LeLe Farley

Farley took Chinese classes in high school because the characters looked good to him, and the decision turned into a career. He first went to China as a school exchange student in 2007, spending a summer in the countryside near Guilin, studied economics and Chinese studies alongside each other at Emory University, and went back on a Confucius Institute grant to work on advanced Chinese at Nanjing University. A full scholarship then took him to the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing, where he studied acting and presenting and picked up television work.

He left China in 2017 and, after a brief return, settled in Los Angeles, making a living from stand-up and from hosting events in two languages. In 2020 he turned to political satire in earnest, releasing the song White Monkey about foreigners who earn their keep praising their host country, and then a run of sketches under the title New Cold War in which he played Winnie the Pooh. Chinese platforms blocked him the day after they appeared. He performs in English and in Chinese, and the bilingual act lets him put the same joke in front of two audiences that hear it differently.