performs stand up comedy in Mandarin and whose career started in China. This reverses our usual format of interviewing non-native English speakers who perform English stand up.

Known as 艾杰西 in China, Jesse has performed on Chinese TV and apprenticed over 7 years under the late Chinese Xiang Sheng* Master 丁广泉 （Ding Guang-Quan）Having started as a Fullbright scholar researching Chinese humour and performance, Jesse has an astonishing command of the Chinese language and has in your host Kuan-wen's view picked up a lot of mannerisms of a typical Chinese speaker from Northern China.

Jesse shares his experience of performing in front of Chinese audiences. He explains how he has had ...