Ep. 16: Kunming-native American cowboy Bruce Wang speaks English with perfect Southern accent

Chinatown 2.0

Bruce Wang is a Chinese cowboy. Not an ethnically Chinese person that was born in Texas, but someone born and bred in Yunnan, China.

He came to the US as a college student. He adopted a Southern accent, started dressing like a cowboy, and started making videos about how cowboys spend their time.

We talked about why he decided to become a cowboy, why he felt the cowboy culture reminded him of his hometown of Kunming, how he felt different when speaking a different language, and how he dealt with an identity crisis.

We also talked about whether he has encountered acts of racism and racial ignorance, his plans to dedicate his Ph.D. to the intersection of languages and cross-cultural understanding, and more.

Chapter

1. Teaser (00:00:00)

2. Intro (00:00:15)

3. How he became a Cowboy: learning the accent, using media as an entry point into the cattle industry (00:02:42)

4. Taking the opportunity to build a channel for beef import to China during Trump's government, failure from trade wars (00:04:53)

5. The unique choice of being a Chinese Cowboy, without precedence or contemporary references (00:08:28)

6. Phonology as the most attractive quality of the Southern persona, accents and similarities in hometown dialect (00:10:17)

7. The appeal of Southern Culture: earthiness, humbleness and backwardness, values (00:14:52)

8. Why I didn't like America: Outsider looking in biases and an undergrad that I hated - engineering (00:17:26)

9. A surgery that changed my judgemental views on a society that I hadn't taken time to understand (00:21:11)

10. Family and friends reaction to his change in accent and persona (00:23:44)

11. Discussion in Mandarin (00:32:18)

12. How I made friends with other cowboys: Knowing the real person, beyond race and stereotypes (00:39:29)

13. Bruce's view on tolerance in the cowboy community towards liberal right ideologies and values (00:42:25)

14. We are addicted to bad news: Why fear-mongering thrives in mainstream media (00:45:24)

15. Buddhist philosophies and scientific research, foundational to keeping Bruce grounded (00:48:39)

16. Concluding remarks (01:01:08)