He Huang: Tiger Daughter vs The World
He Huang has a way with nationality-deprecating humour that bites. When she first broke through on Australia’s Got Talent in 2022, she archly apologised for Covid before pointing out it wasn’t her fault. She spent the entire time locked down in Australia. When one douche shouted at her to go home to China, she replied to his racist retort, “But sir, there are no flights.”An instant hit, her three-minute taster that included a bit about Huang being a “leftover lady,” unmarried and not dating while in her 30s, led to her debut stand-up show Bad Bitch. It scored a nomination for Best Newcomer at last year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival and won the same category at the Sydney Comedy Festival. Huang starts her sophomore outing in the same vein, deadpan asking the assembled audience in the Chinese Museum’s Silk Room if she can record the set on her phone, only to drop, a wicked beat later, “for the Chinese government.” Apparently her schtick caused quite a ruckus back home, and not just with the bureaucrats who constantly monitor Chinese social media app Weibo. Her mother, back home in a remote and still very pro-Mao community, tells everyone that her daughter essentially lies on stage for money. Still, the gig has seen Huang graduate from the “leftovers” table at family events to her uncles’ perch, where she is expected to sink shots and gamble with aplomb. Always teetering gleefully on the edge of bad taste, Huang’s personal revelations are incredibly sex positive a