Vivek Mahbubani has made a name for himself by cracking jokes about his ethnicity. An ethnic Indian, born and raised in Hong Kong, the 28-year-old builds his stand-up comedy routine around cultural and racial stereotypes about South Asian residents like himself.
His patter is that much funnier to Hong Kong Chinese because it's delivered in fluent Cantonese with clever word play and the latest slang.
The part-time comedian, who is also a web designer, knows his shtick is just that. In real life, he reckons, his ethnicity hasn't held him back in Hong Kong and he has his mum and dad to thank for that.
'My parents made a conscious decision to make me go to a Chinese school as a child, so I could adapt to local culture and learn the language,' Mahbubani says.
His mother, Bhavna, a teacher who relocated from India in the early 1980s after she married his businessman father, was motivated by her own struggles.
'Hong Kong was tough for me because I didn't speak the local language,' she says. 'I didn't want my children to face the same problem, so I sent Vivek and his sister to Chinese school.'
The youngsters found it hard going at first, with Mahbubani finishing second to last in his Chinese-language class. To catch up, he and his sister went for Chinese tuition after school every day. As a result, Vivek reads and writes Chinese. That ability, along with his talent, has led to success in entertainment as well as web design.