Comedian Ronny Chieng speaks S'porean-accented Mandarin on 'The Daily Show' with Trevor Noah

He made Trevor Noah call himself an idiot.

Belmont Lay | October 13, 2019, 06:19 AM

Ronny Chieng, a comedian who is a Malaysian who grew up in Singapore, recently addressed the Chinese government directly -- in Mandarin while on American television.

The effectively bilingual 33-year-old did so on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, where he appears as an angsty correspondent.

Context: NBA hullabaloo

Chieng's address to the camera came after China recently lashed out at the NBA in the United States.

If you've got an inkling of what happened, good, because here is a very short explanation.

Essentially, China wasn't happy that the Houston Rockets general manager tweeted in support of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

There was a bit of capitulation on the part of the NBA initially, which then got criticised by lawmakers, press, public and stakeholders, for bowing down to China in the interest of accessing its 1.4 billion population.

The NBA subsequently backtracked and said anyone in the NBA was allowed to say anything they damn well pleased, because America.

On the Oct. 9, 2019 episode, Noah and Chieng did a little piece together in response to the hullabaloo.

Without further ado, here is Chieng speaking Singaporean-accented Mandarin, having spent 10 formative years in Singapore and being an alumnus of Pioneer Secondary School and Pioneer Junior College -- while scoring 233 for PSLE.

This is the full seven-minute version:

 

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