Looking for laughs in China

Local comic Joe Wong discovered how stand-up translates in his homeland

China has been the butt of many a joke lately as the world monitored the Beijing smog and watched the government blast the sky to prevent rain during the Olympics. What few have probably considered is that China may be laughing along with us.

Americans have seen a confusing jumble of images from China - tanks in Tiananmen Square, epic and beautiful Chinese cinema, victims of earthquakes in Sichuan Province, and tough Olympic competitors. We see a future superpower, but we don't see individuals, and there is no art as individual as comedy.

China has been developing its own comic tradition for decades, complete with busts and booms, just like the American scene. Chinese stand-up comedy developed from traditional routines performed by comedy teams, similar to the American vaudeville tradition.

Joe Wong is a comedian based in Boston, but he didn't grow up idolizing George Carlin or Richard Pryor like a lot of his contemporaries. Wong's interest in comedy began in his native China, where he was a fan of traditional Chinese stand-up and sketch. He came to the United States in 1994 to study chemistry at Rice University in Texas and moved to Boston in 2001. He began performing his dry, witty comedy here not long after and has become a fixture of the local scene.

In April, he performed comedy in his native China for the first time in Beijing, a day's journey by train from Jilin Province, where he grew up. This is his account of that trip . . .

In the early '80s, I was in my teens in an economically depressed town in China. In the dreary winter afternoons, I'd wander around by myself and found great comfort from the crackling loudspeakers mounted on electricity poles broadcasting stand-up routines. I laughed by myself and even tried to laugh at things I didn't quite understand. After going home and repeating my recollections of the jokes to my parents, they gave me my first insights into understanding jokes and the art of telling a joke effectively.

Fast forward 25 years: I have become a stand-up comedian in America. When I visited Beijing in April, I was thrilled to catch live Chinese stand-up shows for the first time in my life and managed to arrange for a spot on a show to perform stand-up in Chinese, also for the first time in my life.

I spent two days translating my routines from English to Chinese. I prepared a seven-minute set, consisting mainly of relatable topics, such as travel, childhood, and family. I avoided my routines about Asian stereotypes in America because few people know what these stereotypes are. As a matter of fact, the Chinese think Americans are hard-working, good at math and science, and make fortune cookies.

Upon my arrival at the theater, the first thing the host of the show said to me when I introduced myself is, "Are you here by yourself?" When I said yes, he asked, "Where is your costume?" Turns out that in China, stand-up comedy, or xiangsheng, is mainly performed by comedy duos. Their 15- to 20-minute sets could sound educational or even preachy - elaborating on the four skills in the Chinese stand-up tradition (speaking, imitating, jesting, and singing) and how important it is to laugh. I heard the same talk two decades ago.

If you do traditional routines, you wear a robe; if you do new routines, you wear a suit. No eyeglasses on stage. With some grumbling, they allowed me to go on stage wearing my glasses and a blazer.

After getting used to the comedy scene in America, where people expect laughs every 10 seconds, I found the silence of Chinese audiences grating. However, the audience relaxed with tea and snacks while watching the performance. They are in no hurry to laugh, patiently waiting for the punch lines.

The Chinese audiences don't laugh as hard as American ones in general, but they applaud more. "If I were to die in a car accident, I want it to be a collision with a cement truck," I said. "That way immediately after I die, there is a statue of me." That brought one of my two applause breaks for the performance, which I was quite happy with for my first show in China.

In China you can't talk about sex or politics or use vulgarities on stage. But one thing the Chinese comedians use a lot is the common insult "I am your father" or "You are my son!" One guy talked about how stupid and ugly the other guy's father is for about 10 minutes. The audience laughed it up. I could never imagine myself doing anything like that here in the US.

After the show, I chatted with a seasoned performer who told me that people had to think for a few seconds before they got my jokes. "That's not what comedy is supposed to be," he said. I was quite amused because after my first stand-up set in America, a guy came up to me and said, "You are probably funny, but we don't understand you."

I realized that I had lived in the US for 14 years, and Chinese may have become another second language for me. I guess for my comedy to work in Chinese, I'd have to live in China and start from the beginning, just like I did in America.