“When people laugh together, it’s like they agree or they know that other people also have the same thought,” says Sio.

Sio and Mahbubani have previously performed together in Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Telling authentic stories

Sio’s path to comedy started with improv in the Netherlands. A doctoral student at the time, she appreciated how the comedic form – by placing people in embarrassing situations – encourages participants to open up.

After graduation, she returned to Hong Kong and continued her improv work at TakeOut Comedy club. Established in 2007, the club featured both improv and stand-up comedy.

“Most of the comedians in the improv group also did stand-up, so I thought I could also try,” Sio shares. “I have always wanted to perform.”

While improv required her to play different characters, stand-up offered opportunity for self-exploration. To write jokes, Sio drew inspiration from her stories of living abroad, being in an intercultural relationship and becoming a mother.

“For stand-up, you have to do a lot of soul searching,” she shares. “What kind of personality do you have? What type of voice do you want to have?”

The comedian, and formally trained linguist, was born in China but primarily raised in Macau and Hong Kong. After she finished university in Hong Kong, Sio further her linguistic education at the University of British Columbia.

She also spent seven years in Singapore – a period she sees as highly productive to her stand-up comedy career. Calling this time her “mothering years,” the comedian recalls how she would spend the day looking after her two small children and evenings at local comedy clubs.

“You want to share your stories with other people,” she shares. “It doesn’t have to be real for [everyone], but you should talk about something that is real to you.”

The unspoken truth

For Sio, performing in her second language opens doors to expressing emotions and truths not accessible through her first language.

“Cantonese is my mother tongue, but it also has a lot of burden in it – the way you grew up, the associations you have with that language,” she shares. “I actually find that using your second language [makes it] easier to be more objective.”

Sio now lives in the Czech Republic with her family – a new stage of life that generates material for even more cross-cultural and linguistic-driven comedy. Her process of writing jokes involves careful observation of the world, opening what people call their “third eye.”

“In addition to being surprising and unexpected, [jokes have] to have some kind of truth,” she shares.

She sees stand-up comedy as “an interesting art form” – one that exposes the audience to another perspective and creates shared understanding over a previously unspoken truth. For Sio, this is part of humour’s “bonding function.”

“In the comedy room, new ideas are being performed and proposed,” she adds.

Now an associate professor of Chinese linguistics at Palacký University Olomouc, her linguistic expertise allows for better understanding of the limitations when translating jokes.

“When you have a joke, the punchline should always be near the end,” she reflects. “If you do stand-up in different languages, the word order is different, then your joke structure will have to change.”

The switch between English and Cantonese is also deeply personal for Sio. She recognizes how her first language is associated with a “conservative upbringing” – which limits her expression of certain emotions and experiences.

“I actually find doing something slightly vulgar in Cantonese is much harder for me because I grew up speaking Cantonese,” she shares. “When I try to translate some jokes [from English to Cantonese] that is slightly edgy, I feel ‘I’m being very rude, I really shouldn’t do that.’”

At the upcoming Chinatown event, the two comedians will perform both the Cantonese and English sets together – with one comedian opening the act for the other.

Aside from being entertained, Sio hopes the show will encourage the audience to embrace new perspectives.

“It’s always fun when I share my perspective and it’s something they haven’t thought about, but then they realize that it makes sense,” she says.

For more information, see www.chinatownstorytellingcentre.org/events