Sheldon Ho is an up-and-coming YouTube star from CantoMando. My friend always tells me that the mole on Sheldon Ho’s nose means prosperity and his mole makes him “even more attractive”.
Sheldon Ho is famous for one-third of a channel which has over 230 thousand subscribers. He comprises humor, intelligence and good look. This man is a Macau descendent and have graduated from Waterloo’s Honors Mechanical Engineering with a 3.7 GPA. Before prioritizing his YouTube channel, he used to be a Data scientist at Shopify.
Being born in Toronto, Ho faces the same struggle as many 2nd generation Chinese Canadian – having that cultural and language barriers with his parents. He uses satire to pinpoint Asian culture, including stereotypes, problems and discriminations.
According to an article from the Daily North Western, Ho explained that “the group’s struggles and explained how they ultimately decided to prioritize their YouTube channel over their jobs”, adding that when they prioritize YouTube over their jobs they faced different kinds of criticisms from their parents.
The article quoted a line from Ho saying, “We don’t know where we’ll be, we don’t know whether we’ll succeed, we don’t know if our parents will stop worrying for us but we do know that there is an opportunity for us right now, and we have to lay it all on the line, and that we won’t have any regrets doing it.”
What is it like to be Asian American?
The YouTube channel Ho was part of got popularized since the video titled “Every Asian American Ever”. The video makes fun of people of Chinese heritage but been living overseas their entire lives, claiming that they are “fluent in Chinese” but all they could do is to speak “Chinglish”, which is a mix of English and Chinese.
In an article from Young Post under South China Morning Post, Sheldon deplored that Asian producers online only uses “crappy Asian English accent” to keep their audiences. Ho said that Canto Mando hoped for something different, they will use speak Cantonese or Mandarin to the best of their ability.
Ho once admitted that he was ashamed of his Chinese heritage in an interview, saying that he grew up in a very Asian neighborhood [Markham, Toronto], and that actually had a negative effect on how he viewed himself as an Asian. He added that “even though everyone around me was Asian, because what the media suggested was ‘cool’ was not that, I developed a really negative view of myself.”
In the same interview, he also shared that he appreciated that Chinese culture being family-oriented. However, this aspect of the culture also burdened him when he was deciding what to study in university.
Now visit Canto Mando’s YouTube channel to meet this man of culture.
