Ronny Chieng, from Johor Bahru to the Daily Show

Ronny Chieng was born in Johor Bahru in 1985. The family moved through New Hampshire and Singapore while he was a child, then he studied law at the University of Melbourne and became a comedian instead of a lawyer. Americans know him as a correspondent on The Daily Show in New York, and from Netflix hours in which he takes apart immigrant parents, money, and the performance of being Asian in the West. He turned up in Crazy Rich Asians, like half the Malaysian names in Hollywood that year.

Johor Bahru is not a punchline he left behind so much as a fact he started with. It sits on the causeway facing Singapore. It is hot, large, and organized around roads. Some people retire here because a doctor or a child is on the other side of the water and the rent is lower. It does not look like his stage. It looks like a working city that produced someone who can explain a working city to a studio audience.

If his specials are why you look the place up, go anyway and eat. The famous person is in New York. The kopi and the causeway traffic are here. His joke only lands if the uncle in it is real. In Johor Bahru, he is.