43: Kevin Pang
Source: ChicagoMag
“So one day in 2012, I received this email: Jeffrey Pang wants you to check out this YouTube video. So of course, I deleted it.”
About Kevin
Kevin Pang is an author, journalist, magician, little league baseball umpire, producer, theater music director, award-winning filmmaker, cooking show host, and of course, foodie of the highest caliber (with a James Beard award to prove it).
An eclectic mix of adventures, yes. But it’s not all that surprising when you unroll the scroll that is Kevin’s life. In fact, the trajectory starts to make sense when you dig deeper.
Born in Hong Kong, Kevin immigrated with his parents to the US at age 6. To call his relationship with his dad strained would be an understatement. Kevin embraced Western culture while his parents were firmly rooted in the Eastern way of life, with no interest in assimilating. This “dual cultural experience,” to put it mildly, gave rise to dual identities: Kevin was, in his own words, American during the day and Chinese after school. The arguing and fights with his dad were constant, ranging from smoldering embers to full-fledged conflagrations.
The Eastern cultures put a high emphasis on respect for elders, but Kevin was recalcitrant, insistent on doing things his own way, from refusing to speak Cantonese to bleaching his hair blond, an act that elicited fury from his dad, who accused him of being ashamed of his Chinese heritage.
Kevin was raised in Toronto and Seattle, working at the Pike’s Place Fish Market in high school. After moving to the Windy City, he worked as a metro reporter at the Chicago Tribune. Meanwhile, the relationship with his dad, now 2,000 miles away, was barely aglow, kept alive through a weekly phone call filled with the most superficial of pleasantries and small talk.
Everything changed when Kevin was offered a position on the paper’s food writing staff. He had zero experience, except for one highly qualifying line item: he was Cantonese, steeped in the region’s food-centric philosophy and a deep (though perhaps dormant) love of cooking. And this would be the key to unlock not just his future career, but transform his relationship with his dad.
Jeffrey Pang had an obsession with food that was at once borderline manic and completely culturally acceptable. And after Kevin became a food writer, he and his father, for the first time ever, shared a mutual interest. The weekly phone calls evolved from weather forecasts to deep and analogy-drenched tutorials on the way a shu mai’s wrapper should caress its filling or the proper way to braise pork belly. 5 minute calls regularly stretched to 30 minutes.
After his father started making cooking videos on YouTube, Kevin was shocked to learn that not only did his parents have a loyal audience, their viewer metrics were impressive. But the coup de grace to their fraught relationship came when Kevin learned why his father started to make the videos: it was for Kevin, for when his parents were no longer around to prepare the dishes for him. And so, as the family recipes migrated from the carefully maintained spiral notebook to the world of online content, so did Kevin’s relationship with his dad level up.
Meanwhile, Kevin continued channeling his energy into his culinary pursuits, co-directing the critically acclaimed film For Grace, which follows brilliant but tormented chef Curtis Duffy in the months leading up to the opening of his first restaurant Grace, which would go on to earn three Michelin stars; creating and running the Onion’s food spinoff The Takeout; and joining America’sTest Kitchen as editorial director and co-host of the Hunger Pangs cooking show, a duty he gladly shares with his dad.
And, almost as a bow on their converging character arcs, Kevin and his dad are releasing a cookbook of Cantonese cuisine entitled “A Very Chinese Cookbook,” out on October 24th of this year.
Writing a book is hard, and although it’s bound to do well considering the following of its authors, my sense is that if you ask Kevin what he really thinks, he’d tell you that just being back in the kitchen with his dad made the whole thing worth it.
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Max Chopovsky: 0:02
This is Moral of the Story interesting people telling their favorite short stories and then breaking them down to understand what makes them so good. I'm your host, max Chepofsky. Today's guest is Kevin Pang. Author, journalist, magician, little league baseball umpire producer, theater, music director, award-winning filmmaker, cooking show host and, of course, foodie of the highest caliber, with a James Beard Award to prove it. An eclectic mix of adventures, yes, but it's not all that surprising when you unroll the scroll. That is Kevin's life. In fact, the trajectory starts to make a whole lot more sense when you dig deeper. Born in Hong Kong, kevin immigrated with his parents to the US at age six. To call his relationship with his dad strained would be an understatement. Kevin embraced Western culture, while his parents were firmly rooted in the Eastern way of life, with no interest in assimilating. This dual cultural experience, to put it mildly, gave rise to dual identities. Kevin was, in his own words, american during the day and Chinese after school. The arguing and fights with his dad were constant, ranging from smoldering embers to full-fledged conflagrations. The Eastern cultures put a high emphasis on respect for elders, but Kevin was recalcitrant, insistent on doing things his own way, from refusing to speak Cantonese to bleaching his hair blonde, an act that elicited fury from his dad, who accused him of being ashamed of his Chinese heritage. Kevin was raised in Toronto and Seattle, working at the Pikes Place Fish Market. In high school, after moving to the Windy City, he worked as a metro reporter at the Chicago Tribune. Meanwhile, the relationship with his dad, now 2,000 miles away, was barely a glow, kept alive through a weekly phone call filled with the most superficial of pleasantries and small talk. Something changed when Kevin was offered a position on the paper's food writing staff. He had zero experience, except for one highly qualifying line item. He was Cantonese, steeped in the region's food-centric philosophy, in a deep, though perhaps dormant, love of cooking, and this would be the key to unlock not just his future career but transform his relationship with his dad. Jeffrey Peng had an obsession with food that was at once borderline, manic and completely culturally acceptable, and after Kevin became a food writer, he and his father, for the first time ever, shared a mutual interest. The weekly phone calls evolved from weather forecasts to deep and analogy drenched tutorials on the way a Shumai's rapper should caress its filling or the proper way to brace pork belly. Five-minute calls regularly stretched to 30 minutes or more After his father started making cooking videos on YouTube, kevin was shocked to learn that not only did his parents have a loyal audience their viewer metrics were impressive but the koo-the-grass to their fraught relationship came when Kevin learned why his father started to make the videos. It was for Kevin For, when his parents were no longer around, to prepare the dishes for him, and so, as the family recipes migrated from the carefully maintained spiral notebook to the world of online content, so did Kevin's relationship with his dad level up. Meanwhile, kevin continued channeling his energy into his culinary pursuits co-directing the critically acclaimed film For Grace, which follows brilliant but tormented chef Curtis Duffy, in the months leading up to the opening of his first restaurant, grace, which would go on to earn three Michelin stars. Creating and running the onion's food spin-off, the Takeout. And joining America's Test Kitchen as editorial director and co-host of the Hunger Pangs Cooking Show, a duty he gladly shares with his dad. And almost as a bow on their converging character arcs, kevin and his dad are releasing a cookbook of Cantonese cuisine entitled A Very Chinese Cookbook, out on October 24th of this year. Writing a book is hard, and although it's bound to do well, considering the following of its authors, my sense is that if you ask Kevin what he really thinks, he'd tell you that just being back in the kitchen with his dad made the whole thing worth it. Kevin, welcome to the show.
Kevin Pang: 4:00
Wow, max, that felt like being on an episode of this Is your Life or my Funeral one of the two, but it's so great to be here.
Max Chopovsky: 4:09
Max, thanks for having me, of course. Of course, thanks for being here. So you are here to tell us a story. Is there anything we should know before we get started?
Kevin Pang: 4:19
if you want to set the stage, yeah, you know, I think you set it up quite well with a lot of context, but I want to tell the story of after I had become a food writer. There was one moment that really precipitated everything that happened over the following 12 years.
Max Chopovsky: 4:36
I love it All right. Well, let's get into it. Tell me a story.
Kevin Pang: 4:40
So, max, you know that I become a food writer, and that was one way that gave a reason for my dad and I to speak together. We would, rather than having these really nothing phone calls at all I mean, it was the most cordial of calls we would call each other. We would say, hey, how are you doing? What did you eat? Did you go to Costco? You know like, are you hanging out with mom? That sort of thing, right. And the thing is that we did fight, but most of the time it wasn't fighting, it was having a cordial conversation about nothing at all. So I'm sure you can relate. It's just when you feel obligated to talk to someone that you care about, but then you really have nothing to say, and so you resort to the same three or four things that you talk about every single week, and so our relationship was just in a holding pattern. That's what it was. So, even after I became a food writer, we still had these sorts of things. We were talking about how to roast pork belly, but then, beyond food, it was just like you know, hey, how's it going? That sort of thing. So one day in 2012, you had mentioned, I received this email from my dad this forwarded email that says Jeffrey Pang wants you to check out this YouTube video. Now, when you are back in your 20s and you receive an email from your parents that says check out this YouTube video, what do you do? You delete it. Because you don't look at these forwarded emails. You think, well, it's probably some crazy conspiracy theory or something political. I'm not going to read this, I might have time for this, right. And then a few weeks later, my mother contacted me and said hey, kevin, have you seen this video that your dad sent? I'm like no. And she said you should look at it. So I clicked on it and the first thing I saw was it was called creative production and the EAT in the middle of creative was highlighted. It says eats right? I'm like all right, that's kind of cheese ball. And it had royalty free music. You know something you didn't pay for, right? Just something you just got from the internet for free. And then I saw a photo of my mom and her mom, my grandmother, and I thought what the hell is this? And then I saw my mom's hands. I noticed her wedding band, which is recognizable, and she was massaging dough and she was rolling out the dough and there were scallions on it and I thought wait a minute, this is my mom making scallion pancakes, which is something I grew up eating, something my grandmother would make and something that I loved to eat when I was a kid. Take care, they were making their own YouTube cooking show and my parents are tech phobic people. These videos were lo-fi and when I saw this I thought what the hell is this? I was completely shocked and the biggest shock was that they kept doing these videos. They were like 20 videos, you know, in the ensuing months, in the weeks and months, right, and some of them had more than half a million views and in total, it was more than like two million views combined. Now, this was back in 2012, 2013,. Back when getting two million views was pretty hard. I mean, like now today you can bump in church and you can get like 10 million views on TikTok, right, it's pretty easy to like sort, but back then it was kind of hard to like get that and my parents were doing that and I was in digital media and I'm like, okay, I'm helping produce video content on my work and they're getting more views than I was. Like what was going on so many months later, as you alluded to, when I asked them like, why did you make? Like? Why are you making these videos? Like, are you trying to get likes? Or, you know, are you trying to make money? And you know they're making like 60 bucks a month and you know, my dad's able to take my mom out to a nice restaurant, which was cool. They said that, well, you and your sister are not exactly the most communicative of people, right, and you know, we understand we don't really speak the same language, right, and so, like, there's a lot of things that get lost in translation. And they said that we wanted to speak to you in a medium that you would understand, and you guys live in the digital medium, you live in YouTube land, so the only way that we can talk to you guys, you and your sister, is through YouTube. And one day when and this is my parents speaking when we're no longer around, and you grow older and you realize, well, maybe they, you know, hey, your parents weren't all too bad, they did do something right. And one day when you think about some of the food that you grew up eating and you are thinking about that dish and how you just want to recreate it and we're no longer around, we'll have these instructions for you. So it's almost like they're making a time capsule for you to discover later in life. Except, more than two million other views have been. People have seen these videos as well too. So I think from that point on, the relationship got gaping. Which is not to say that we're still not arguing from time to time, but we now have deeper conversations than just hey, how you doing? Did you go to Costco? What did you eat last night? Right, we actually have substantive conversations now, and who knew that food was gonna be our lingua franca, that this was gonna be the way that we would talk to each other? In Cantonese there's a saying. We don't really say hey, how you doing? Hi, we say, have you eaten yet? That's the phrase you greet other people with. I'm sure other communities have something similar, but food is so integral to us that we will avoid conversations about relationships, about geopolitical strife, but we will use food as a way to broach those subjects. So who knew that a simple email 12 years ago would lead to all these things? Lead to a cooking series that I'm doing with my dad and a cookbook, but, most of all improving parental relationships.
Max Chopovsky: 11:09
Well, it went through your mind when you realized that they went through such incredible effort just to communicate with you and your sister.
Kevin Pang: 11:18
I think it wasn't until years later when I became a parent myself. I've got a seven-year-old now, right, and I'm sure many parents go through this. They will soon realize that, oh, this is why your parents did that thing. They tried their best. They're by no means perfect parents I don't know any parents who are and it wasn't until my dad was telling me a story about how, when he was five, his mother, my grandma, and they were growing up in Hong Kong. They were poor. She would take him to the market. There were no TVs, radios you know their household back then. They had nothing to do, right. There was no internet, no tablet, so we had no babysitters. They had no babysitters, right. So my grandma would take my dad out to the market to go shopping, and they didn't have a refrigerator back then too. So they had to buy these things fresh every day. Right, it's not like today. You go to Costco, I keep plugging Costco. Costco should give me some residual here, you know. But they're not going to a supermarket once a week, they're going every single day, sometimes twice a day, to buy fresh produce, meats, fish and things like that. And so when my grandmother would take my dad there, she would teach him about what to look for in an eggplant. It should be the specific color, it should be firm. You should be able to hold it. You have some bounce to it. You should be able to you know, use tactile also your senses, you know your visual senses to be able to, like, tell whether something's fresh or not, right. And then afterward, if he was being a good boy, my grandma would buy my dad a bowl of, like noodle soup as, like, a reward, and the same way that I would buy a big Mac for my kid, right to be hungry. And then I never envisioned my dad as the same age as my child. And it's like you always look at your parent as parents, that is like you always see them as older than you, right, you always see them at a certain age or older, right, but you would never imagine them as a five-year-old. And I had a kid who, back then, was five, right, and so it was for the first time I thought you know this person, you know my father, who I have all this arguments and strife with, right, he was at one point, this innocent kid who was perhaps curious and scared of the world and had hopes and fears and dreams, just like my child does. Now, right, and that was the moment that I thought, oh, this guy's a human too. He's not like some automaton who's trying to annoy you or like, ruin your life or just make your life hard. So it wasn't years later, until I became parent, that I realized oh well, now I see what they're trying to do, and it is both quite humbling and you think well, you know, I wasn't the easiest kid to be raised. As well, too, I was, as you said, recalcitrant. I was being annoying, I was being ironic. They have no idea what irony was right, they don't know what sarcasm is, and so when you don't understand sarcasm and you say things that are the opposite of what you mean, they just become confused, and so that just shows more confusion. So I think, really becoming a parent, that was probably the moment that I saw my parents as not just parents, but as human beings.
Max Chopovsky: 14:51
Totally, and a lot of the time that doesn't actually happen until we become parents. And by that point our own parents are so much older and so we kind of have less time during which we understand them more as people who are imperfect. And what I find so interesting is, you know, to your point, when we're younger we see our parents as people who are static, that have everything figured out, who are, who they are, and we just kind of live in their world. And when we become parents we realize through our interactions with our own kids that actually our parents didn't have it all figured out, and maybe without telling us they were questioning their decisions that they made around us or different you know sort of, or their paths right Through life. But they never let us know any of that and so we never knew that backstory until we sort of reverse engineered it when we had kids. And then, through those conversations with our own parents, we're like, oh my God, why didn't you tell me any of this stuff?
Kevin Pang: 15:54
Yeah, because we never asked. Nor will we have a reason to ask.
Max Chopovsky: 15:57
Exactly exactly.
Kevin Pang: 15:58
Are your parents still around, max? Yeah, they're. So one thing you just said is that, like how lucky some of us are to like still have those parents around, to like understand fully. It's like, ah, now I get it, and to be able to tell them that I have a lot of friends who have become parents and their parents are not around anymore. It's like they don't get the opportunity to tell them now I understand and now I empathize with you. So I guess that makes us very lucky people.
Max Chopovsky: 16:32
It really does. It really does Whatever limited time we have left with them. It really does help us create a richer relationship out of it. What I find so interesting is when you talk about how your dad's mom would take him to the market. In this day and age, we can just leave our kids at home in front of the TV or with a babysitter while we run all the errands and they live the super charmed life where they get to go to birthday parties and activities and stuff, and then we have to do all of that stuff, you know, drive them around, but we also then have to do all the behind the scenes boring stuff that makes their lives easy. But the flip side of that is they don't get those moments that your dad, for example, still remembers, the moments when they're at the store and they figure out how to tell if an eggplant is good, right. And so I always struggle with that. Like, how much should we take our kids with us just to run the boring errands, even though they absolutely hate it? Because during those boring errands A they learn life isn't all peachy and you have to do boring stuff to do stuff that you like, right. But also they get these random moments with us that maybe in the moment they don't want to be having those moments. They want to be in front of the TV watching you know their show, but down the road they're going to be like oh my gosh. I cherish those moments so much and I think that's almost a missed opportunity. Like Kevin Hart has a bio, an autobiography that he wrote, and in the autobiography he talks about how his mom would drag him with her to run her errands and they had to take public transportation four or five buses. It would take, you know, two hours to get somewhere, right, and then they would have to schlep all the groceries back to their house. And in the moment, while he was, while that was happening to him, he probably was cursing his life like, lamenting every moment that maybe his friends were out playing, but his mom couldn't leave him home alone because they didn't have a babysitter, so she dragged them to do all these errands. Now he looks back on those moments and says, wow, that gave me discipline, that gave me patience, that gave me creativity and the ability to not drive myself crazy while I was sitting on the bus looking at the person across from me for a half an hour. You know, it almost seems to me like I mean I hate to be like the nostalgic guy, that kind of yearns for the days long gone, but I do feel like we were forced to have certain experiences that our kids aren't having as much because they don't have to, because we have the resources for them to not have them.
Kevin Pang: 19:04
Well, I think we have to be really conscious about building in those moments. Those boring moments that are, you know, in retrospect are quite, quite instructive. And you know, I'm sure a lot of parents, you've heard your parents say you know, you'll thank me later, you'll thank me later, and so that's certainly a mantra that keeps running through my head. Now, you know, one thing that I think we can do and I really try to do, I suppose, and I am fortunate enough to be able to do is especially post COVID, you know, post lockdown, there's a term I think the travel industry called revenge travel, because everyone just like ends up and they just want to go out again Totally. And I realized that I can spend $100 on a Lego set for my kid, who loves it, for exactly 48 hours and then he dismantles it and then it just becomes integrate into this part of this growing pile of, you know, lego pieces that will never be built again. And there goes my $100, right, totally, versus taking my kid out to travel. And we did that last year. We went to four places, four different places in 2022 and we're traveling again this year, and I just realized that the thing that I want to do more with my family than anything else is to travel. I don't need clothes, I don't need a Tesla, I don't need a new house. I'm fine with sort of like what I have. We live with very simple means. But the one thing I don't want to compromise on is travel, because I want my kid to have those experiences to go to a different country and try to speak someone else's language, try to order a pan au chocolat. You know my kid, seven. He doesn't really speak French but he knows how to say je voudrais un pan au chocolat, si vous plaît. Right, and I haven't been very touched when he says that. So I think just building in moments for our children I think that is sort of my top parental responsibility is make sure that's. You know, that they, years from now, they can think about it. Years from now, they can think back and say my parents took me here. We had these moments. Not all of it was easy. It took 14 hours to get here, we missed our connecting flights, but you know what? It's all part of it and I think that those moments are really instructive 100%.
Max Chopovsky: 21:22
I mean, the downside of living where we live is that we're surrounded by people who aren't struggling at least for the most part, financially right, and the byproduct of that is having kids who are entitled if you don't course correct them right. And so I was talking to somebody who were kind of joking about this, but they were like you know, the weather wasn't good and we were about to go home and he was like you know what? I actually don't mind if it rains, it'll be good for them. Life isn't all about like sunshine and rainbows. You have to make them a little bit uncomfortable. He was like you know, sometimes I'll make the tub a little bit colder, right? He's like, I'm not suggesting you do this, but I made the joke that, like you dip them in a little cold plunge and then you put them in the tub, right, right, right, right. My wife did not approve of that statement, but it's all about a showing them that the world doesn't revolve around them, right, absolutely, because they have to order a chocolate croissant in French, right? And it's allowing them to understand adversity while they are still at home and while you can pick them up and explain to them both what happened, how to address it and say things like this happen more often than you're used to.
Kevin Pang: 22:39
Yeah, I think making sure that our children have empathy for other people, that's really important, but also they need to struggle a little bit, correct? You know, I think one of my favorite things to say to my 7-year-old is like you figure it out. You got to figure this out yourself, man, so I think it's that's not being negligent, that's in fact being really helpful. You know, I read a book that really changed my life. Do you ever read the book Anti-Fragile? I've heard of that book, yeah, by Nassim Taleb, and I love, love, love, love, love that book, because the central thesis is that you should be embracing uncertainty, you should be the opposite of fragile, which is anti-fragile. Right? It's like, think about the way that you exercise. Right, you do not row until you introduce some trauma to your muscles. Correct, you got to work out and that's that can be painful and not comfortable, and comfortable at many, many times, but that is also going to good for you. Now you take that and you apply that to whatever emotional trauma, whatever discomfort and like we need to be resilient. And the way to become resilient people to not sort of, whether at the first sight or the first feeling of discomfort is you need to experience some heartache. You need to experience some, you know, some shit in your life, right, totally. So I really like the idea. Now, how do you do that without you know throwing them straight into the fire, like in that? That's the balancing act. But yeah, that book really, really I think is a good operating philosophy for us.
Max Chopovsky: 24:17
I'm going to definitely check that out. I think that for our kids, if they don't experience discomfort, we're doing them a disservice Totally, totally. When my kids get mad at me because I'm making them do something that they don't wanna do, and they yell at me and I hold my ground, which is really hard for me because I'm constantly questioning am I being too hard on them? But I also say to them you might not like what's happening right now and you might not understand what I'm about to tell you, but you'll get it later. It is my responsibility as your parent to send into the world an empathetic, kind, resilient human being.
Kevin Pang: 25:03
Yeah totally.
Max Chopovsky: 25:04
The only way to do that is for you to be uncomfortable sometimes.
Kevin Pang: 25:07
Yes one of my favorite quotes, someone told me, is like the best things in life are on the other side of comfort. Yeah, which I really love that, and I think that is something that I really try to abide by at all times.
Max Chopovsky: 25:20
Totally, totally. Do you recall a moment during these last few years when you've gotten closer with your dad where he said something to you that just kind of was so deep but he almost said it kind of in? He almost it was almost like a throwaway comment but he said it and you were like, oh my God, I cannot believe. He just said that to me Like this is such a big moment.
Kevin Pang: 25:45
I don't remember the specifics, but I remember very vividly the feeling that I felt when he said whatever it was that he said, and I had said something, and sort of my standard operating state is to respond with perhaps some humor or with some sarcasm. We're always like in a joking, playful manner, right. And when I said it to him, he responded back with me with sarcasm as well too, and I thought, like number one, this is a hilarious line coming from a 72 year old Chinese man, right, like you're able to like that is like if you're in a writer's room of a late night talk show and you like responded this line like I would high five you. Because it was like really, really hilarious. And I forgot what that line is, but I just remember him oh, now you're like responding to me. It's like this is like we're engaging in like verbal, like playful fisticuffs now. And I thought, how do you know humor or sarcasm or irony, right? And that was the moment that I thought, okay, it further chipped away this notion that you're not just this like elder figure, stoic figure, like you actually have a sense of humor and you're able to like go toe to toe with me, and I thought, oh, you're a human being. Yeah, you're not a robot, you're a human being. And so I don't remember what it was he specifically said, but I remember the response was so unexpected and surprising and hilarious that it just like knocked me back.
Max Chopovsky: 27:29
I'm sure it actually makes me think. Do you ever think that maybe your parents held back on some of those parts of their personalities while you were younger, for whatever reasons they might have had, and they didn't wanna sort of fully show their the breadth of their personality to you until you got mature enough to experience it?
Kevin Pang: 27:53
I don't think it was any conscious thing. But you know, like I didn't really go up to them like after dinner to be like, hey, let's have this conversation, like I would just be off into my world, I'd be playing Nintendo or doing my homework, right? So I did not create those opportunities for them to be able to express those sorts of things. You know, I mean, as any kid would. It's like you don't really wanna hang out with your parents, right? So I think it wasn't that they were holding back, it's that I never allowed the space or the opportunity to express those things. And now that you know, one of the great things about working on this cookbook is that I'm talking to them three, four times a week. I'm on the phone with them on Zoom calls for hours at a time, you know, talk to them, interviewing them, and when forced to do this professionally, is when, personally, like this stuff is actually coming out. So it's almost like though my work, you know, professionally I am being forced to have a relationship with my parents, right. So I mean that's a very powerful thing. And you won't believe how many people have told me that they wish they had this opportunity with their parents. And I, like you know, I didn't really think much of it, like I never saw this as like, oh, here's an opportunity for me to reconcile any sort of like fraud relationship, right, I just thought I get to do a cookbook, that's fun, right. But when I heard that I realized like, oh, maybe I am lucky to be able to have this. And yeah, who would have thought that this you know 30 year old food media company would help, you know, repair whatever fractured relationship, which is kind of amazing.
Max Chopovsky: 29:30
Totally. You know we were talking about the screenplay that I wrote before we started recording and I never let my parents read it. So I wrote it in the spring of 2020, and then I revised it and sort of the working draft was from September of 2020. And it goes really deep into the complexity of the relationship that I have with my dad. Right, and what's so interesting is the more I got into that screenplay, the deeper I got into it, ironically, the more I started to understand where my parents were coming from. Because I didn't want to make the character simple so that there's an obvious villain and an obvious like an obvious protagonist, obvious antagonist. I wanted to make each character relatable because in reality, somebody can relate to him, somebody can relate to me, to my mom, to my brother, and so it wasn't supposed to be a very sort of black and white situation, which in reality it's obviously not. My dad turned 70 a few weeks ago and we drove down to see them with my whole family and after my wife and the kids went to bed, I sat with my parents on their deck and I had two printed copies of the screenplay for them and they read it.
Kevin Pang: 30:44
Oh boy.
Max Chopovsky: 30:45
Yeah, and I had come to expect, based on some conversations I had with people, that it was gonna get pretty crazy, because this was basically me communicating to them through the screenplay, the same way that your dad communicated to you through those YouTube videos. I was just using a different medium. Right, and At one point my dad is reading my mom's reading, and I have to kind of like look over their shoulders to see what pages they're on, just so I can follow along, and they're pretty quiet. And at one point my dad looks up and just nonchalantly, matter of factly, says you know, you never had to prove anything to me. And then he just keeps reading and I was like, oh, my God, like that shook me, because that was the statement that I had been looking for for so many years. Right, there's one part in the screenplay where he says why can't you just be proud of me? Right, to his dad, and I actually told him keep reading, keep reading. Responding with sarcasm, almost the same way that your dad responded to you, you know. But it was such an interesting experience because to me it was like, wow, this is what it took for me to hear from him, literally nonchalantly, and what I had been wanting to hear all those years, and it also showed me that, actually, maybe it's true, maybe I never had to prove anything to him, but the way that he was pushing me was because he thought that I wasn't living up to my full potential.
Kevin Pang: 32:17
And so, in the same way that this cookbook is bringing you and your dad closer together, but through you being able to see some of his perspective, maybe him being able to see some of your perspective, it was the same thing with the screenplay One thing I think I realize throughout working on this and I'm sure you can probably relate to this, Max is that throughout this process I realize my dad was way smarter and wiser than I give him credit for, and vice versa, my dad realized, oh, my son is way smarter and wiser than I give him credit for. So, it's like, and it took a cookbook. It took your screenplay. For others it would take a piece of poetry, a song, a work of art, a painting, whatever it is right. But it's amazing how you have a stack of 70 pages on printed paper. That is the conduit for understanding 70 sheets of paper, or however long your screenplay is you know 370 pages for my cookbook. That's like this inanimate physical object that weighs three pounds has, like, so much meaning and like symbolism in this thing which is like, when you look at it, you think this is amazing that I'm holding this in my hands.
Max Chopovsky: 33:39
Yeah, you know You're holding a conduit in your hands.
Kevin Pang: 33:41
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like this is 40 some odd years of complexity and strife and misunderstanding, but encapsulated in this three pound book which is like oh my God, it's kind of crazy to think about it Totally.
Max Chopovsky: 33:58
I mean, maybe there's something to the fact that we see our kids as kids and to us, like you know, I say to my girls like you're always going to be my babies, right, but at some point they grow up and they mature and at some point you have to sort of shift your understanding of who they are as people and their maturity level, because then you can start to have some of those deeper conversations with them. But most parents probably want to be perceived the way that we perceived our parents when you were younger, which is invincible, omnipotent, kind of unfallible right. But at some point, if you keep that up, your relationship will suffer with your kids. Like, at some point you have to show vulnerability because otherwise they're going to see you the way that you and I saw our dads Right. At some point there has to be an inflection point. But they grow up so gradually that it's hard for us to be like, hmm, maybe now I can bring this up, or maybe now I can bring this up. Like I always err on the side of no, I don't want to bring any of that up, but I feel like on some level that's, you know, putting me in the same position that I was in with my dad.
Kevin Pang: 35:02
I was going to respond to that with like at least we have like the foresight to like recognize us and think about this. But then, as soon as I said that, I realized who's to say? That my parents also did not see this and realize this and just like never got a chance of doing that, like, maybe they were just as conscious about that idea. And so, like what if I'm just what, if this is just history repeating itself? Like what, if? So, again, understanding that we need to give them more credit than what we think that they deserve? So, but I think the fact that we're like conscious and like recognize that this is happening, I think it's really important. But again, who's to say that? Our parents, we think, well, what do they know? Maybe they didn't know, we just don't know it.
Max Chopovsky: 35:45
Maybe they did, and my wife and I talk about this all the time. It's like are we doing the right thing, Are we being good parents? And are you know, are we giving our kids enough resources and teaching them enough? And remember I was talking to somebody a couple of years ago and their response to that sort of stuck out in my mind and now I give it as advice to people that ask me the same question. The advice is if you're asking the question, then you're probably within the margins of what's acceptable, because there are a lot of parents that don't even ask the question. Now, now that you are closer with your dad and you have so much more insight into sort of both sides of the story, how has that influenced your parenting with your little one?
Kevin Pang: 36:28
I think that it makes me like rewind back to my memories when I was like seven or eight and how I perceived my parents, you know, and it made me realize that feeling that I'm feeling, whatever it is, however irrational my seven year old brain was back then is probably the way that's my son is probably perceiving me now, and so this is very much like walking a mile in their shoes, but like sort of in reverse, like I like it's like I walked a mile. Now I understand how you're walking a mile and I think that's made me much more conscious about how I should react in certain situations. I can sense probably like a few years ago I could be like way more impatient and way more impulsive and reactive to these things, but now it's like there is a little birdie that just tells me it's like oh, wait a minute, is this how you wanna react? So basically it's just like something that just holds you back before you sort of revert to that monkey brain reaction. You know that primordial reaction. So I think it's just more about now in my brain. Now it gives me like a split second, more to like reflect and go. Do you wanna like yell and scream? And you know in reaction to your kid spilling a glass of milk onto the ground right. So it has added a split second buffer in my parental brain.
Max Chopovsky: 38:06
That's a massive win.
Kevin Pang: 38:07
Yeah.
Max Chopovsky: 38:08
It's a massive win.
Kevin Pang: 38:10
It's just a 0.37 seconds is all it takes. Literally and hopefully and I understand now when you think of like these old folks with their sage wisdom. That's what it is. It's just having more time to reflect and think and not needing to say the first thing that comes out of your mouth. I tend to start speaking without my brain consciously knowing when I'm actually how I'm gonna finish the sentence, but I just feel the need, I just need to start talking, right, and now I think it's okay to pause and like take a second to ponder and it's like you know what. It's fine to do that, and like same thing, parental. It just gives you like a split second more to pause and reflect.
Max Chopovsky: 38:56
Totally yeah. Silence is only uncomfortable for people that maybe don't trust their gut as much.
Kevin Pang: 39:05
right Like silence is actually not a bad thing, it's kind of powerful thing to have. It's like, you know, when you're the person in a meeting, in a work meeting, you just like babble on and on and on. I don't know if some folks view that as like insecurity, I don't know, but I remember a boss where you would ask a question and she would just sit and wait and think about it for a second and then respond and I'm like, in those five seconds of silence I thought, man, that's powerful, like you are the boss for a reason. Like that's a really powerful trait to have. So I've learned to embrace silence and you know, and I know that we're here to also to talk about story, and I think one way of sort of bringing it back to the idea of story is that like we don't necessarily need to fill every part of the sort that we're telling with forward action with you know, because I think the brain also does need some time to process and reflect. And I think building in those moments of silence and just let things sit in the air and ponder for a second, I think that's a really, really powerful trait.
Max Chopovsky: 40:12
Yeah, I mean, I think that's what they call in a theatrical pause, yeah, yeah, so let's talk about storytelling. So you've obviously heard and told some amazing and powerful stories in your life and you've used multiple media to tell those stories. So what, in your opinion, do good stories have in common?
Kevin Pang: 40:33
Good stories almost always have something at stake. This is every single fairy tale since time in memorial. Like is someone has this perfectly happy life, something happens and it just like disrupts that world. Something goes missing, someone loses something, and then they have to try to restore order from chaos. Right, so to me, I mean, you know, gosh, untold volumes have been written about how to tell stories, but I think at the heart of it, it's just about you have stasis, you have uniformity, and then chaos is introduced and you try to damnd us. You try your damnd us, and heart is to restore that chaos into harmony again. And the consequences of not restoring that chaos it could be small, it could be big, it could be existentially important, but you certainly don't wanna lose whatever. That is so, and then you have your reasons for wanting to make sure that you don't lose it, you know so it's just chaos and order.
Max Chopovsky: 41:53
I think that's what all storytelling is Totally and even better if restoring order comes at some cost to the protagonist.
Kevin Pang: 42:02
Yeah, yeah. And I think as young storytellers, I think, certainly when I was in my 20s it's very easy to look at like storytelling as like this very simple framework as conflict resolution. All right, you lose something, you find it, and it's happily ever after. Well, I think as you grow older, you realize that happily ever after doesn't really happen, right. It's like sometimes you only get some of that order back, yeah, and then you've become a changed person at the end of it. And I think that's probably the bigger thing is that, like, you were this person before and then you become this person afterward. And what is that shift? What's that emotional shift, right? What's the spiritual shift? And it's not as binary as like conflict and resolution, that's. You know, it's way more complicated than that. But basically, I think all stories go from one place, go somewhere else, and then it's understanding the effects of what that change does that person. That to me, I think, is very instructive in understanding how humans work. And I think, at the end of the day, we just want to better understand what this complex mass of flesh called humanity like, what it works and how do we become better at it. Totally.
Max Chopovsky: 43:25
Totally Now. Does every story have to have a moral?
Kevin Pang: 43:30
I don't think so. I think people try to jam morality down people's throats in a very explicit way that feels oftentimes quite forced. And I think that when you say moral, it's an either or thing. There are different shades of it, there are different spectrums of it and there are different degrees of it. And I think, rather than looking at it as like should every story have a moral, I am looking at it as should you force morality into every story. I look at it that way and I think the answer is no, when I'm also thinking about moral and I'm glad the title of your show has that word in it right, it's about understanding, like I said, how we live, how do we become better humans, what we can learn from other people's mistakes. And I think, while not necessary to have it, I think it does make the story worthwhile. It actually makes it worth listening to. Otherwise, why did you just spend 30 minutes listening to it, watching this, reading this, if it was all sort of meaningless? So I think it's good to have it. Is it necessarily to always have it? Probably not. Should you be forcing it down people's throats? Definitely not. You know, I think there's an arts in letting that unfurl and letting the reader, the viewer, the listener come to that conclusion themselves. And I think that's probably even the more powerful thing is when they had that aha moment. You know, I love it when comedians I just stand up, act right, they will tell a joke, but they don't give the punchline, because the punchline is filled in the heads of the listener. And then you can slowly hear murmurs of laughter from the audience, like building. You're like ah, I get it, I see what they're saying, right, yeah, they're like why don't you do this with morality in a story and a tale? It's that you don't force upon them, but they discover it themselves. All we're doing as storyteller is we're unearthing this thing for you to then discover that, if you can do that, that is magic, that is arts, right there.
Max Chopovsky: 45:59
Totally, you're giving more credit to your audience, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. So last couple of questions here. You mentioned anti-fragile as a book that you love. Tell me about maybe one or two other books that you love that really nail the art of storytelling.
Kevin Pang: 46:17
I never read a lot of John Steinbeck when I was young and I started reading him voraciously as an adult. And I think my favorite Steinbeck is not the one that everyone's going to say which is not Grapes of Wrath, which is not to say that's not a brilliant book. But I love East of Eden. But I think that's a book that I read later in my adult life and it's a story about two families and how they live, and it's not necessarily conflict resolution in the traditional sense, but just seeing how they live and how they react and the dynamics with each other. That, to me, is a book that stays with me, has stayed with me long afterward. And one thing I'm reading now that I'm really enjoying is you know, steinbeck would keep a journal that he would start the day before he would got to work in, like writing the actual novel. He would start the day by writing a letter to his editor and he would write about everything from these are the troubles I'm having. He would write about like his love life too, which is kind of like wow, I can't believe you're telling people that Just about anything at all. Just, you know about like living in New York and like the troubles that he's having. And he did this as a way of like, it's a warm up exercise for the actual act of like, writing the novel. And I'm quite enjoying reading the East of Eden's letters that he wrote because it's really fun to read it in parallel with reading that novel as well. He also did this with the Grapes of Wrath as well too. That's, I find, in addition to that book, reading the letters of EB White's, of John Steinbeck, of Ernest Hemingway, right, like it's almost like the equivalent of reading the people's emails today, right, but back then, like there was so much gold to be mine from those correspondences and you sort of learn a lot about the problems that they endure, the roadblocks that they face, and I think you can learn a lot about writing from reading those. So, anyway, I would say number one, east of Eden, john Steinbeck, but then also the East of Eden letters that he wrote to his editor. Those two things I'm just like they're really, really profound to me.
Max Chopovsky: 48:39
Oh, I love that and it makes you appreciate the book more, the reading the letters.
Kevin Pang: 48:43
Yes, oh, and I can't wait to read East of Eden again. It's almost like watching the Simpsons, like when you're 13 and you watch it. It's one thing, and then you watch it again in your 30s. You think this is brilliant, because this is a show that is different for when you're 13 and when you're 33. And it's like, wow, this is really, really so like I really can't wait to like dive into like old episodes of, like like all these jokes and adult references that you don't get, that they wrote just for the adult version of the viewer. And I feel like the same way if I'm reading Steinbeck again. So I can't wait to dive in, but I'll do that after this book tour, maybe when I have some time to read again.
Max Chopovsky: 49:24
Yes, you are quite the busy man, which we'll talk about in a sec. But the last question I have for you is if you had a few minutes with 20 year old Kevin Peng, that young, brash, recalcitrant, stubborn, intelligent, ambitious young man, if you had a couple of minutes with him, what would you say to him?
Kevin Pang: 49:49
I heard this in a show I forgot where a few weeks ago, and it wasn't about personal advice, it was about, like, how to have a long-term relationship. And this person said the three most important words with a spouse is not I love you, but let it go. And I thought, wow, that is true, let it go. Of course, it also makes me think of the Frozen song, which I, you know that sort of like really annoys me because I can't help but to hear that now. But I think if you just let go a lot of the anger and all the anxiety and just like, what does it really mean at the end? Probably not, not a lot. So just like, let it go, let it go, you know, let it go. Adena Menzel said it best. So let it go. I think it's a really good life philosophy.
Max Chopovsky: 50:45
Let it go. If you just zoom out enough, you'll realize that so many things that we think matter now actually don't.
Kevin Pang: 50:51
Totally. Yeah, I'll tell you one more thing too. I think I heard it might have been Tim Ferriss or someone else said it, but he said like let's say you're driving down the road and you get this like flat tire right and you can be really, really upset and angry at that moment. And he said at that moment you need to think about in six months six months from whatever is happening right now, will you still be angry about it, the way that you're feeling now? And the answer is almost emphatically no. So don't like, why add anxiety now when, in six months, like who cares? Totally, I really like that framework. It's like saying like ask yourself, will the person in six months still be angry about this current situation you're feeling it's okay to feel emotionally upset or annoyed, right, but it's like you don't really need to let it fester and, at the end of the day, you should just let it go.
Max Chopovsky: 51:54
Totally. I love that Great advice. Well, that does it, kevin Pang. Author, talk show host. So many other wonderful things and I will say again, foodie of the highest caliber. Thank you for being on the show. Thanks, max, what a pleasure. So Kevin has a book coming out with his father, jeffrey 370 pages of gold Cantonese cuisine cookbook, entitled a very Chinese cookbook. It is out on October 24th. Make sure you get that, kevin. Thanks for being on the show man. Thanks so much For show notes and more. Head over to maspodorg. Find us on Apple Podcasts, spotify, wherever you get your podcast on. This was more love the story. I'm Max Drepowski. Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.