Hudson Yang grew up on television. He was nine years old when he was cast as a young Eddie Huang on ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, the first network sitcom centered on an Asian American family in two decades. Now 23, a Harvard graduate, and still a self described “little chubby Asian kid” at heart, Yang is turning his lifelong love of food into a second act. His cooking and travel series “Order Up!” follows him through a crash-course chef apprenticeship in restaurant kitchens around the world. The first season, which aired in the U.S. on National Geographic as “Crash Course Cuisine with Hudson Yang,” took him from Los Angeles, Houston, and New Orleans to Singapore.
The second season brings him to Taiwan, where his family is from, and to Vancouver. In Taiwan, Yang wades neck-deep into a water lily farm and saws down giant bamboo alongside members of the Indigenous Amis community in Hualien. This season will begin streaming online on TaiwanPlus, Taiwan’s English-language international media platform, beginning early November.
The following interview was edited for length and clarity.
Since Fresh Off the Boat, you’ve taken a pretty big interest in food television and cooking. What led you in this direction?
I’ve always loved food and cooking. It was only recently that I decided to take it seriously. I’ve told this story a billion times, but the reason I found food is my grandmother. She came to the U.S. and opened a Chinese restaurant here. Growing up, we couldn’t really communicate that well, because my Chinese is pretty terrible. Even though I was in Chinese school, I didn’t take it that seriously. So the way we communicated best was through food. If I told her in my broken Chinese that I was sad or tired, she would make different dishes. That’s how I fell in love with food.
When she passed, I realized there’s no one left to make me these dishes anymore. What do I do? I tried to supplement it with restaurants in New York, but nothing made that same flavor. So I decided to try to recreate it myself, because my Mom, even though she had the recipes, kind of just throws stuff in a pan and hopes it works out.
I had a lot of Taiwanese food growing up with my grandmother, a lot of botched home recipes that ended up being delicious. As a little chubby Asian kid, my favorite was beef noodle soup. Every day, all day, and keep all the vegetables out.
My family’s always been very in touch with our culture. As much as I was a Taiwanese American kid eating burgers and pizza, I always had Asian food in my life a couple times a week. And I go to Taiwan maybe once or twice a year, so I get to experience the great night market food every time.
What does an average Taiwan trip look like for you?
I still have some family in Taiwan, but nowadays I mostly go with my friend. We have a yearly trip every winter where we start in Japan and end in Taiwan, for a month. If I go in summer, I’m not going outside until nighttime. I’m indoors, maybe in a mall. Usually I stay close to Taipei, doing night markets. We hike Elephant Mountain every year. But thanks to the show, I discovered how beautiful Hualien and other parts of Taiwan are. I went back to Hualien this summer and it was fantastic.
I have so many friends out there right now, so we hang out, do night markets, and play the little plinko game. We spend so much money to win a toy.
Is it rigged? I’ve never tried.
It’s not rigged, but I always spend like $3,000 NT with my friends, which is like a hundred dollars. You get a thousand balls, and eventually you’re going to win something. Recently, we found a place that’s all-you-can-play for 30 bucks. You just don’t win good prizes.
Your dad, the writer Jeff Yang, wrote a piece for The Hollywood Reporter about watching you grow up on screen. For a Taiwanese family, it’s interesting that he’s accompanied you on this journey. What are some of the conversations or disagreements you’ve had along the way?
There are so many. We’ve all made our mistakes, but at the end of the day, I turned out somewhat normal, and I think that’s a testament to my parents. Especially in an Asian family, it’s tough to get your parents to support you in being in this industry.
My mom wasn’t supportive at first, until pretty recently. My dad was like, “I’m going to let you try this, but it may not work out.” When I first said I wanted to be an actor, he sat me down and said, “I want you to do whatever makes you happy. But you’re going to see a lot of doors slammed in your face, and it’s not your fault.” And I was like, “What are you even talking about? I want to make it.”
My first audition was for a small movie called The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete. They flew me out to L.A. after my second callback. I didn’t get it, but they connected me with an agent. After that, my dad was like, “What the hell? That’s not what’s supposed to happen. You’re supposed to struggle.”
When I got Fresh Off the Boat, it was another sit-down. He said, “You’re lucky, but you have to understand how important this show is to Asian America. It’s carrying the weight of being the first Asian American family show in 20 years.” He said, “I don’t want to put this pressure on you as a 10-year-old kid, but you’ve got to take this seriously.” And I did, but I was also still a kid. I was on set playing around with the other two boys, and I also had to be professional. I was blessed to have a crew that understood that we’re kids and we’re going to do kid stuff.
My dad and I are probably the closest father-son duo you’ll ever see. We truly are best friends. But the biggest fight we’ve ever had was me saying I didn’t want to go to college. I already had a job. You go to college to figure out what you want to do, and I knew what I wanted to do. He said, “Hudson, you haven’t experienced what it means to be a student.” We had fights for days. There were times I ran away and said, “I’m not going back. I’m just going to be an actor.” He would never give up. That’s what I love most about him. He cares so much that he would never let me mess myself up like that. I thank him all the time, because going to college changed my life. Dad’s always right.
He must be loving this!
He’s in the background. I never told him this, so hopefully he didn’t hear me.
So you’re juggling a psychology degree, producing and hosting a TV show, and a budding chef career. Do you think about merging those worlds, or is it more organic?
Luckily, everything seems to come together naturally. Psychology can be put into any process. Cooking is all about psychology: thinking about how the person eating your food thinks about food, how they feel, what they need. Acting is the process of understanding the human mind. But it doesn’t feel like juggling to me, because it’s all just me having fun at the moment. That’s what makes life great.
What was the most challenging part of shooting the Taiwan episodes?
[In Hualian], we hiked up to a bamboo forest to cut down giant bamboo to turn into pots and utensils with the Indigenous Amis people. I was super hot. I had taken my shirt off and put it on my head. We were using hand saws to cut through these thick bamboo trunks. I felt like a true wild adventure man, but every part of my body was screaming at me to sit down and stop.
They must have had a good time plucking an American boy out of his comfortable surroundings and taking him into the forest!
You don’t even know. The Amis man we were working with fell in love with me. I could barely speak [Mandarin], but we tried our best, and by the end of it he was like, “I’m gonna come visit you in L.A. I don’t even care about the cameras. I just want to see you again.” He took me into a private dance that’s only for Amis members. He said, “You are Amis now. Put the cameras away. This is just for us.” it was all these people dancing around a fire changing. Taiwan has a lot of subcultures, but they’re all really embracing. There’s no sense of exclusivity.
This season was the hardest yet by far, the most physically intense, especially because it was so hot. One of the hardest things was water lily farming. We had to go neck-deep in some of the eeriest waters you’ve ever been in. Both my guest and I got sick afterwards. We wore waders and they immediately filled up with water, so we were kind of stuck to the bottom, sinking, but we still had to finish harvesting the lilies.
I think my team saw me suffering and said, “That’s so funny. Let’s do it again.” Now I just get to suffer on TV and make a fool of myself. But you know what? I love it. I would never take it back though because it was so beautiful. You would never see anything like Taiwan’s countryside in America.
The first episode of “Order Up!” releases on TaiwanPlus on November 5th with subsequent episodes to be released each week through the month of December.
TaiwaneseAmerican.org Food Editor Tiffany Ran is a chef and writer based in Seattle, Washington. Her writing has been featured in Seattle Magazine, Vice Munchies, Goldthread, Seattle Weekly, Lucky Peach, and more. She runs a Taiwanese pop-up called Babalio Taiwanese Pop Up, showcasing lesser known dishes and aspects of Taiwanese cuisine. She is very passionate about tracing and contributing to the growing recognition of Taiwanese cuisine in the U.S.
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