Vancouver comedian Ed Hill explores what it means to be Asian in new podcast
Model Mythology, which Hill co-hosts with Aidan Parker, launches during Asian Heritage Month
Ed Hill thought he was going on vacation when his family moved to B.C. from Taiwan.
WHEN ED HILL first came to Coquitlam from Taipei at age 10 back in 1994, he thought he was going on vacation, as his father had told him, not moving to another country. The family’s belongings were delayed, stuck on a ship in the Pacific Ocean because of a snowstorm, so he and his brother slept on a mattress on the floor by the fireplace, thinking they were camping. It kicked in a few months later that they were actually in their new home.
Hill, who now lives in Vancouver with his wife, has gone on to become an in-demand comic, performing on stages around the globe and appearing everywhere from XM Radio’s Laugh Attack to the Just For Laughs Northwest Comedy Festival to the Hong Kong Comedy Festival and far beyond. In what some may consider especially high praise, several of his tweets have been featured on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Although the pandemic has put a pause on live gigs, Hill has a lot going on. For one, he recently released his comedy special Candy & Smiley, which gets its title from the real names his mother and father chose upon moving to Canada. (“It should be Spicy and Grumpy,” Hill quips.) In addition to his podcasts Son of Smiley and Guide to the Quarantine, he is about to launch a new one called Model Mythology, which he co-hosts with local improvisor, actor, and writer Aidan Parker. Model Mythology’s media partner in Elimin8Hate, the anti-racism campaign and centralized community racism-reporting centre formed by the Vancouver Asian Film Festival Society in response to the recent wave of anti-Asian sentiment.
Hill has first-hand experience with racism here, and many personal stories to share. In an interview with Stir, he recalls one such incident. Just before the pandemic hit, he and his wife had moved into a new condo complex. One evening on the road in front of it, Hill, like other cars in front of him, had done a U-turn to get into their parking garage. They got pulled over.
The police officer looked at his licence and registration, then glanced at Hill’s Caucasian wife, then asked Hill: “How long have you been here?”
“I said, ‘We just moved here a month ago,’” Hill recalls. “He said, ‘No, how long have you been in this country?’ I said ’25 years.’ He said, ‘Well can you drive like you’re in this country?’
“I didn’t have a response,” Hill says. “We just sat there. The car is registered under my wife’s name; it’s her car. He said to her, ‘Because it’s your car, I’m going to let you guys go.’ There was about a five-minute silence after he departed.”
Although that particular encounter left him stunned, Hill says he has become used to racist attitudes.
“The prejudice is always there,” he says. “We carry on. We don’t give up. We continue to live our lives and for me personally, I continue to tell our story. I’m not a politician. I’m not an activist. That’s not my realm. I can only do the best I can in the realm I’m in. The weapon and the tool I have is my words.”
Hill draws much of his material from his family. They’re very close. He says the older he gets the more he appreciates the courage it took for his parents to uproot their lives in the face of the risk of invasion of Taiwan by China; he still remembers the terrifying sounds of air-raid sirens and hiding when they heard bombers in the air.
He says comedy appeals to him because of the way it opens up conversations.
“It’s not a medium that’s familiar to the Asian community,” Hill says. “Initially, when I started, it was just nice to have people laugh in a room. As I continued, I realized that laughter and humour are really a way people can digest something that’s heavy. It’s a gentle way of discussing something that may be very emotional or conflicted. The way we deal with things in my house or our family is to try to be as gentle as possible. Humour doesn’t mean we don’t get into arguments or fights…but there are subtle ways and gentle ways of dealing with it.”
In Model Mythology (which launches on May 31), Hill and Parker, who’s of mixed Chinese-Canadian heritage, interview guests from the Asian diaspora and ask them to share their reflections on being Asian—stories that are entirely different from one individual to the next. The model-minority myth undermines the diversity of experiences of the Asian community and stereotypes an entire demographic, Hill says. Guests are asked to present a personal belonging that would represent them if their experience were “mythologized”. Joining the hosts on the show will be not only entertainers but also athletes, reporters, politicians, and others—people from all walks of life.
“People from different parts of the world may not be understood by mainstream culture,” Hill says. “What this podcast hopes to do is take a look at what does it actually mean to be an Asian person in every way, shape, or form. We want to bring out the voices of the community.”
The podcast co-hosts are releasing their new podcast during Asian Heritage Month. Hill has worked with Elimin8hate in the past and wanted to support its ongoing work.
“They’ve been pushing the idea that Asian people are just people; we’re not better or worse or more special than anybody else,” Hill says. “In light of the recent climate, they’re hoping to be more outspoken with their messaging, and it’s also something we want to help promote through the podcast.
“All of us are immigrants to the nation, and that hybrid story of where we’re from and the new land we came to is a genuine story,” he says. “That’s really the Canadian story."
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