By Florence Ip

Kristina Wong's comedic act reflects her daring character.

Growing up in San Francisco, California, “the actual city … I’m not like one of those people you meet who say they grew up in San Francisco but are really from Cupertino or Palo Alto,” Kristina Wong experienced and learned from an environment that opened her eyes to a different world, a world that the stereotypical sheltered Chinese American girl might not see. “It was really interesting growing up there because there was such a mix of people. It was pretty liberal in the sense that I was exposed to a lot of liberal politics that really informed my work,” she comments. However, one cannot overlook Wong's own unique curiosity for life that makes her the bold and gutsy comedian she is today.

The diversity of the city, not just in terms of race but the types of people who lived there, such as goths and punk rockers, gave Wong the freedom to experience life and find her own identity.  “One thing that happened a lot as I was growing up was that I really felt like I could pick and choose a different identity … I got to experiment with so many different people I could be. And I think a lot of that shows up in my performance work now where I get dressed up like different things and different identities. "

Wong does not deliver the usual monologue nor does she simply stand on stage to tell jokes.  Her work, which she coins as “in vain of performance art,” encompasses much more of the environment around her. She describes it as, “a type of performance art that [is]… a combination of many different genres.” Her most famous character is Fannie Wong, former Miss Chinatown second runner up. Fannie is not like any beauty pageant contestant seen on television. The beauty pageant contestant that Wong creates is “basically a really bad Miss Chinatown - I have glasses and a cigar and sometimes I put in pimples. And I’ll just show up in public places and introduce myself as Fannie Wong.”  Her comedy comes out of people’s reactions to her characters, much of which is born in the middle of the night when images of different situations flash through her head. Wong enjoys doing solo work because she's the one that calls the shots to create something “new and out there.”

Her desire to perform began in high school. “I went to an all girls Catholic high school, which was interesting,” she laughs, thinking back to the place where she first took speech classes and complained about the boring material she had to work with because of the school’s strict standards. But as she moved onto performing in plays (which she began as a way to get attention but turned into a career aspiration), Wong yearned to expand her abilities and create her own art by overstepping hindering boundaries. “I remember a lot of the kids I went to school with would always be like, ‘well you’re going to have a hard time because you’re Asian,’ and I remember really believing that, and being like ‘gosh it’s going to be so hard if I want to do it,' and being so jealous of kids who were white, who I thought had an advantage.” But now Wong has seen and met many other successful Asian American women performers who write their own material that's much more interesting than the material she had to interpret during high school speech tournaments.   

A large part of Wong's work focuses on what it is to be a woman, specifically a Chinese American woman. She has two versions of her Fannie Wong character; one of them, in which she is not dressed up as Miss Chinatown at all but instead, is a half-hour stage performance about exploring her own body while growing up entitled "Miss Chinatown 2nd Runner Up" (the other show is "Fannie Wong, A Touch of Class"). Wong states that, “I was very excited about growing older and learning new things about my body, but I was also terrified about having those explorations in my home.” One of the figures that fascinated her in her earlier years was Miss Chinatown “because she’s so poised and graceful and the thing that strikes me about her at first glance is that she’s very sexy.”

Wong, like many other Chinese girls, wanted to be Miss Chinatown, or at least be like her. Even her parents would joke that she would become Miss Chinatown one day. This thought, however, made her nervous because she did not know how she'd transition from being “completely sexually repressed and totally awkward” to someone who was beautiful and self-assured. “I felt like such an embarrassment to my family,” comments Wong because she felt that she was growing farther away from what her parents wanted her to be. In retrospect, she laughs about it, realizing how her perception of Miss Chinatown “isn’t as gorgeous and glamorous” as she thought it once was. The show concludes in Wong's “own personal awkward style” inspired by one of her favorite movies, Stephen King’s Carrie, that displays her boldness in dealing with sexuality in a most unexpected and outrageous way. 

Wong's work is not so much a statement of what a Chinese American or Asian American woman should be, but it has a lot more to do with individuality and self-discovery. “In a lot of my work I’m very clear that I’m not attempting to represent all Chinese American women … The reason for that is because … I think it’s problematic to get into the realm of what representing is because culture is always a thing that’s changing, and who’s to determine what culture is? It’s very subjective.” At the same time Wong strives to educate the world on a broader level. “I look at what my work is doing to explore and question words like ‘activist’, ‘feminist’, ‘Asian American’. For me, these are all words that I’m trying to stretch in definition through my work.”

In addition to performing, she is currently working on Between the Peaks, a book still in its baby stages, about a Chinese American girl growing up in San Francisco who is fascinated by her body and searches outside the home for answers to her questions about growing up. The book tackles many of the issues that Wong has explored in her performances and much of the book mirrors aspects of her own life thought it is not autobiographical. Wong does not live within the boundaries of so-called “acceptable” behavior that many Chinese American women might feel restricted by. Instead, she ventures out to communicate her own views about society, breaking down barriers and giving the world a taste of her own unique personality.

Kristina Wong is currently performing in California. For show dates and more information, visit www.kristinawong.com.

Published: Friday, April 9, 2004