This Was Funnier in China Laszlo and Jesse Appell

I drove downtown not too long ago to meet with Jesse Appell to talk about his first book, "This was funnier in China" Jesse's been performing stand-up comedy and Xiangsheng 相声 for years now. When he isn't engaging in this profession, he's managing and promoting his global tea company, Jesse's Teahouse This book tells the story of Jesse's experiences engaging with the PRC and building a nice, comfortable, and exciting life for himself. You'll learn about what it was like living there, about his apprenticeship under Xiangsheng Master Ding Guangquan 丁广泉, his performances, the comedy club he created in Beijing, a whole bunch of interesting characters, and a whole lot more. You may want to slow the audio down to half or quarter speed to take in everything Jesse has to say. This is all raw and unedited from the Livestream he ran on his various platforms. We clipped on a couple of Bluetooth mics and hit Play on my iPhone to record. The video of this recording can be found at Jesse's TikTok, YouTube, and IG. Thanks, everyone! Video of the interview:

You can listen to This Was Funnier in China Laszlo and Jesse Appell online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

This Was Funnier in China Laszlo and Jesse Appell is an episode from The China History Podcast by Laszlo Montgomery.

This episode is 01:10:40 long.

This episode was published on Feb 4, 2026.

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