EDDY MORETTI: Hi, I'm Eddy Moretti.
Welcome to the Vice podcast.
Today my guest is Eddie Huang.
EDDIE HUANG: What's up?
EDDY MORETTI: Yeah.
So let's talk about a bunch of shit.
Let's talk about the book, right?
So you have a show on Vice called "Fresh Off The Boat."
And now you have a book called "Fresh Off the Boat?"
EDDIE HUANG: Yes, consistent branding.
Want that consistent branding.
EDDY MORETTI: Yeah, did you go to
branding college or something?
EDDIE HUANG: I did visit Portland a couple times.
EDDY MORETTI: Oh right, because that's where Wieden
and Kennedy--
EDDIE HUANG: Wieden and all those people.
EDDY MORETTI: That's the land of--
EDDIE HUANG: The branded city, the whole city is branded.
EDDY MORETTI: So first of all, how is the book doing?
EDDIE HUANG: The book did well. "New York Times"
bestseller.
So can't ask for too much more than that.
I'm very happy.
EDDY MORETTI: What does that mean?
What is a bestseller?
EDDIE HUANG: You make a list of bestselling books.
You sold the most books in a week or some shit like that.
EDDY MORETTI: So how long were you in the number one spot?
EDDIE HUANG: I was not number one.
EDDY MORETTI: No, you were just on the top 10.
EDDIE HUANG: Not even.
I topped something.
It was the hardcover bestsellers list.
I was like in the 20s or something like
that, but it's cool.
Basically, I never thought I'd even make the list as a kid,
so for me it's dope and it's one of those things.
I never had the highest expectations for myself.
I just never thought that I would ever break the bamboo
ceiling, you know what I'm saying?
So anytime you reach a milestone like "New York
Times" bestseller, it's cool.
It's a good look.
For coming from Chinese school, it's not bad.
EDDY MORETTI: Yeah, not bad.
For anyone it's not bad.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: Why did you write it?
And first of all, did you have an idea when you were a kid
that you wanted to write?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: And then, why this book?
EDDIE HUANG: When I was 18 going up Orlando, Orlando was
just a funny ass town.
EDDY MORETTI: I know.
I have questions about Florida.
EDDIE HUANG: Everybody has questions.
I have questions about Florida.
Growing up in Orlando, it was just a weird urban sprawl kind
of strange suburbia situation.
It's hot, muggy, there's lizards outside.
EDDY MORETTI: The landlock.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
The white people aren't even like-- they're just strange
people out there.
Because it's everything that's bad about the south, without
everything that's good about the south.
You don't have that neighborhood spirit, that
community that a lot of smaller southern towns have--
southern cities.
You don't really have much of the southern hospitality.
It's a lot of carpetbaggers and transients.
And so it's all the ignorance and none of the accoutrements
that go with it.
There's none of the good pickled vegetables and sides
that usually come with southern ignorance.
So that's what I really hated about Orlando.
But being Chinese, being pretty much the only Asian kid
in most of the schools I went to, only one in the
neighborhood besides one of two other families.
I just knew I wanted to write about my American experience.
And how there's so many of us that fall through the cracks
of the American dream and the stories that are
told to us every day.
And I was like, my story's just not represented.
Not in the mainstream, not in the subculture--
it's just not represented.
Even when there's Asian people that come through, like Jeremy
Lin did his thing.
Psy did his thing.
I love these dudes.
Margaret Cho was probably the only one as a kid I saw that
came through, did her thing, and spoke about the
experience.
But her experience is much different than mine.
So as a kid, as an 18-year-old leaving for college, I knew I
wanted to write a book like this one day.
EDDY MORETTI: Wow, OK.
So what was the process like?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, this is funny.
Like my editor Chris Jackson said, he's like, Eddie got a
lot of skills.
Like whether it's like Allen Iverson or something, he got a
lot of skills as a writer you can't teach.
But he got a lot of gaps in his writing.
EDDY MORETTI: That's what your manager said?
EDDIE HUANG: My editor.
My editor is Spiegel & Grau.
He was talking to me writing the book.
There were things he'd say like, Eddie, you need to do a
little bit of setup in this chapter.
I was like, why?
Why can't we just jump in?
And he was like, the questions I asked--
it wasn't that they were elementary, it was just that I
had been untouched, untrained.
All my ideas and my thoughts were very radical, and they
were very original.
Some of them worked, some of them didn't, but it was
because I had never gone to a school to
tell me how to write.
And I don't really read modern fiction, literature.
EDDY MORETTI: Do you read a lot now?
EDDIE HUANG: I read internet shit, and I read philosophy.
EDDY MORETTI: OK.
Wait, that's cool.
So define internet shit, and then tell us the philosopher
that you're reading.
EDDIE HUANG: I'll read Kara Crabb articles.
EDDY MORETTI: On Vice.
EDDIE HUANG: I'll read The Kid Mero.
I will read Grantland.
I like Grantland a lot.
There's a lot of writers on Grantland.
Jay Caspian Kang, Rembert Browne--
I like these cats.
And then I'll read philosophy books.
Like, I'm reading Franco Berardi.
And then there's this other philosophy book like "The
Image of the Young Girl" or something.
It's like a little red book.
I forgot the title, I just flipped through.
But you know when you go to McNally Jackson and all those
little colored philosophy books?
I'll go pick them up and just read through them.
Because I like those things that untrain my brain.
I feel like society really conditions you so much, that I
try just not to touch anything that is going to further
condition my mind.
I like to read in the margins.
EDDY MORETTI: So how much time do you actually
spend reading then?
You're a pretty busy guy.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
I'm like a binge reader.
EDDY MORETTI: Right.
EDDIE HUANG: It's almost like some dudes will just go on a
fucking Molly binge for two, three weeks or something.
I'll read.
I'll go for two, three weeks and just read every day and
not go anywhere.
And then I'll stop, and then I'll think about it, and then
I want to go see it in the world.
And it's not that I plan it that way, that's just
kind of how it is.
I'll get into a book and I'll really, really
grapple with it.
I'll write in the margins.
I'll take my notes.
And then I'm like, all right, I got to chill and just let
this shit breathe in my life.
I almost never read fiction.
EDDY MORETTI: Why not?
EDDIE HUANG: I just love nonfiction.
I love philosophy.
I like to deal with the current world politics.
I'm not an escapist.
If I want to escape, I'll just smoke weed.
I'll watch a movie.
If I want to slumber and escape, like that Shakespeare
"Midsummer Night's Dream" type shit, I'll watch a movie.
EDDY MORETTI: You don't have time for fiction, basically.
EDDIE HUANG: I'm just not interested, yeah.
The last fiction book I read that I liked was Junot Diaz,
"Oscar Wao." And I only read that because my editor was--
after reading the manuscript I sent in-- he was like yo, I
know you never read it.
But you've got to go read "Junot." And I was like all
right, cool.
And I read it and I fucked with it, because we had a real
struggle while writing this book talking about how much
vernacular did we want to use?
How much slang did we want to use?
And I said that I didn't want to filter my book.
I didn't want to tame my book for the
normal reading audience.
Because I'd pick up books at the store, and you'd read
these books, and it's set up like "and the wind blew
through the back window."
EDDY MORETTI: Right.
EDDIE HUANG: "She touched her auburn hair and ate her fiddle
sticks, or whatever." And that's not me.
I like to immerse myself.
Like you guys do immersion journalism, I really like to
drop people into a scene and be like figure
a way out of it.
And that's really, I think, from being a hip hop kid.
When I listened to Wu-Tang for the first time, I did now know
what the fuck was going on.
EDDY MORETTI: How old were you?
EDDIE HUANG: 12-years-old.
EDDY MORETTI: So you were in Florida?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
I was 11-years-old, in Florida, listening to the Wu.
And I remember just trying to figure out what the RZA was
saying, what the GZA was saying.
And it took years and years and years, but I loved it.
It was cryptic to me.
I'm really influenced by the Dao De Jing, and
it's not a cop out.
I purposely will drop you off in the
scenes, intellect thoughts.
And be like yo, work your way out of this, grapple with it.
EDDY MORETTI: And so language is one of those things, too,
that you're authentically using the language in the book
that you do in real life.
EDDIE HUANG: Yes.
EDDY MORETTI: You have your own language.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: I've heard you talk some shit, and it's like
kind of made up and definitely comes from the
world of hip hop.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: You've put things in there--
EDDIE HUANG: My own amalgamism of my upbringing.
EDDY MORETTI: So why is that the linguistic mode that makes
you feel most comfortable?
Because it feels like I can be myself, I can explain the
funny thing I want to explain with some weird joke.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: Why is that?
EDDIE HUANG: I like to be able to do that, because a lot of
the other vocabulary--
I can speak.
I speak very well.
I mean, I passed the LSAT.
I went to law school.
I know how to use those words.
But I had to teach myself to use those words, and it's very
uncomfortable for me.
I've always been a circuitous explainer of things.
You know what I mean?
I use really strange metaphors and whatever to explain.
And it definitely comes from hip hop, WWF, and comics.
Because my thing as a kid was I loved when people created
their own universes.
Whether it was Razor Ramon, whether it was MF Doom,
whether it was Sparr, Wu-Tang.
They're all superheroes.
They have their own language.
Like that whole Shaolin shit was like another universe.
And I liked how every crew had a way of dressing, their own--
like OutKast had that just ATLiens shit.
And so, for me, it wasn't any way of really trying.
Just as a kid, you and your crew, you always
wanted to be different.
Like me and my friends always wanted to be different than
everyone else.
And I think that's just like an artistic thing.
And the way I explained it, whether it was my editor or
other writers who were like yo, we'd had reviews where
people are like this is rough English.
This is sloppy English.
I'm like, no, you just don't get it.
That's what people said when the romantic poets first came
around, like Wordsworth and those cats--
they did their own thing.
Jack Kerouac did his own thing.
And those were very rough works, and they're not the
most enjoyable things to read.
But the level of difficulty and the statements they were
making were the most powerful.
You have writers where there are peaks and then there's
valleys over the centuries or whatever.
But I thought the romantic poets were a peak.
And people hate on them, but they were interesting because
they wanted to break the mold.
Same with the May Movement in China.
And after the revolution, everyone wanted to go to the
vernacular.
And I think that that's kind of what the internet is doing
to writing now.
EDDY MORETTI: Can you explain that a little bit better?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: What does that mean?
EDDIE HUANG: Mao did a lot of fucked up shit, obviously--
burning books and things like that.
But a lot of times after these cultural movements and
revolutions, one of the number one things people go to do is
to take the language from the ornate and make it the
vernacular.
And that's definitely what happened in China with their
literature and stuff like that.
EDDY MORETTI: So it became more colloquial?
EDDIE HUANG: Colloquial, yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: It became sort of regular language--
EDDIE HUANG: Real live street shit.
EDDY MORETTI: --exalted poetic stuff.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: So I know you did mention Mao in the book
and that there was some good stuff to come out of the
revolution.
What's your family's experience with the
revolution?
EDDIE HUANG: Well, my grandfather, grandmother on
both sides, all my aunts and uncles, were born in China and
they all fled.
So after the KMT lost, they all fled to Taiwan.
EDDY MORETTI: Why?
EDDIE HUANG: Well, because they were on the losing side.
They left with Chiang Kai-shek.
They were all Chiang Kai-shek supporters.
EDDY MORETTI: OK, so describe that.
Because you don't really go into detail in the book.
How deep were they into politics?
EDDIE HUANG: My grandfather on my father's side--
my great grandfather was a county mayor in Hunan in the
last dynasty.
So he died, my grandfather on my father's side was in the
internal ministry of Taiwan, when Chiang
Kai-shek went over.
EDDY MORETTI: You talked about that, yeah.
EDDIE HUANG: So he was very involved in the politics.
My grandfather on my mother's side was not that involved.
He would make mantou and sell them on the street, and he
fled to Taiwan.
And one of the best stories of him and my grandmother, he
would sell the bread on the street.
And there was this one businessman, and actually from
Hunan as well, from my father's family's province.
And this guy will come buy the mantou every day.
And mantou was almost like a bagel to Chinese
or Taiwanese people.
You eat it in the morning.
It's just a big starch, gets you through the day.
EDDY MORETTI: Fried bread?
EDDIE HUANG: Steamed bread.
EDDY MORETTI: Steamed bread.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, and you eat it.
This guy came by, and he said look, your family every day is
so consistent.
You've got your daughters out here working, your son is out
here working, the whole family is here selling these buns.
I have a textile factory, and the family that works for me
has not shown up for a couple weeks.
Do you guys want to come work in this factory?
And they dropped everything and went.
EDDY MORETTI: That's your grandfather dropped it?
EDDIE HUANG: Grandfather on my mother's side.
EDDY MORETTI: On your mother's side.
EDDIE HUANG: Like, the whole family.
EDDY MORETTI: So your dad's side was more political,
involved in the government.
Your mom's side is--
EDDIE HUANG: Textiles.
EDDY MORETTI: Textiles.
But before that?
EDDIE HUANG: Sweatshops.
EDDY MORETTI: Sweatshops.
But before that, selling mantou?
EDDIE HUANG: Bread.
Yeah, mantou.
EDDY MORETTI: So, poor?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
And you know, they went and they worked hard.
And my grandfather ended up opening his own textile
factory years later in Taiwan.
EDDY MORETTI: In Taiwan.
EDDIE HUANG: He learned and he did it himself.
EDDY MORETTI: And then that was the bridge?
Textiles is what got you to America, essentially?
EDDIE HUANG: My mother.
EDDY MORETTI: Mother's side.
EDDIE HUANG: My mother, yes.
And they came and they opened a furniture store in America.
EDDY MORETTI: Yeah, in Florida?
EDDIE HUANG: In Northern Virginia, DC.
EDDY MORETTI: In Northern Virginia, right.
EDDIE HUANG: They came there first.
They opened Better Homes right out there.
EDDY MORETTI: OK, I got it.
On your father's side--
EDDIE HUANG: It's tricky, yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: On your father's side, what was the--
EDDIE HUANG: So the way they got over was one of my uncles,
Uncle Joe who's still alive--
love Uncle Joe.
He came over, he went to Virginia Tech.
And he studied, he became an engineer.
And he built three of the major bridges in DC--
participated in building three of the major bridges in DC.
Then they allowed my father to come over.
My father was the ill street kid.
He was a troublemaker.
And my grandma basically, after he got out of the Army
in Taiwan--
even in the Army he was a troublemaker.
He got out of the Army, my grandma sent him to live with
my uncle, Uncle Joe.
Uncle Joe took away his car, put him to work.
EDDY MORETTI: So Uncle Joe's older than your dad?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, he's the oldest son.
EDDY MORETTI: So what year was that?
What year did the Huang's come to America?
EDDIE HUANG: I don't want to misspeak, but I think it was
'77 or '78, and I was born in '82.
They might have come over then '77-'78.
EDDY MORETTI: But you were born in--
EDDIE HUANG: '82.
EDDY MORETTI: But not here in America?
EDDIE HUANG: Oh, no, I was born here.
EDDY MORETTI: You were born here.
EDDIE HUANG: My parents-- my dad knocked my mom up at a
house party and I was conceived at College Park.
EDDY MORETTI: So in the book you say, "whether it was
another Communist scare or the even greener pastures of
America, no one ever gives you a straight answer as to why
they came to America."
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: Why don't they give you a straight answer?
EDDIE HUANG: I think it's a little to them.
They love Taiwan.
EDDY MORETTI: That's clear from the book that they miss
it a lot, right?
EDDIE HUANG: They miss it a lot.
And even in Taiwan, they still feel a strong
connection to China.
And if you watch the Taiwan episode we did on the "Fresh
Off The Boat," our fixer George even talks about it.
He's like, there is a brotherhood and a kinship
between the people in Taiwan and the people in China.
Not the aboriginal Taiwanese.
Maybe not the original immigrants, even the ones from
Fuji and/or Fujo.
But at least that Chinese migration from Chiang Kai-shek
to Taiwan, there's a lot of us descended from those people
that made that original
migration with Chiang Kai-shek.
And we still have a bond to China.
We still feel a brotherhood with it.
And I think my parents, when they come here, they don't
want to tell you.
It's almost sad to talk bad about where you left.
They love the place, so they don't want to
talk bad about it.
But at the end of the day, it was opportunity.
And they were scared of another revolution, another
Communist scare, a takeover.
And America's been that place, you can't take it away from
American at all.
It's been that place where you can come, you feel relatively
safe, you feel like--
EDDY MORETTI: Feel relatively.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, you feel relatively safe.
You feel the politics are relatively stable.
You have a opportunity to make money that you
don't in other places.
The standard of living is higher, and
that's why they came.
But it was hard for them, because when they came they
were made fun of all the time and they didn't fit in.
And that's why they've created Chinatowns.
Chinese people are very isolationist, I think, in all
of the political movements.
Whether it was like building an entire wall around the
country, or right now like shutting down all access to
internet outside the country, or coming to America and
building Chinatowns.
It's like we have a little bit of an isolationist mentality.
EDDY MORETTI: That's historical though, right?
EDDIE HUANG: I think it's historical.
People are going to disagree with me, and that's fine.
I don't speak for all Chinese, this is my opinion.
What I see, I see we built a wall.
EDDY MORETTI: And there's no Google.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, there's no Google and we built a wall.
Kind of strange.
But even my father said this--
it's hard for me to give you an answer,
because there isn't.
They always dance around it.
When we talk, they go, it's opportunity.
They try to give you a one-word answer.
My father after he read the book, the funniest thing he
said, and it was a little sad and it's like bittersweet.
He said to me, I'm sorry.
And I said, it's good, don't worry it.
I thought he was talking about hitting me and the abuse.
Like, don't worry about it, it's fine, you had to do it.
And he goes, no, I'm sorry about that.
Don't beat yourself up.
He was like, I'm sorry I brought our family to America.
And I was like, whoa.
I was like dude, we're good.
We did it.
Why do you feel that way?
He goes, it was hard for me when I came over.
It was hard for me in my '20s.
People made it very difficult for me.
And at times I was ashamed--
not ashamed, he's like, I was just mad at how much people
made fun of me and things like that, and gave me a hard time.
And how I didn't have the same opportunity that other
Americans have.
But he's like, I had no idea how hard it
was to grow up here.
He's like, I didn't realize when I came what I was putting
my children into.
He's like, because you guys had to live through this from
a young age.
And he was like, I'm sorry.
And I was like dad, don't be sorry.
Don't be sorry, because we grew up in this.
We've navigated this.
We've kind of in a way conquered
this in our own method.
We are part of America.
America is part of us.
You cannot separate the two.
EDDY MORETTI: Let's talk about that for a bit, actually.
Most of my questions are about that idea of you--
EDDIE HUANG: Let me just take a sip of this unsponsored
drink real quick.
EDDY MORETTI: About you growing up here in America.
You already described a little bit about
what Florida was like.
What Orlando was like.
But you say in the book, those first few years in Orlando I
hated being Chinese.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: You talk a lot about the Bible and religion.
There's this moment with a teacher, Miss Truex.
EDDIE HUANG: Oh, she's the worst.
EDDY MORETTI: So just explain, how much did you hate being
Chinese growing up in Florida?
EDDIE HUANG: You know, I really, really was like why
can't I just be normal like everybody else?
The thing was, it was just I'm sick of being weird.
It wasn't even Chinese as much as I just
don't want to be different.
When you're a kid, you want to have friends.
You want to be invited to fucking birthday parties.
You want to get fucking presents like everybody else.
You want to get Christmas cards like everybody else.
I just want to be normal.
You don't understand as a kid the value of difference.
You have very simple needs as a child.
EDDY MORETTI: You want to belong.
EDDIE HUANG: I want to belong.
I was sick of being an outcast, sick of
being picked on.
Always getting pushed down on the floor, teachers
making fun of me.
I had to eat soap.
They'd always make me eat soap.
EDDY MORETTI: Why?
EDDIE HUANG: Because I didn't know about the "Bible." So
these were private schools.
And I remember one of the first things was I
saw Adam and Eve.
And I saw the pictures, and I remember as a five or
six-year-old I said, why is Adam and Eve white
and I look like this?
They don't look like me.
And they literally just picked me up and took
me outside the room.
EDDY MORETTI: Are you kidding?
EDDIE HUANG: Like, get this kid out of the room.
EDDY MORETTI: Who did?
The teachers?
EDDIE HUANG: The teacher.
EDDY MORETTI: Get the fuck out.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
And then I remember, I asked again--
EDDY MORETTI: Was this like a Christian school?
EDDIE HUANG: Christian school.
Christian fellowship.
They made me eat soap.
EDDY MORETTI: So they took you out of the class because you
questioned Adam and Eve's--
EDDIE HUANG: Race.
EDDY MORETTI: Race.
And then they made you eat soap?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
It's almost like--
EDDY MORETTI: How do you eat soap, by the way?
EDDIE HUANG: They literally take a bar of soap and make
you put it in your mouth.
EDDY MORETTI: Do they still do this?
EDDIE HUANG: This was in the '80s, like
'88-'89 was the year.
But they put me in there--
EDDY MORETTI: This is awesome.
EDDIE HUANG: They had me eat soap.
EDDY MORETTI: Awesomely bad.
EDDIE HUANG: I'm a natural lefty, made me
use my right hand.
EDDY MORETTI: So you have to swallow it?
EDDIE HUANG: The soap?
EDDY MORETTI: Yeah.
EDDIE HUANG: No, they just make you hold it in your mouth
and then you're just like, eh--
EDDY MORETTI: Gagging.
EDDIE HUANG: So you don't ask questions anymore.
EDDY MORETTI: That's fucked up.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
Then I got older.
I asked Adam and Eve again and they're like Tower of Babel.
And I'm like, I don't think it makes sense that this tower
fell and then there was colored people.
And they were just like out, get out--
even in third grade.
EDDY MORETTI: Yeah, that's pretty extreme.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: Was it like that,
generally speaking in Florida?
Were you confronted by a lot of fundamentalist
Christianity?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
I don't think people realize that in the '80s in the south
in Orlando, Florida, which some people don't even
consider the south, there's a lot of that going on.
There's a lot of that stuff going on.
My brother's faced a lot of similar things.
I kind of caught the tail end of it.
I doubt it's still going on now.
But I remember even though they had stickers on books
that were like evolution is just a theory.
They didn't even call evolution natural
selection is a theory.
And there was always those stickers on books.
EDDY MORETTI: Wow.
EDDIE HUANG: I remember that.
EDDY MORETTI: So what's your take on religion now, and
Christianity?
EDDIE HUANG: I'm a very spiritual dude.
I believe that there's a universe beyond us.
There's karmic spirits.
I do think that there is some sort of be a good person.
And there is, not a reward, but you have a duty to be a
good person.
EDDY MORETTI: Are your parents religious?
EDDIE HUANG: My parents are Buddhist, but they're not
practicing Buddhists.
They're kind of like non-practising Jewish people.
But me, I definitely believe in karma.
I believe in the Golden Rule--
do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.
And I talk to my grandparents a lot.
EDDY MORETTI: You say the easiest way for Americans to
make sense of Chinese history is to compare
it to Jewish history.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
There's just a lot of parallels.
EDDY MORETTI: Yeah.
Do you extend that all the way into religion?
EDDIE HUANG: The religions are different.
Because Buddhism, at the core of it, a lot of it is to
believe that life is suffering.
EDDY MORETTI: Which probably is pretty--
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, now that I think about it.
Woody Allen will probably agree with that.
He probably thinks life is suffering, too.
Life is about suffering and banging Asian chicks.
So it's probably pretty similar.
And the Dao De Jing though, the Dao De Jing is super ill.
That's less of a religion than it is a philosophy, and I
think everyone should read the Dao De Jing.
That book, I think, has such a good handle
on the human spirit.
I love that book.
That book's very good.
EDDY MORETTI: OK, I need a quote from your book now.
I'm going to roast you with the shit that you've been
saying about everyone.
So I'm just going to read this passage here.
I guess the question is how you define your American-ness.
Because you say here in the book, "look, legally I've
always been a citizen.
I was born here.
But even now, you'll never see me hold an American flag."
You know what follows in the paragraph.
You love New York, but you feel New York is not really
America, it's like an international city.
So explain, how American are you?
EDDIE HUANG: In a funny way, the day that the book released
I wore this American flag poncho to our
Barnes and Noble event.
EDDY MORETTI: On purpose?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, on purpose.
And kind of in an ironic, funny way to be like, yo,
today I'm an American.
Because I can't front.
I definitely don't think that people in America have the
same opportunities.
I think that depending on race, your opportunities
aren't reflected.
The level of opportunities that you receive are
definitely affected by race.
Not to blow hot air up your ass, businesses like Vice that
are trying to represent people in the margins, people that
are different, trying to give everyone a voice, are
definitely fixing that problem.
I was never comfortable with other places I worked that
wanted me to be Asian guy, or wanted me to curb who I was
and curb my speech to fit into what they thought how people
should behave in public.
I don't fuck with that.
And I definitely think that America--
there's no middle class here even.
Let's get beyond race.
Let's talk about America in general.
Like 0.04% of America holds all the bread.
Not even though 1%.
The 1% person is almost like a misnomer,
because it's the 0.04%.
And then after that, it's just drops off.
And if you think about it, Kobe Bryant is
probably middle class.
Entertainers are middle class.
Startup guys are middle class.
EDDY MORETTI: And that's what you identify with?
EDDIE HUANG: I'm not even on that.
You know what I get paid.
So I mean, Suroosh might be middle class.
Suroosh is probably lower middle class, if you really
look at the metrics of it all.
I love America.
I would not live anywhere else.
I choose to live here.
I have the power to live other places, and I
choose to live here.
I love the people here.
I love a lot of my opportunities here.
But do I buy into this American dream, equality?
Do I think we actually have the rights that the Bill of
Rights talks about?
No, I don't think so.
I think that a lot of the teeth has been taken out of
our social contract.
I think that big business has pulled the chair out on the
social contract, and so I can't fully support that.
But is there a country out there
that I can fully support?
Probably not.
EDDY MORETTI: Right.
EDDIE HUANG: There isn't.
So is this the best that there is?
Yes.
EDDY MORETTI: Tell us about this.
Because you basically encountered a bit of this
0.04%, as you call it, in class at Rollins.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: Tell us a little bit about this one particular
English class, Dr. Jones' class.
And explain the school and what you saw there.
EDDIE HUANG: The school was funny.
And there was this guy, he was a writer and I think he was
from "People" magazine or something.
He came to school once and he said, Rollins, if you want to
explain it to people, the only time its name's dropped is in
"American Psycho." They name drop it in "American Psycho."
The mad dog from "Mike and the Mad Dog" is from
Rollins, Mr. Rogers.
But beyond that, nobody knows this place.
The only thing they know is that it's a place to send your
daughter if you don't want anything to happen to her.
But if something happens to her, it's from the right guy
because people just have bread out there.
And it was wild.
I ran into kids that were 18-years-old that had their
own yachts.
I knew a kid that would like-- he's a
really cool kid, actually--
would leave class to go marlin fishing.
EDDY MORETTI: That's pretty cool.
EDDIE HUANG: I was like, this motherfucking young
Hemingway over here.
There wasn't even a hashtag, but that kid would have been
Young Hemingway.
It was just extreme money.
People were the heir to the Tupperware fortune
and things like that.
It was crazy.
But it was also crazy to see these kids and how
much power they had.
How much power will be transferred to them, and how
little they were connected to the greater society.
They were so insulated.
They were so unaware of what was going on outside of them,
that actually the kid that went marlin fishing was one of
the only ones that was actually connected and
understood.
I thought fishing had a lot to do with it.
He's a cool kid.
But overall you met a lot of these people, like children of
government officials, children of presidents and vice
presidents of companies.
And it was just really scary to know that these kids would
be running the world.
EDDY MORETTI: But you go a little further.
Because it's not just that they're unaware, I think you
say that they were hustling you.
The anecdote in the book is about do
you believe in welfare?
Instead of giving you a straight answer, these kids
would run around with--
EDDIE HUANG: They were media trained.
These motherfuckers were like media trained.
EDDY MORETTI: But you think that they were fucking with
you and they were bullshitting.
And that what they were really saying is I really don't give
a shit about poor people.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: So was it that bad?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
The disconnect was insidious.
It was like they actually knew, but they were the type
of people like let's not talk politics and religion.
Let's not talk politics and religion, because they already
know how they feel, and they know how they're going to
impress their opinion, how they're going
to exert their influence.
So when you actually try to grapple with
them, it's just elusive.
They're very elusive.
EDDY MORETTI: What year was that?
EDDIE HUANG: I was there at 2001.
I was in class at Rollins when 9/11 happened.
And that was some wild shit just to see how people
responded and things like that.
That was a very strange time.
EDDY MORETTI: It's an important part of the book,
too, your reaction to 9/11.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
Man, it's hard to talk about.
This is a cool thing about writing a book.
I like books and I like writing, because you get to
spend time with yourself and make sure you get it right.
EDDY MORETTI: You reflect?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
You reflect, you sit, you make sure you get it right.
And talking about feelings and 9/11 is one of those things
that you do not want to get wrong.
And my thing, I remember I was in a class
called social problems.
Literally in a class called social problems.
And we see on the television they just went down, just
everybody lost their shit.
And people started running around the building, oh my
God, oh my God.
Because so many kids at Rollins were from New York.
And it was interesting, too, because we had kids in class
who their parents were government officials in DC,
who worked downtown in New York.
Everyone was kind of affected.
Immediately--
I'm sure this happened around the nation, not just where I
was at Rollins College, but there was a lot
of just pure anger.
And there was a lot of anti-Islamic sentiment.
I remember these girls started wearing American flag mini
skirts with the ass hanging out.
And I was just like, that's dope.
But, united we stand.
'Hos for America.
EDDY MORETTI: Really?
Wow.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, it was just like the way they expressed
their patriotism was crazy and weird.
And it was very much like when you saw people celebrating
Osama Bin Laden's death, it was kind of surreal to me.
When these people were cheering the kid being caught
in Boston this weekend, that was very surreal to me.
These people deserve everything they get.
Obviously, these people that we captured, they deserve
everything they get.
But human to human, I feel like you take the high road.
I would never go celebrate.
He's dead.
You got him.
EDDY MORETTI: So some of this patriotism after 9/11 kind of
freaked you out?
EDDIE HUANG: Freaked me out a little.
It is very dope to see people who love their country, that
is cool to me.
Americans who love their country, that's cool to me.
And love it in a passionate way is cool.
There were people who were very articulate about how they
felt, and how they felt like it was an
attack on a way of life.
I thought those were pretty valid sentiments
and things like that.
But the hate against an entire group of people.
The hate against an entire religion which actually has
nothing do with these radicals, they have nothing to
do with what they're talking about.
That's the funny thing with war in countries in general,
not to get like OD about it.
But these wars they're fighting, you're not sending
these guys out there.
I'm not sending them out there.
They say they're for us, they say it's for our way of life,
but I always question it.
I'm just like, who is this for, really, because I don't
want to fight.
EDDY MORETTI: You're constructing a really
interesting portrait of yourself as an American kid
who's torn between different--
EDDIE HUANG: I'm torn between the idea of America and what
it actually is.
EDDY MORETTI: Right.
Can you explain a little bit, this discussion of
authenticity and what it means to be authentic for you?
In the book, there's this whole passage here about you
can't win, basically.
You don't know what to be in order to win, and you never
feel really truly yourself.
So you know what, fuck it.
EDDIE HUANG: Authentic to yourself is something I like,
thought about for a long time.
A lot of philosophers talk about it.
And this is where I tried to grapple with the issue, the
essential self.
Is there an essential self?
Is there one Eddy Moretti inside you?
And you try to peel back the layers, and
you try to find it.
But the thing is that I realized, at least my
philosophy on it, my thinking and feeling is
that the self evolves.
The self is constantly reinventing and evolving
itself, and in the funniest fucking way.
The one thing that rang true to me, that made all of it
make sense, is motherfucker Harry Potter.
EDDY MORETTI: Why?
EDDIE HUANG: Harry Potter got the illest quote.
I think in book one when he's talking about I want to be in
Gryffindor.
I want to be in the good kid's school.
I don't want to be in this snake kid school.
And he's like, what if they choose me to
go to the bad school?
And I think it's like the ill wizard dude,
I forget his name.
Gandalf?
Was Gandalf from fucking "Lord of the Rings?"
EDDY MORETTI: I think Gandalf is "Lord of the Rings."
EDDIE HUANG: "Lord of the Rings?" Well,
whatever, the dude--
I think it's the same dude plays them.
EDDY MORETTI: I don't read those books.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, anyway, the ill wizard dude is like look,
you have a choice in who you are.
And that's powerful to me.
That is very powerful to me.
And that's so funny it comes from Harry.
You never know where you're going to learn shit from.
But the choice to be an American.
The choice to be Chinese and represent the place where my
blood is from, my history is from.
The choice to also identify with Taiwan--
that's my choice.
I used to allow other people's expectation and other people's
understanding of identity reflect on me, and control me,
and arrest me in a lot of ways.
But the thing that liberated me was to understand that
there's nature, there's nurture, but there's choice.
And the third leg of it that they don't
talk about is choice.
Because let's say--
EDDY MORETTI: You have a lot of fun with
choice in your life.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: Because this is how I want to dress.
These are the books I want to read.
These are the books I don't want to read.
I want to do a show with Vice.
I want to do something else.
I want to write a book.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: You're having fun in the
choosing part of life.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, and I'm creating my own education.
Like colleges are doing the same thing, interdisciplinary.
They're understanding that this is how the mind works,
this is how we operate.
EDDY MORETTI: It's more normal.
EDDIE HUANG: Postmodern.
This is like very, very postmodern.
People read astrology.
It's like you give yourself up to this.
You give yourself up to your genetics.
You give yourself up to environment.
Oh, I'm from Boston.
I'm from Southie.
This is the way I am.
I'm from New York, this is the way I am.
You have a choice.
EDDY MORETTI: So you're a little--
EDDIE HUANG: It's almost lazy.
Don't you think it's lazy to be like everything's
predetermined for me because of my genetics?
EDDY MORETTI: We're not interviewing me.
But if I were to answer that question, I would say society
is predicated on people being as lazy as possible in a way.
Just to get through things and not complicate life, because
it's already complicated.
EDDIE HUANG: Like I'm Muslim because my parents are Muslim.
I'm Baptist because my parents are.
You've got to question it.
EDDY MORETTI: I go to McDonald's
because it's what I do.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: So you're actively choosing the kind of
American you want to be.
But you're also a little disappointed or frustrated
with Chinese-American, your peers, your peeps.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, I'm fair.
I shoot the fair one.
Whoever it is, I really always give my
honest opinion of shit.
EDDY MORETTI: "That was one of the things," I'm quoting,
"that really annoyed me about growing up
Chinese in the States.
Even if you wanted to roll with the Chinese/Taiwanese
kids, there were barely any around.
And the ones that were around had lost their culture and
identity."
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: So how disappointed are you?
And what are they missing out on?
EDDIE HUANG: The funny thing is is a lot of these Chinese
kids that don't speak Chinese, or they don't cook, or they
don't know how to celebrate the new year, or they don't
know a lot of the traditions and religion.
I think they're insecure about their identity.
And they start to hang onto stereotypes and stigmas.
And then it's like yo, Eddie, you dress this way, therefore
you must not be Chinese.
Eddie, you talk this way, therefore
you must not be Chinese.
Eddie, you play basketball like a black person, you
therefore must not be Chinese.
People literally would say things like that.
EDDY MORETTI: Do a lot of Chinese, your generation,
first generation American Chinese and Taiwanese, are
they really forgetting their culture?
Are they really not adopting?
Is there a real problem?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, I think it's a real problem.
A lot of kids lose their language.
EDDY MORETTI: Fact, right?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
I was just at my Chinese herbal doctor, my herbalist.
I go to him all the time for most of my ailments, unless
I'm getting blood work and shit.
But I went to go see him.
I brought one of my cooks at work.
His mother had a problem, so I brought her to the doctor.
And I see him and his son was there.
And I was like, yo, your dad is the illest.
Like, you've got to learn this shit from your dad.
And he's like, I would, but I don't speak Chinese.
And it was so sad.
I was like, your dad has held down Chinatown on Mott Street.
These guys on Mott and Bayard had this little Chinese herbal
shop for I think upwards of 35 years now.
EDDY MORETTI: Wow.
EDDIE HUANG: Everybody goes there.
EDDY MORETTI: Authentic?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: As authentic as it gets.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
And I don't go there because it's
authentic or dingy or whatever.
But it's like he cures people.
He's cured someone with leukemia before, this guy, and
people know it and I go to him.
And it was so sad to be like, your son
doesn't speak Chinese.
He can't learn this.
And I was like, is there anyone that is your disciple,
your student?
He said nope.
And I was like, I'll come learn this shit from you.
And he was like, it's years.
Like, you want to spent 20 years?
And I was like, if you had told me that
when I was 18, yes.
I would have dedicated my life.
Like, that practice is so ill, you know, to be
that kind of doctor.
You've got to come.
I've got to bring you sometime.
It's very, very good.
But I think a lot of the culture is being lost.
Luckily, it's still preserved in China.
But even in China, people are in such a rush to westernize.
And that's the scary part of the internet, we chase trends.
Countries literally, civilizations chase trends.
It's not just do's and don'ts.
It's not just people copping sneakers.
It's like the internet, the speed of things.
You can actually turn your civilization on its head in a
matter of two to three years now with the internet and the
things that are available.
And it's scary, because before you have a time to test
things, before you have a chance to see the side
effects, before you have a chance to see the overall
detriment to society aftershock of the changes, you
can turn your civilization on its head and not
be able to go back.
We've let a lot of genies out of the bottle with whether
it's fracking, even just original oil drilling, the
industrial revolution.
There's a lot of genies we can't put back in the bottle,
and the internet enables more of that shit.
EDDY MORETTI: So Taiwan was a turning point for you?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
Taiwan was crazy.
EDDY MORETTI: Your life kind of changed after that trip?
So that was your first trip there, right?
How old were you?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, Taiwan was awesome.
I was 19, I think I just turned 20.
EDDY MORETTI: So what year are we talking about?
EDDIE HUANG: 2000-- it was the summer of 2002.
So I'd just turned 20, summer 2002 I went.
And yeah, that was a life changing trip.
That was a life changing trip for me to go out to Taiwan.
When I went when I was younger, I was just trying to
find Jordans and video games and eat Chinese food.
And it was delicious, but I still wanted to be normal.
And when you're a kid, you pay so much attention to things
like oh, the laundry is moldy, it smells nasty.
Why is there cockroaches in auntie's apartment?
Why you motherfuckers out here playing basketball in sandals?
So it's all little shit like that.
Like why I got athlete's foot, what is going on out here?
But when I came back as a 20-year-old, I
didn't mind it as much.
Moldy clothes, whatever.
Cockroaches, whatever.
And it wasn't even that bad.
Taiwan had progressed as a country.
So standard of living was actually quite good.
But I got to explore, and I remember the thing that hit me
the hardest.
I didn't realize it as a 12-year-old.
As a 20-year-old, it hit me like a fucking monsoon.
As soon as I got in the airport, I
saw all Asian people--
Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese, whenever.
I saw all Asian people.
There was not a white person or a black person to be seen,
or a Hispanic person.
It was all Asian, and it made me realize I'm not weird.
I'm actually, in the globe, the majority.
There's a lot of us motherfuckers.
EDDY MORETTI: There are more than us than anyone else?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
And I was like there's doctors, there's engineers,
there's cab drivers, there's skateboard kids.
And I was like I'm not weird.
There's a whole country with people like me.
EDDY MORETTI: Did you feel at home?
EDDIE HUANG: I did.
I did.
I immediately felt at home.
And they adopted me, too.
They were like, yo, you're American, but like--
this is a cool thing about Taiwan and China.
They will point out all your differences, but they
want to claim you.
They're like, you're still ours.
And I thought that was pretty neat.
I never say neat.
It's just like that heartwarming moment that you
talk like a 15-year-old girl, you know what I mean?
Like, that was neat, but it really was.
It really was on some back to the motherland shit.
And you go and people were so excited to show you the
country, show you where your parents used to live, show you
where your aunts used to live.
And just be like, this is you.
This is your shit.
EDDY MORETTI: You're going to go back?
EDDIE HUANG: I go back all the time.
EDDY MORETTI: You go back all the time?
But you're going back soon, right?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, I'm going to go back this summer.
EDDY MORETTI: So explain what you're doing this summer?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, this summer for book two, it's an
extension of that idea of choice.
And to go back to China, I'm going to go to Chengdu in the
Szechuan Province.
Right next to where my father's family's from in
Hunan, a neighboring province.
And I'm going to live in an apartment and cook downstairs
in the stall five days a week serving--
I think I want to cook Taiwanese food
in Szechuan, China.
I think that'll be really cool, to cook Taiwanese food
there, see how people react to my food.
Because I have my ideas of Chinese food.
I have my understanding that comes from the home.
But I want to see what their understanding is, because mine
comes from the Taiwanese-Chinese home, this
is China-China.
So it's very interesting to see.
I think that'll be cool, and I want to see how the society
embraces me.
And I know what the struggle is as an American business
person, as an individual in America, as a creative person
in America, I want to see as much as I can what that
struggle is in China.
EDDY MORETTI: Forget about for a second that you're doing
this show with us.
You're going to do this project in China.
Why another food book?
Why another food show?
Why does the world need this?
Can you explain?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, this is the thing.
I think constantly, and you may be mad at me saying this.
I don't feel like our show is even a food show.
And I know that book two is not a food book, just like
this wasn't really a food book.
The food thing is a trap.
I use food as a trap, just like cheese for mice.
Because a lot of times you say hey, we're going to write a
book about choice and identity in China, fucking tune in.
People don't want to tune into that shit.
But the food is a trap.
I tell you I'm going to go cook food in China.
We're going to see lots of interesting things.
And I'll show you these interesting
things, but it's a trap.
EDDY MORETTI: But it works?
EDDIE HUANG: It works.
People got to eat.
EDDY MORETTI: Thinking you were born in the '80s--
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: General cuisine and food literacy in America
has kind of gotten better--
EDDIE HUANG: Much better.
EDDY MORETTI: --coast to coast, right?
For sure in big cities, it's kind of amazing.
Like, New York right now is amazing.
You go to the top eight to 10 cities in America, you're
going to find some really fucking cool shit.
EDDIE HUANG: Yes.
EDDY MORETTI: But like you said, it's a trick to educate
people and introduce them and bring a little more choice
into their lives.
But it's working, right?
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
I love this.
Like this interview with the things we're talking about,
I'll talk about forever.
The thing is I realized that to get people to--
it's that fucking shit, the sugar for the
medicine to go down.
Like titties and soup dumpling sell.
You know what I mean?
People want to see titties and soup dumplings,
so give them one.
EDDY MORETTI: It works, but it's not always done as you do
it, and Anthony Bourdain does it for sure, is that model of
I'm actually using food to learn more about the
world around me.
And I'm going to bring that to you.
And then there is walking into the Food Network on the flip
side of things.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah.
EDDY MORETTI: So describe that, why you knew from the
day you walked into their offices like, oh fuck, this
might not actually work out.
EDDIE HUANG: Food Network is a vocational channel.
Just like a vocational school, like the University of Phoenix
or some shit.
I'll explain it this way.
I always told people, it doesn't matter what you decide
your major is in college.
Go get a liberal art-- whether it's
philosophy, music, art, history.
Those are just purely lenses to understand the world and
its inhabitants through.
Those are just disciplines and lenses you put on to see and
to analyze and to understand yourself and others.
Music is that way, you do it with noisy, we do it with
food, we do it with art, we do it with music.
That's what subculture is.
Subculture is just something that people connect with, they
feel passionate about, it speaks to them.
But then it's used as a vehicle to understand
everything else.
EDDY MORETTI: But it's not stuck in the dish itself?
EDDIE HUANG: No, no.
It's all beyond the plate.
You go to the Food Network, it's like stand and stir all
right here.
Here it is.
You could actually do amazing stand and stir shows that
extend beyond that pot and talk about the family, and
where you got the ingredients.
And you could actually have an ill talking head show with a
stand and stir.
EDDY MORETTI: Like storytelling
kind of over a pot.
EDDIE HUANG: I've been talking with people.
I want to do something like that, like a stand and stir
talking head show.
Because food is such a ill trap, it's beautiful.
That's what you've been catching mammals with for
centuries is food.
This is what you will get them with.
And so the Food Network I don't think understands it.
And I don't think they want to have a higher calling.
I want to be on the Hebrew National of networks, we
answer to a higher power.
So I just have a much bigger agenda in terms of speaking to
people who watch what we're doing.
Otherwise, I mean, I'm not a pretty motherfucker.
The only--
EDDY MORETTI: I think you're pretty.
EDDIE HUANG: --reason I'm here-- thank you.
But the reason I'm here--
EDDY MORETTI: I wouldn't use the word pretty maybe.
EDDIE HUANG: Yeah, like I have ideas and I want
to get those across.
And we're using food to do that, because the food will
draw you in.
And it's Muhammad Ali's boxing, Charles Barclay's
basketball.
But that's the thing-- whatever it is that speaks to
you, whatever skill that you have to share with people, use
that skill to talk about the human spirit, I think that's
what it is.
EDDY MORETTI: I think that's a perfect place to end.
EDDIE HUANG: Word.
EDDY MORETTI: So, I'm looking forward to season two.
EDDIE HUANG: Yo, I'm super hyped.
EDDY MORETTI: Yeah, I'm hyped.
And I'm looking forward to this new book in China,
because I think if anyone's going to go there and let us
know what it's really like on the street,
it's going to be you.
EDDIE HUANG: And I want to be a bridge between the
American-Chinese, the Chinese-Chinese, and street
food diplomacy.
EDDY MORETTI: I like that.
That's what it should be called, the books.
EDDIE HUANG: Yes, definitely man.
Dumpling diplomacy's some funny shit.
EDDY MORETTI: OK, thanks, buddy.
Good to see you.
EDDIE HUANG: Thank you, man.
Thank you.
Good shit.
All right.