At Just For Laughs Vancouver, Andrea Jin's "eccentric" family still provides endless amounts of comedy gold
The Shanghai-born, Vancouver-raised standup will tape her first special here at the Biltmore, as her career continues to take off in L.A.
Andrea Jin performs at the Biltmore Cabaret on February 18 at 7 and 9 pm, and February 19 at 8 pm as part of Just For Laughs Vancouver
THE MOST RELIABLY FUNNY BITS of Shanghai-born, Vancouver-raised comedian Andrea Jin’s act centre around the grandparents she lived with for the bulk of her growing-up years here.
Some of her biggest laughs come from her stories about the fact they insisted on hoarding 30 to 40 giant cloth bags of rice to feel secure. Any less than 17, and it was time for an emergency Costco run.
Family members, especially the elderly ones, have long been a go-to for the now L.A.–based comedian. She even called her breakthrough Juno-winning comedy album Grandma’s Girl—the collage cover art featuring granny standing in the background, in a jaunty pink jacket with her arms raised in a friendly greeting. If you follow Jin, you’ll know that her Mandarin-speaking Grandma prefers herbs and spices over white medicine, and tends not to show emotion—even when she can’t feel her arm.
“I think it was hard not to talk about that—even if I wanted to steer away it just felt very unnatural because they were such a big part of my life and I feel like they still are,” the comedian reflects from her City of Angels home before heading here to tape her first special at Just for Laughs Vancouver. “It would feel like lying if I didn't include my family in the subject matter of just everything I want to talk about. And it set me apart because my family is very eccentric. Even for an immigrant family. They're very wacky. So yeah, it definitely made me more unique.”
An added bonus? There’s never any tension with them over her material. “They don't know what I'm saying,” Jin continues in the same dryly casual tone that works so well onstage. “So I was able to avoid that. A lot of my friends in comedy, they want to talk about their family, but they're worried that they would get mad. So they can't be completely honest. And I feel bad for them, because I definitely don't even have to think about that.”
Clearly, Jin’s jokes about her immigrant family are resonating. The rising star made a terrifically assured late-night debut on The Late Late Show with James Corden, has written for Andy Samberg's animated Digman! show, and counts her TikTok and Insta followers in the hundreds of thousands. The three live-taped shows at the Biltmore Cabaret for JFL will mark another big milestone, and she’s been touring comedy clubs all over America preparing her material.
Jin’s shows often begin with a uniquely disarming nod to her cultural heritage. Her entry goes something like this: “I immigrated here from China… Is that ok?” Followed by: “It doesn’t matter, I’m not leaving.”
“I feel like it's very me,” the standup says of her faux-humble entree. “It's asking for permission, but actually, not really. So it's definitely a fake out.”
Her signature opener is a perfect illustration of how unassumingly and unshowily smart Jin’s material is—and the way those smarts contrast with a laidback, deadpan, and appealingly awkward delivery that sets her standup act apart.
“I feel like it's very me, but also it's very underhanded,” she allows thoughtfully. “I think I write at a level that’s quite high. Because I do think highly of my work and I feel like my comedy is more highbrow. I know it, like, sounds pretty snooty to say that, but I do. But my delivery is very… low. Because I feel like I want you to focus on the words that I'm saying instead of a big performance.
“And I laugh so hard at comedians that do big act-outs and big performances— I think they're hilarious!” Jin continues. “But yeah, that's just not my sensibility. It works for them. But I guess I'm just staying true to myself.”
Jin says she’s learning to trust that voice more and more as her comedy evolves. Amid hilarious observations on dating, waxing, and, yes, stocking up on rice with her grandparents, you might not even notice the deeper levels of subject matter—her openness about being bisexual, say, or the fact she’s a product of China’s one-child policy, or the acknowledgement that her grandparents’ hardships in Communist China turned them into food hoarders. And she often finds novel ways to address the fallout of her upbringing’s tendency to repress emotion—“because that’s how you seal in the flavour”, she quipped on The Late Late Show.
Jin attributes most of her craftsmanship to working her way up through the Vancouver comedy scene—one she considers “artsy” and demanding. She had moved back east to take a pre-business program at Western University when she joined the school's comedy club and realized that her true passion was standup. So she left school and moved back to the West Coast to begin pursuing a career at the microphone, working late, great clubs like the downtown’s Comedy MIX and Cambie Street’s Yuk Yuk’s, as well as fondly remembered Little Mountain Gallery comedy nights, where she also ended up taping Grandma’s Girl pre-pandemic.
“I was able to do shows very often—I was able to find a show to do every day and build my material,” she recalls. “I'm very lucky to have had such a great comedy scene and city to work in, because in Vancouver, the audiences are well read. They know art very well there. They are fans of art and pop culture. And so they're a smarter audience, and I was able to do jokes that, if I started somewhere else, where people were less comedy- or art-savvy, then my jokes would be dumbed down more. So I'm happy that I was able to elevate my style of comedy to the level that it was when I was in Vancouver—and it still is.
“That’s really important, your first few years where you start, because it really defines your whole career,” she stresses.
That makes her return here for her JFL all the sweeter—and a chance for her loyal Vancouver fanbase to see how she’s grown. And, of course, to check in on her family quirks.
“The old jokes have a new kind of flavour to them,” she hints, “and there are completely new jokes.” And don’t worry, she’s been really sealing in that flavour.
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