Terrace House, Hasan Hates Ronny: 3 Must-Watch Picks for AAPI Heritage Month
Here I am wearing lucky red, drinking boba at 10 at night, hair looking like a Kumon kid staying up doing air abacus all so you can watch me spit stereotypes for your entertainment. Happy AAPI Heritage Month!
Are your asian parents right?
Should you be a Writer or Accountant? This FREE Decision Tree Will Tell You!Read Full Transcript
Sophia Chang (00:00)
Okay, I am calling it: autoimmune diseases hate Asians, and the Asian it hates the most is me.
Happy Asian American month, everybody, on The Sophia Chang Show. I have been looking forward to recording this since 2025. I had guests lined up, really cool Asian American brothers lined up for you guys. However, you know what took me out? The common cold. I am on immunosuppressants for my neurological disease, and that plus round after round of chemo has destroyed my immune system so that I catch a common cold and instead of fighting it off, it just gets worse and worse and worse.
Stop coughing with your mouth open and wear your damn mask, people.
I wanna jump right into being Asian American. Three pieces of Asian media that I saw that are excellent.
Number one.
Hasan Hates Ronny, Ronny Hates Hasan. Hasan Minhaj — Google, how do you pronounce Hasan Minhaj's name?
Google: "Hey guys, this is Hasan Minhaj."
Sophia: Hasan Minhaj and Ronny Chieng have had this bit since The Daily Show about how they hate each other and which one is the real Asian. This mic, I swear to God, is too heavy for this faded Snape shirt. They have had a bit since The Daily Show about how they hate each other and which one is the real Asian. And so they decided to pay off this extremely long-running fake rivalry. I shouldn't say fake because that's going to ruin their show. They had their very real rivalry and they had this show where it was basically Asians versus Indians. Who's going to save America? Who's going to make America great again? Who can fix our environment? The education system? Health care?
It was so funny, so incisive. I'm so jealous of comedians and stand-up comedy. I've done a few in my lifetime. It is really hit or miss. There was one I did to just a small group of comedians and they didn't laugh at a single thing I did. Comedians are like the hardest fucking audience. There was another one that I did to a bunch of Asian Americans and I killed. I wasn't trying to be a comedian. It's just something that they recommend all actors do because once you do some standup, nothing else will phase you. I promise you this, especially if you do comedy in front of other comedians. I mean, if you can limp away from that with your dick still attached, you're good.
The thing that I'm so jealous about with comedians is that they can say things that I always say in my real life and in front of my friends, but if I were to record it right now — if you were a fly on the wall in my home and heard what we say here — I would be cancelled in negative five seconds. Like Satan would come out of hell and be like, whoa, a woman, a woman saying those words. Uh-uh.
I'm just really jealous. I mean, obviously these are men, so they may be brown and yellow men, but they're still men. And so they can say things that I can only say privately. Those of you who have my number and are my personal friends know what I'm talking about. Snitches get fishes. That doesn't even rhyme.
Number two.
I don't know why I'm like — this is like, you know how Asians want to be hard?
We are watching Terrace House right now. In this house, we are big time into Korean and Japanese dating shows. We would be into Chinese dating shows, but America hates China and so we don't get any Chinese imports. And we don't even get any — like Taiwan should really get on this because Taiwanese people are cute. I'm not biased at all. It's not like my parents are from there or anything.
We have been watching for years and years. Pretty much anyone that is out there on Netflix, we've seen it. If there's even one Asian on a preview for one of the overly white shows — Love is Blind, Married at First Sight — we will watch it. You want to know what is a surprisingly Asian rep version of Love is Blind? It is Love is Blind France. It is all Vietnamese. Represent. Italy also had one as well. We were really surprised. Yeah, America, catch up.
So right now we are on Terrace House, and if you have been living under a rock and you've never heard of Terrace House, it is one of the original Real World type shows. The thing is the Japanese have excellent — well, I guess they were like before social media — but the Japanese have intense concentration and focus, right? So they'll have these shows go for years. The first season of Terrace House was just six people living in this apartment and they just let the camera roll. It's a weekly show. I don't know if it was weekly back then, if it was daily, but it was this weekly show. And sometimes there'd be one person living in the apartment because people would leave if they find love, they move out, or if something else happens they leave, new people come in, and sometimes they can't find people or they didn't have a replacement in time. And so people would just watch this mostly empty apartment and you would just get so engrossed in these people's lives.
So if you guys are burnt out by Perfect Match and all the asses hanging out of G-strings — because I really don't need to see thongs on TV. Let's bring it away from Europe and back to the cover of your butt. I don't even want to see my butt. I don't want to see your butt. And so if you're burnt out on people's butts and you just want to see something calm and beautiful, you know the Japanese aesthetic — it just looks so nice — then I highly recommend Terrace House.
It's got this nice pastel wash, the way early 2010s Instagram used to only have three filters and one of them was this vintage wash. And it's just really pleasant to see people's daily lives. They actually have to go to work. Some of them are in school. Some of them are commuting two hours on the Shinkansen, which is the bullet train for you, whities.
It's really fascinating and it's really lovely. And some of it is a train wreck because the reboot is Netflix. So this I think is the third one. This one is more in the northern area, and we are on episode 48, which is the second to last one. We're about to do 49. I'm having a hard time saying goodbye. We've watched people shuffle in and out. I already have it on my bucket list that the next time I go to Japan, I gotta do all these things. I gotta go to that one hockey player's dad's soba shop. I don't know if it's still gonna be open, but I'm gonna try.
Number three.
I don't know, is this what they do on TikTok?
Kim's Convenience. You probably know this best as the TV show that launched Simu Liu's career. It is about Korean Canadian bodega owners. I don't know if they call it that up north. Ye olde north.
We saw the play, and what was really special about it is that the creator, the playwright, the person who created this whole thing was actually starring in it. The second the lights went up, it was so relatable. I was either laughing or crying the entire time. There was not a moment I wasn't having one of those reactions.
I've been really burnt out with just disappointments in writing, in my writing career, for a really long time now. And this was one of the few things that got me excited again about the creative arts and got me thinking about being a playwright again.
I used to write plays because there weren't any parts for Asians. You had to create your own. So I would write plays, but I was so terrified to submit them. I've only had a few either performed or read. And even though I've had multiple productions put them on, it's not as many as I have actually written and as I could have done.
This one actually made me be like, I want to write another play. And I actually opened up one of my plays that was performed. It was a 24-hour play-a-thon. I was given three objects and I had to write a play in one night using those three objects and come back the next day. And it was so fun. People always say constraints breed creativity and they really do. That 24-hour play project is one of the peak moments of my life. I actually performed it, mic dropped, and then left LA after that. I still continued to act in New York afterwards, but I left LA after that and I was like, I'm leaving on a high. Y'all didn't appreciate me.
I feel this way a lot actually. Every day.
Turning Red
I totally forgot to do the intro with Turning Red. Red panda. Yeah, no, I have to prove how Asian I am.
My Rumi jacket is somewhere around here. I should have worn my derpy shirt. Okay, it is time for Turning Red.
Google: Turning Red has 27 characters, mainly the first three: Mei Li, Ming Li, and Tyler Nguyen-Baker.
Sophia: Tyler's half Asian?
Boba of the Week
Okay, Mei Li, let's see. What is the boba of the week?
Oolong Milk Tea. It is Camellia Flower, which is a flower native to Taiwan, and it tastes so good. I love tea that tastes like perfume. Anything that's flowery. Ask me about this.
Herbal-ly, this one has less ice. I'm literally reading off of my kiosk order here. Less ice, no additional sugar, tea jelly, and oat milk substitute — because the older I get, the more Asian my stomach is getting.
Alrighty. The Asian I live with just texted me. I hope that you've been enjoying my new lavalier mic that is pulling my shirt down. I am wearing lucky red because once again, say it with me: I am proud to be AZN.
Sophia Chang (10:40)
Mei Li says, please subscribe to this podcast so we can be friends.
