【纽约时报 20150521】中国可以承受一句笑话吗？

满仓

【中文标题】中国可以承受一句笑话吗？
【原文标题】Can China Take a Joke?
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】CHRISTOPHER BEAM
【原文链接】http://international.nytimes.com/subscriptions/inyt/lp87JWF.html?


单口喜剧正在风靡这个国家，即使人们还不大确定什么时候该笑。



“三，二，一，鼓掌！”北京演播室的观众面对着空无一人的舞台逼真地做出兴高采烈欢呼的样子。那是去年一月份的一个晚上，他们在录制中国国有广播电台中央电视台的一档节目《是真的吗？》，由喜剧演员黄西主持。在黄上台讲笑话之前，导演——一个精力充沛的年轻人，戴着白框眼镜，穿着羽绒马甲——希望先录制一下观众的反应。他对观众说：“不要太安静，这是现场直播。”

几分钟之后，灯光闪耀，导演大喊：“所有人热烈欢迎黄西！”范•海伦的开场音乐《Jump》响起，黄从观众身后的一道门跑出，向摄影机摆了一个“摇滚”的手势，还喊出一串吉恩•西蒙斯风格的饶舌歌词，然后跳上舞台。他过分古板的发型和眼镜，加上红色的外套和金色的领结，让他看起来就像一个老小孩。（他已经45岁了。）

他说：“大家好，我是黄西。”他使用了自己的英文名字，然后加上一个双关语笑话：“黄是黄瓜，西是西瓜。”轻微的笑声伴随着一串滑奏乐。他说：“这其实不是一个笑话。”

接下来，黄用独特的中文俏皮话讲了十分钟的美式单口喜剧。一个男人用辣椒水抢银行，结果被捕了。“其实他前两次成功了，第三次被抓到是因为保安是湖南人。”（湖南的食物很辣。）“他们说现在要结婚，你必须要有房子和汽车。但是我和我老婆结婚时，我们没有房子，也没有汽车。不过我并不嫌弃她。”（在中国，这些东西应该是男方准备的。）笑话中夹杂着配乐效果，架子鼓、镲和钢琴的声音。

之后节目进入主环节，黄和另一位主持人陈蓓蓓——一个高高的女人，配上更高的发型——调查网络流言的真相，类似《流言终结者》。他们调查当一个人噎住的时候是否应当拍后背（否），是否可以用电线杆上的号码向警察汇报你的位置（是），有没有可能用常温的水在一分钟里解冻一块肉（是，取决于肉的形状）。节目最后，黄又讲了一分钟的笑话。

中国大部分电视节目主持人都有甜美的笑容和滔滔不绝的口才，黄那种神经兮兮的表现就好像是第一次走上讲台的助教。看着他的表演和观众们尴尬的反应，你或许猜不到他是中国最成功的单口喜剧演员之一。这种现象说明，单口喜剧这种表演形式在中国依然出于初级阶段，就像黄一样。大部分在《是真的吗？》录制现场的观众，以及观看他剧场表演的观众，都不是第一次见到他，这不过是第一次与他面对面。面对他的笑话，他们似乎有些不知所措。

黄首次接触单口喜剧是在2001年的休斯顿，他刚刚从北京来到美国，在莱斯大学攻读生物化学的博士学位。一天，一个朋友带他去看喜剧演员艾墨•菲利浦斯的表演。大部分笑话黄都无法参透，但是他喜欢那里的气氛，他喜欢那种不知道菲利浦斯接下来会说出什么的感觉。

他还觉得自己也有一些天赋。他在中国之所以出名，是因为他那些不落俗套的幽默。他对我说：“我永远不会是最搞笑的人，但或许是第二或者第三搞笑的人。”在德克萨斯，他参加头马俱乐部来提高自己的英语水平，在那里他经常能引发别人的笑声。他有一次说：“我有过一次濒死的经历，那一天我走过一片墓地。”后来他搬到波士顿，在一家制药公司工作。他在晚间参加了一个当地高校提供的喜剧课程，并且开始在城里各地参加公开麦克的活动。

他的第一次表演惨不忍睹。2002年一个冬天的晚上，他站在马萨诸塞州萨摩维尔一个体育酒吧的角落里，讲了一个有关新英格兰植物的笑话，还说他不愿意回到中国，因为他在那里无法展示自己最擅长的才华——“少数民族特征”。观众席里的几个朋友礼貌地笑了笑。表演之后，一个男人走上来和他握手：“我觉得你或许很幽默，但我一句也听不懂。”

当时，30多岁的黄正在经历一场身份危机。他来到美国已经8年，但依然觉得自己就像一个幽灵。他的英语水平在不断提高——他已经吧牛津英语词典从头到尾读过8遍——但是在一些美国人听来，他的英语还是晦涩难懂。他喜欢化学实验，但是对一个化学科学家的身份并不感兴趣。他说：“我想指着某个东西说：‘那就是我。’”

黄决定继续他的喜剧事业，笑话讲得越多，他的表现越出色。哈佛广场附近的蜥蜴音乐酒吧每周都有单口喜剧比赛，精英齐聚。黄是那里的常客，他测试新笑话的效果，收集比赛中的经典段子。最终，有一个星期，他获得了冠军。那天晚上，他在雪地上开车回家，难以恢复平静，“我觉得自己不可战胜。”他后来又获得了五次冠军。

2003年，黄和其它95人被选中参加波士顿喜剧节，他在那里结识了《大卫莱特曼晚间秀》的经纪人艾迪•布瑞尔。之后的好几年里，他坚持把自己不断提高的表演水平刻成DVD，发给布瑞尔，最终接到了邀请他去纽约的电话。

黄在2009年4月第一次登台时房间里有一股紧张的气氛。他看起来根本不像一个晚间秀的喜剧演员，而是像一个迷路的游客误闯入CBS的演播室。他的卡其色裤子拉得很高，面色一片慌张。“嗨，大家好。”他说，他的声音有点颤抖。莱特曼的听众发出一阵谨慎的笑声。黄有意沉默了片刻，然后说：“呃，我是爱尔兰人。”

观众席一片笑声，当人们想明白这句话有多么荒唐时，又爆发出第二波的笑声——这种“余震”模式已经变成了黄的招牌。接下来，黄主宰了舞台，他的每一个包袱都响声清脆。观众一方面被笑话本身逗乐，另一方面对不可思议的笑话表述方式感兴趣。路易斯CK看完这期节目之后，在他的网站上盛赞黄：“这家伙是美国最搞笑的喜剧演员吗？不，但他或许是最特别的一个。”

黄很快有了一个经理、一个经纪人和一个律师，他开始与莱特曼的制作公司Worldwide Pants合作，开发一个情景喜剧。他后来又出席过三次《莱特曼晚间秀》，并且称为《艾伦秀》最受欢迎的嘉宾。2010年，他受邀在华盛顿记者招待晚宴上表演。他在台上对副总统乔•拜登说：“我其实读过你的自传，今天又看到了你本人。我觉得还是书更好一点。”

白宫记者晚宴之后，黄发现他受到了越来越多来自中国粉丝的邮件。他表演的视频在世界另一边引起了轰动，观众难以相信他竟然当面嘲弄美国副总统。中国记者开始联系他进行采访，很快就出现了非常正式的邀请，包括中央电视台请他去北京主持一个每周定期播出的节目。

黄在当时并不期望回到中国，那里没有单口喜剧，发起这种新的艺术形式意味着与历史悠久的喜剧传统和同样庞大的国有媒体作对。另外一个风险之处在于，单口喜剧是对当局的挖苦与刺痛，而这个政府对此不解风情。这个国家有悠久的政治笑话传统，人们喜欢捉弄共产党领导人，但这些行为往往是在私下，或是匿名的网络中。对喜剧演员来说，匿名是不可能的了。所以他们面对一个艰难的选择：对权力持有者，嘲弄还是不嘲弄？

但是想很多侨居海外的华人一样，黄感觉到了家乡的召唤，并对它迅速的变化觉得兴奋。他也知道，14亿人群所组成的庞大观众——其中很多人刚刚对单口喜剧产生兴趣——是一个巨大的机会。黄说：“很有挑战，但是市场的潜力巨大。”


黄西和他在国营电视台所主持的节目《是真的吗？》。节目把黄的单口喜剧与科学实验问题结合在一起。


每一集《是真的吗？》录制开始前黄闪亮登场。黄西的喜剧事业在美国起步，他多次登上《大卫莱特曼晚间秀》，还得到了路易斯CK的表扬。


喜剧演员王自健在上海录制他的节目《今晚80后脱口秀》。王接受过中国本土喜剧形式“相声”的培训，在2012年首次推出的这个节目中，王在中国推广单口喜剧。


中国最著名的喜剧演员之一周立波，在他担任评委的《中国达人秀》节目录制间歇，在自己的拖车中。周在80年代参加过各种形式的表演，后来形成了风格独特的喜剧形式，他称之为“海派清口”。


国际妇女节当天的《中国达人秀》录制现场，周向现场女观众献花。他不喜欢“单口喜剧”这个词，认为在中国并不合适。中国的观众更喜欢多种表演形式混合的搞笑方式，就像他的表演中所融合的歌曲和舞蹈。


周在《中国达人秀》录制现场。


3月，西江月（左二）在北京辣猫俱乐部上台表演前低头沉思。西发起了北京脱口秀俱乐部，这里有一批喜剧演员在城市各地演出，还开设了喜剧教学课程。


西在辣猫俱乐部表演。


辣猫俱乐部的观众。

幽默有极强的地域性，大部分经过翻译的笑话效果都不好。（一个日本翻译曾经把吉米•卡特的一个笑话翻译成：“卡特总统刚刚讲了一个笑话，请大家笑一笑。”）曾经有一项学术调查，发现意大利人比德国人更喜欢与性有关的笑话，而后者更喜欢荒诞的笑话。还有一些研究发现，匈牙利人比英国人更喜欢有关传统种族偏见的笑话，而美国人比比利时人、香港人、塞内加尔人和日本人更喜欢富有进攻性的笑话。

人民共和国的喜剧并不具备那么深奥的态度和哲学观点，而只是一种形式。流传最广的形式是相声——一种传统的两人喜剧表演方式，内容经常是文字游戏和评论中国文学经典著作，也包括唱歌和跳舞。相声始于清朝末年的街头卖艺表演。1861年，咸丰皇帝驾崩，政府宣布为期100天的哀悼，停止一切娱乐表演，很多艺术家不得不从事非法的街头卖艺。一位京剧演员朱绍文在一块空地打出一幅字，意思大致是“我很穷，但是我并不害怕站在街角表演。”（译者注，原文为“满腹文章穷不怕，五车史书落地贫”。）

朱把自己的名字改成“穷不怕”，他称为了相声这门艺术的创始人。相声演员很快发现，两人配对能吸引更多的观众。在一个经典的段子中，两个男人（相声演员总是男人）试图表演一段京剧，但是只有一个人知道戏词，另外一个人不懂装懂，却把知道台戏词的人搞得像个傻瓜。（译者注：马三立和王凤山的经典相声《黄鹤楼》。）美国与此最接近的喜剧表演者或许就是阿伯特和考斯特罗。

相声在1949年人民共和国建立之后得到了蓬勃的发展，作为一种广受欢迎的艺术形式，它成为了推广普通话和革命思想的理想媒介。毛就喜欢听相声，他曾经把相声大师召集到家里表演，其中有一些不那么常见的传统段子。

文化大革命让所有非革命性的艺术形式都靠边站，很多传统的相声文本都陆续失传。但是当毛在1976年去世之后，被压抑的愤怒转化为讽刺，相声再一次兴起。80年代一个著名的相声《如此照相》，带有嘲弄意味地模仿一个照相馆服务员与一名顾客用革命口号对话。

甲：“为人民服务！”同志，问您点事。
乙：“要斗私批修！”你说吧。
甲：“灭资兴无！”我照张相。
乙：“破私立公！”照几寸？
甲：“革命无罪！”三寸的。
乙：“造反有理！”您拿钱。

电视机在中国的普及让很多演员成为了家喻户晓的明星，同时也把原来主要出现于东北部城市北京和天津的相声，传播到这个国家的每一个角落。但是在1989年×××之后，具有挑衅意味的相声语言从电视和茶馆中消失了。马克•罗斯韦尔：“相声不再逗乐了。”这个人来自加拿大，也叫大山，他在80年代末和90年代初因为在中国表演相声而变得家喻户晓。（外国人在中国都听到过这句假惺惺的恭维话：“你的中文说得很好，但是没有大山好。”）互联网在近些年的出现在某种程度上帮助了相声的推广，但它已经无法恢复到以往的文化影响力。

与很多舶来品一样，单口喜剧首先是通过香港传入中国。在90年代，喜剧演员黄子华首先开始表演一种单口的喜剧形式，其中融合了政治和文化的批判内容。但是直到2012年单口喜剧才算真正出现，由年轻、不修边幅的喜剧演员王自健主持的《今晚80后脱口秀》在东方卫视首播。（中文的“talk show”——脱口秀——也同样表示“单口喜剧”，似乎会造成一些混淆。）王起初是一个相声演员，他本来不喜欢单口喜剧这种表演形式。他对我说：“我不觉得这个节目会火起来。”但是，就是这个节目，把王变成了一个家喻户晓的明星，至少是在年轻城市居民人群中。

当黄西在2013年夏天回到中国的时候，这个国家正处于喜剧发展的一个小高峰。除了互联网的发展和王的节目之外，政府也起到了推波助澜的作用。在广电总局出于“建设社会主义道德规范”的目的，限制了一系列《美国偶像》之类的音乐比赛节目和受外国影响的一些真人秀节目之后，各网络电台迅速转向喜剧节目。在《喜剧之王》和《谁能逗乐喜剧明星》等节目的烘托下，2014年变成了“喜剧之年”。突然之间，单口喜剧无处不在，即使人们还不大了解它究竟是什么。

“人们为什么会笑？”西江月首先提出了一个根本性的问题。这是第一次周末单口喜剧研讨会，西是北京脱口秀俱乐部的创始人，这个组织的几十位喜剧演员在北京各地表演。在北京西北部的一个社区中心，六、七个学生坐在二层楼的房间里。一位来自广西省的教师参加这个研讨会，他希望提高自己演讲的技巧。一个来自广告公司的女人说，她想提高自己的自信心。书架上摆着一排书（有卡尔•马克思的自传、希拉里•克林顿的《举全村之力》），一只猫在旁边打盹。

西今年33岁，身体健壮，原来是一位信息工程师。他长着一双颇为吓人的眉毛，虽然只是在早上10点，他却喝着红牛饮料，把这个问题先丢出来。一会儿，有个学生说：“因为他们感到愉快？”另一个人说：“因为别人表扬你。”第三个人说：“因为结果在意料之外。”

西表示鼓励地点点头。最后一个学生说：“比如，我读到一本书说吸烟有害健康，于是我把书戒掉了。”几个人鼓起掌来。

西说，很多人试图给喜剧下定义。西格蒙德•弗洛伊德说幽默是心理能量积累后的一种宣泄，亨利•柏格森认为幽默是“生物体内的某种机制”，就像一个抽动秽语综合症的病人或者一名牧师放了一个屁，而笑声就是对这种现象的回应。中国学者林语堂把“humor”这个词引入中国，翻译成“幽默”，以区别于“讽刺”、“机警”、“嘲笑”、和“滑稽”。在1934年一篇著名的散文中，他说“……一旦聪明起来，对人之智慧本身发生疑惑，处处发见人类的愚笨、矛盾、偏执、自大，幽默也就跟着出现。”他认为幽默是一种文明的力量。20世纪伟大的中国作家鲁迅说：“幽默是带有感情的滑稽，滑稽是没有感情的幽默。”西说，就这个研讨会来说，幽默就是意料之外。

作为练习，西把课堂分为两个小组。一个人读一段话，对方要给出脑筋急转弯式的回答。一个年轻的女人对她的男性搭档说：“你的头发一团糟。”对方说：“我知道我很帅气。”她又问：“你有多高？”他说：“我到姚明的膝盖。”

对话持续了几分钟，课堂里陆续出现了一些小声的窃笑，但没有爆发出大笑。西说：“没有关系，你的回应不一定都很搞笑，第一步是养成这样的习惯。”

西把讲台让给另外一位喜剧演员宋启瑜，这个人27岁，有一张娃娃脸，戴着无边框眼镜，一副搞笑的表情。他脚上那双黑色运动鞋上有一个金色的花花公子标志。宋在台上，有点像一个结结巴巴的伍迪•艾伦，也有点像面无表情的史蒂夫•怀特。他表情紧张，用浓重的陕西农村口音小心翼翼地说出每一个字。只要观众一笑，他就提醒他们安静，但是这让他们笑得更开心了。

宋的喜剧之路漫长而又艰辛。他看到网上黄西的视频发现了单口喜剧的表演形式，很快就对这种幽默的笑料组合和方式产生了兴趣。2011年，他辞去教师的工作，到中国艺术研究院进修研究生课程，专业是喜剧。他第一次上台表演是在2013年的春天，不到一年之后，他在江西电视台主办的喜剧大赛中获得第二名，获得了2万元人民币的奖金，相当于3,250美元。现在他是全职的单口喜剧演员（父母有一些资助），他希望有一天能主持自己的电视节目。

宋向学生们解释如何创作出一个笑话。他的大学专业是经济学，所以喜欢用图表来阐述。他在黑板上画了一个表格，表格上面写“笑话的来源”。然后又画了4个格子，里面分别写上“主题”、“态度”、“技巧”和“表演”。

宋选择了一个主题：爱情。他解释道，态度就是有关爱情的各种观点，例如“爱情很难”。技巧就是进一步充实这个观点，爱情为什么很难？“爱情很难，因为我是男人。”——一个双关语，中文的“hard”与“man”发音一样。他说，表演就是表达。宋那种神经质、含含糊糊的举止让他具备喜剧色彩的优势，同样一个笑话如果由别人来讲，多半会死于沉寂。

宋接下来讲述一个笑话的起承转合（一条垂直的线，中间用一些短横线来分割），以及如何给一系列的笑话排序，先是第二搞笑的段子，之后是最不搞笑的，最搞笑的留在最后（就像一个反曲线）。他满脑子都是点子：尽量简洁、不要拿悲剧开玩笑。他还说，喜剧演员应当在早期开始培养。从业的前3年，他们只应该讲短笑话，大约从第6年开始可以讲一些小故事。只有在8年之后他们才可以表达对世界的个人观点，“就像乔治•卡林”。

如果说黄让宋喜欢上笑话，那么是卡林让他决定把喜剧作为终身的事业。宋对我说，很多喜剧演员的风格只不过是“笑话、笑话、笑话”，但卡林已经超越了搞笑的境界，深入到人类深层次的真理。他说：“他是一种高端的艺术，最好的喜剧演员对生活有深刻的理解。我具备了一些技巧，但知识不够。”

宋和习发现，单口喜剧不但是幽默的载具，而是还是自我表达的一种方式。宋对我说：“相声只是为搞笑而搞笑，单口喜剧包含了一些思想。”相声演员大多使用的是大师们撰写的剧本，而单口喜剧演员表达的是自己对世界的见解。与中国社会中很多的现象不同，单口喜剧似乎专门是为精英阶层所准备的。宋说：“段子有意思，人们就会笑。段子无聊，就算你是明星人们也不会笑。”他认为中国的经济逐渐强大，越来越多的人加入中产阶级，单口喜剧必定会更加繁荣，因为物质满足感让人们更渴望表达自己的见解。

在发起北京脱口秀俱乐部之前，习就是一个颇为独立的人，他在大学期间曾经两次创业，但都失败了，总之他不喜欢为其他人工作。于是在2009年，他辞掉了IT的工作，投身于单口喜剧事业。他的新工作并没有丰厚的收入，但这并不重要，他说：“这是我心之所往。”

托尼•周是北京的一位喜剧演员，曾经在中央电视台做记者工作，他对于单口喜剧事业的追求具有浪漫色彩。他对我说：“我是个追求自由的人，在大学同学中，我是唯一一个不从事本专业工作而去追求梦想的人。他们都是工程师，我不觉得他们都喜欢工程师的工作。”周去做记者，因为他觉得或许有机会分享他对世界的观点。他说：“但实际上不是这样，中央电视台不需要个性。”而单口喜剧完全是关乎自身的感受。

周立波在杭州有一个铺着木地板的拖车，他坐在拖车的沙发里，对我说：“中国没有单口喜剧。”这个48岁瘦瘦的男人有一张表情夸张，甚至可以说带有卡通造型的脸，留着一头光亮、柔软的头发。周的周围摆满了遥控直升飞机——“都是我的玩具。”他刚刚拍完一集单人电视节目，脱掉领结套装，换上休闲的装束，敞开的领口中露出一个太阳型的挂坠。

作为中国最知名的喜剧演员之一，周在80年代成为上海滑稽剧团最年轻的一名成员，专门从事相声和其它传统剧目的表演。后来，因为殴打女朋友的父亲入狱，他的事业停滞了十年。（他告诉我：“是他先动手的，但是我的动作更快。”）2006年，他以全新的个人形象返回公众视野，他称其为“海派清口”的表演形式是针对时事新闻的长篇幽默独白。他在电视台开办了个人节目《壹周立波秀》，还作为评委参加了一系列的节目，包括《中国达人》。

周不同意使用“单口喜剧”这个词来定义他的表演，因为他觉得自己不仅仅是在说话：他会唱歌、跳舞、滑稽模仿。（每期《壹周立波秀》的结尾他都会郑重其事地唱一首民歌。）他对我说：“他们没有我的水平”，他指的是那些单口喜剧演员。周说他不太认可黄西对中国未来的看法。“我觉得中国市场不适合他，他的风格太美国化了。他可以说，但中国人更喜欢看到我这样的人。周立波可以让他们兴奋，让他们听到笑话和观点，为什么不喜欢呢？”


周立波和他女儿的狗Schoko。

我之所以去拜访周，是因为我听说他在表演中经常会谈论一些敏感话题。周对我说：“我说的那些话题，中国政客不会说，外国记者也不敢问——即使他们问了，也不会得到回答。”他最有名的一个段子是有关腐败的官员，以及对他们荒唐的“人民公仆”称呼：“哪有仆人坐车，主人骑自行车的？哪有仆人住别墅，主人住安置房的？……哪有仆人用主人的银子到处砸，也不给主人知会一声的？”

在周的每期节目末尾，都会有一个观众问答环节，就是像击鼓传花一样在观众之间传递一个麦克风，音乐停止时拿到麦克风的观众必须要提一个问题。在一次节目录制的现场，不知道是不是巧合，音乐停止时话筒刚好落在我的手里。我于是站起来问周，如果他有一天成为中国主席，他会做什么。我已经准备好聆听他对这个国家权力结构的尖锐评论了。

周说：“我会给每个人都放一天假。”

尽管周勇于闯入一些禁忌领域，但他很少谈论真正有争议的话题。（即使他的“人民公仆”的言论瞄准的也是政府首肯的小角色。）在他说来，原因很简单：“我爱国。无论我去哪里，我都会说：‘中国好。’”他说他不会说违心的话，但是他的真心话总是不会忤逆官方的意见。他说：“我对自己的笑话负责，我并不是盲目地奚落。”他暗指的是拿中国和领导人开玩笑的喜剧演员。他说：“他们是悲观者，蓄意要把这个国家搞乱。如果我是政府当局，我也会让他们住嘴。”

政府当局早已采取了行动。2014年6月初，×××事件25周年纪念日之际，黄西和另外几位喜剧演员正准备在北京市中心的陆玖酒吧上台表演。当地两名文化事务官员走进来，向主办者建议取消演出。他们并不强制这么做，只是一个建议。主持人走上台，宣布演出取消。台下有人喊：“这一点都不搞笑。”

一个星期之前，两名官员来到北京一家剧院，严厉斥责一个拿中国国旗开玩笑的喜剧演员。从那之后，北京脱口秀俱乐部开始小心行事。社会上时时出现具有警戒意味的事件：2012年，一位北京博客写手因为发布了一个有关当年全国党代表大会的笑话而被逮捕。今年4月，中央电视台主持人毕福剑的一个视频——他在一个私人晚宴上唱了一首讽刺毛的革命歌曲——在网上疯传。毕被停职，并为他的嘲弄性语言道歉：“在社会上造成了严重不良影响。”

中国所有的喜剧演员都知道有那么一条线，但谁也不知道这条线究竟在哪里。有一些明显不能触碰的内容，比如“三T”——西藏、台湾、天安门，但细节要靠人们自己揣摩。有些艺人对其避之唯恐不及，也有一些人小心翼翼地靠近这条线，把手伸得尽量长，然后飞快地收回。偶尔有人会越过这条线，结果往往不那么搞笑。

但是在现实中，只有高级别的演出需要奉行一些这些限制规定，比如电视和大型的演出活动。在酒吧里，喜剧演员可以畅所欲言，除了类似×××纪念日那样的敏感日期。黄西对我说：“在中国，你往往只需要等那么一段时间，然后就可以重操旧业。”而且，争议并不一定是坏事，宋说：“你越禁止，人们就越好奇。”

但是我交谈过的大部分喜剧演员都认为，在中国，人们对于尖刻政治批判性的喜剧没有太大的兴趣。年轻的电视节目主持人王自健说：“在美国，人们相对自由，可以讨论种族和政治问题，每个人都有自己的态度要表达。喜剧在美国所扮演的角色与中国完全不同。在这里，我们依然处于‘先让我乐呵乐呵’的阶段。”

从这种意义上说，中国和美国的喜剧风格存在着根本上的差异。讽刺是美国单口喜剧的精髓，比如李察•普莱尔、比尔•希克斯，甚至史蒂夫•马丁。但是在中国，讽刺会产生反作用。在2013年中央电视台的春节联欢晚会上，一向彬彬有礼的主持人决定，或者说被要求要相互嘲弄。北京一位教育家和评论员莫大伟说：“没什么效果。他们的对话不含讽刺，所以听起来就像白开水一样。”

这比政治因素更严重地阻碍了中国出现真正优秀的单口喜剧：人们不愿意放下自尊，开句玩笑。王自健对我说：“如果我拿北京的雾霾开玩笑，人们会说：‘你给北京丢脸。’”一位著名的女演员曾经给王的制作人打电话，恳求不要在拿她和她的男朋友开玩笑了。制作人为了维护良好的关系，答应下来。

4月，黄西在天津海边一个三层交叉式的剧院登台表演。回到中国之后，黄发现他在美国屡试不爽的搞笑逻辑——一个乡巴佬与一个疯狂新世界的碰撞——在中国似乎也行得通，因为现在的中国和二十年前他离开时已经完全不同了。

北京的官方人口统计数字已经超过了2000万人，城市增加了10条地铁线，路上塞满了汽车。老旧住宅已经拆除殆尽，奢侈品店取代了旧商场。黄说：“这里有的女孩皮肤比美国人还白。1990年之后出生的人有很多个性，我离开中国之前不是这样，每个人差不多都是一样的。”

黄还发现中国的演艺市场比美国还要复杂。大剧院会要求表演者事先提供详细的台词，有时候甚至在表演开始前几个月。如果剧院领导不喜欢某个笑话，你就要把它拿掉。

电视节目的限制更多。《是真的吗？》为黄赢得了一大批观众和稳定的收入来源，但是节目把单口喜剧与科学实验蹩脚地整合在一起，而且黄和制作人的观点不一致。为了吸引更多的观众，他们把复杂的段子简化，有的甚至彻底删除。政治和宗教内容肯定不能提，但那些无伤大雅的婚外情笑话也被删除了。

从另一方面来说，黄发现他在中国也可以触及一些在美国不敢触及的话题。他告诉我：“你可以嘲笑胖子。我的一个撰稿人就有点胖，我就可以讲段子取消他。”还可以拿打孩子开玩笑，也可以把人比成动物。

在过去一年里，黄的表演风格发生了很大的变化。他依然在讲述美国的生活，以及回到中国之后的陌生感。但是在天津的舞台上，他更投入、更活跃。在讲述一个滑雪的笑话时，他做出爬山的动作。在丢出包袱时，他睁大眼睛，冲观众扮鬼脸。他还唱了一首歌《Don’t Worry, Be Happy》，把歌词改成中国人的日常生活。观众的情绪颇高。

他后来对我说：“我在美国不会唱歌，观众不喜欢。”正如黄曾经努力了解美国观众的需求一样——简洁、清晰、有悖于美国传统思维的意料外结果，他正在学习如何在中国观众前表演。

剧场外悬挂着一张海报，微笑的黄身边围绕着一些语句，就像是一张世界上最大的名片：“美国总统特邀脱口秀达人”、“‘莱特曼秀’表演脱口秀第一人”、“央视《是真的吗》主持人”、“生化博士”。似乎在提醒人们，黄的成功不仅仅在于他的笑话，而且在于他以此为生的决定。他可以说是中国梦的实现者——在一个小乡村长大，努力学习，出国，谋得高薪工作——接下来放弃一切，去追求鲜有人达成的成就：他自己的梦想。

回到中国之后，黄发表了一个电视讲话，题目是《不完美，怎么了？》他敦促年轻人去做自己喜欢的事情，不要害怕失败。这在美国算是老生常谈，但与中国的传统思维并不吻合，中国的传统思想强调稳定、永争第一。他对观众说：“我现在意识到，生活的意义就是努力工作，找到你自己的志向，让这个志向来驱动你前进。”观众们普遍点头认可。背景想起一阵音乐。

我看着他的演出视频，不禁想到：一个喜剧演员在美国不可能这么做。在美国的单口喜剧产业中，占统治地位的永远是讽刺的虚无主义。美国人如果愿意，可以把一辈子的时间花费在小房间里，给醉鬼们讲笑话，这并不奇怪。但是在中国，这种职业还是崭新的，而且可以说是一个美丽的梦想。黄的职业是一种激进的实验，结果尚不明朗。但是如果缺少了令人沮丧的失败，喜剧会变成什么样呢？黄说：“我不会考虑回到美国。”



原文：

Stand-up comedy is catching on in the country, even if people still aren’t quite sure when to laugh.

Three, two, one, applause!” The audience in the Beijing studio cheered as excitedly as anyone could be expected to cheer for an empty stage. They had gathered on a January evening last year for a taping of “Is It True?” — a show broadcast on the Chinese state-run network CCTV2 and hosted by the comedian Joe Wong. Before Wong came out to tell jokes, the director, an energetic young man in white-framed glasses and a puffy vest, wanted to record the audience members’ reaction. “Don’t be too quiet,” he advised them. “This is a lively program.”

A few minutes later, the lights flashed. “Everyone please give a warm welcome to Joe Wong!” the announcer shouted. The opening bars of Van Halen’s “Jump” played. Wong came running in through a door behind the audience, gave the camera “rock on” fingers and a Gene Simmons tongue wag and bounded onstage. His aggressively unfashionable haircut and glasses, combined with his red dress shirt and gold bow tie, made him look like a very old child. (He is 45.)

“Hello, everybody, I’m Huang Xi,” he said, using his Chinese name, then added a pun: “Huang like a cucumber, Xi like a watermelon.” Mild chuckles. Glissando sound effect. “That wasn’t a joke,” he said.

Wong then launched into 10 minutes of American-style stand-up comedy with distinctly Chinese punch lines. A man was arrested for robbing a bank using pepper spray, he said. “It worked twice. The third time, they caught him because the police were from Hunan.” (Hunanese food is spicy.) “They say that to get married these days, you need a house and a car. But when my wife and I got married, we didn’t have a house or a car — and I still didn’t dump her.” (In China, men are expected to provide.) The jokes were punctuated with sound effects: the boyoyoing of a spring, the tinkle of a piano.

The show segued into the main act, in which Wong and his co-host, Jessica Chen, a tall woman with even taller hair, investigate online rumors, “MythBusters”-style. They examined whether you should pat someone on the back while the person is choking (no), whether you can report your location to the police using the numbers on telephone poles (yes) and whether it’s possible to defrost meat in one minute using room-temperature water (yes, depending on the shape of the meat). Wong concluded with one more minute of jokes.

Most Chinese TV hosts are all ingratiating smiles and talky energy; Wong has the nervous manner of a teaching assistant running his first seminar. Watching his delivery and the audience’s frequently awkward response, you wouldn’t guess that he’s one of the most successful stand-up comedians in China. This says as much about stand-up comedy in China, where the form is still in its infancy, as it does about Wong. When most audience members watch Wong perform, on the set of “Is It True?” or at one of his theater shows, they’re not just seeing him for the first time: It’s their first exposure to live stand-up, period. They’re not always sure how to react.

Wong first encountered stand-up in 2001 in Houston, where he had moved from Beijing to get his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Rice University. One day, a friend took him to see the comedian Emo Philips. Wong didn’t get a lot of the jokes, but he relished the atmosphere; he loved the fact that no one knew what Philips might say next.

He also thought he might have a knack for it himself. In China, he’d been popular, and known for his offbeat humor. “I was never the funniest, but maybe the second or third funniest,” he told me. In Texas, to practice his English, he took a course with Toastmasters International, where he got some laughs. “I had a near-death experience once,” he said in one speech. “I walked past a graveyard.” After moving to Boston to work at a pharmaceutical company, he signed up for an evening comedy class at a local high school and started attending open-mike nights around the city.

His first show bombed. On a winter evening in 2002, he stood in a corner at Hannah’s, a sports bar in Somerville, Mass., and told a joke about the New England foliage and another about how he didn’t want to go back to China because there, he couldn’t do what he did best: “be ethnic.” A few friends in the audience smiled politely. After the show, a man came over to shake his hand. “I think you might be funny,” he said. “But I couldn’t understand a thing you said.”

By that point, Wong, then in his 30s, was going through an identity crisis. He’d been in the United States for eight years, but he still felt like a ghost. His English was improving — he had read the Oxford English Dictionary cover to cover eight times — but to the ears of some Americans, he still spoke gibberish. He enjoyed chemical research, but he felt interchangeable with the next scientist. “I wanted to point to something and say, ‘That’s me,’ ” he said.

As Wong decided to keep telling jokes, the more he told, the better he got. Lizard Lounge, a tiny music club near Harvard Square, had a weekly stand-up contest — comedy at its most brutally meritocratic. Wong became a regular, testing out jokes at open mikes and culling the best ones for the competition. Finally, one week, he won. As he drove home through the snow that night, he was in shock. “I felt invincible,” he said. He went on to win five more times.

In 2003, Wong was one of 96 comics picked to participate in the Boston Comedy Festival, where he was spotted by Eddie Brill, the booker for “Late Show With David Letterman.” After several years of sending DVDs of his gradually improving act to Brill, he finally got the call to come to New York.

There was tension in the room when Wong first came onstage in April 2009. He didn’t look like a late-night comedian so much as a confused tourist who had accidentally wandered into the CBS studio. His khaki pants were pulled high, and his face read panic. “Hi, everybody,” he said, his voice straining. Letterman’s audience chuckled nervously. Wong let the silence hang. Then he said, “So, uh, I’m Irish.”

There was a wave of laughter, and then another wave as the absurdity of the statement sank in — an aftershock pattern that would become a Wong trademark. After that, he was flying. Every joke hit. The audience seemed to be laughing partly at the jokes themselves and partly at the unlikeliness of their vehicle. After seeing the routine, Louis C.K. praised Wong on his website: “Is this guy the best comedian in the country? No. But this set is very special.”

Wong soon had a manager, an agent and a lawyer. He started working with Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, to develop a sitcom. He went on “Letterman” three more times and became a favorite on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” In 2010, he was invited to perform at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. There, he addressed Vice President Joe Biden. “I actually read your autobiography, and today I see you,” he said. “I think the book is much better.”

After the correspondents’ dinner, Wong noticed he was getting more fan mail from China. The video of his performance had gone viral on the other side of the world, where viewers were marveling that a Chinese comedian had mocked the vice president of the United States to his face. Chinese journalists began contacting him for interviews. Those requests soon gave way to serious offers, including an invitation from CCTV to host a new weekly show in Beijing.

Wong hadn’t expected to move back to China. Stand-up barely existed there. Building it up would mean taking on decades of comedic tradition reinforced by a homogeneous, largely state-run media. There was also the potential risk of pursuing a form of entertainment that was synony mous with irreverence and tweaking authority under a government not known for its sense of humor. The country has a long history of subversive jokes, and people delight in poking fun at Communist Party leaders, but these jabs are usually made in private or anonymously online. For comedians, anonymity is not an option. They face a starker choice: to mock or not mock power?

But Wong, like many expatriates, felt the pull of his homeland and excitement at how rapidly it was changing. He also knew that an audience of 1.4 billion people, many of whom were just starting to take an interest in stand-up, was a major opportunity. “It’s challenging,” Wong told me. “But the potential market is huge.”

Joe Wong on the set of the show he hosts for China’s state-run CCTV2 network, “Is It True?” The show pairs Wong’s stand-up comedy routine with science questions and experiments.

Wong taking the stage for his stand-up routine, which opens each episode of “Is It True?” Known in China by his Chinese name, Huang Xi, he first achieved success as a comedian in the United States, where he appeared several times on “Late Show With David Letterman” and received praise from Louis C.K.

The comedian Wang Zijian at a taping of his program, “Post-’80s Talk Show,” in Shanghai. Wang, who trained in the indigenous Chinese form of comedy known as cross-talk, helped popularize stand-up in China with the program, which debuted in 2012.

Zhou Libo, one of China’s best-known comedians, in his trailer between tapings of “China’s Got Talent,” on which he is a judge. Zhou got his start as a variety-show performer in the 1980s and later pioneered his own style of comedy, which he calls “Shanghai clean talk.”

Zhou handing out flowers to female audience members in honor of International Women’s Day on the set of “China’s Got Talent.” He dislikes the term “stand-up comedy” and considers it an awkward fit for China, where audiences are accustomed to the more vaudevillian blend of jokes, singing and dancing offered by performers like him.

Zhou on the set of “China’s Got Talent.”

The comedian Xi Jiangyue, second from left, bowing his head to think in silence before performing at the Hot Cat Club in downtown Beijing in March. Xi founded the Beijing Talk Show Club, a group of comedians that performs around the city, and teaches stand-up seminars.

Xi performing at the Hot Cat Club.

The audience at the Hot Cat Club.

Humor is stubbornly provincial. Comedic tastes differ by region, and most jokes don’t translate well. (A Japanese interpreter once translated a joke that Jimmy Carter delivered during a lecture as: “President Carter told a funny story. Everyone must laugh.”) One academic study compared Italians with Germans and found that the former had a stronger preference for sex jokes, while the latter had a greater appreciation for absurdist humor. Other studies found that Hungarians like gags about ethnic stereotypes more than the English do, while Americans enjoy aggressive humor more than Belgians, Hong Kongers, Senegalese or Japanese.

Comedy in the People’s Republic isn’t so much an attitude or philosophical viewpoint as it is a set of forms. The most widespread is xiangsheng — typically (if imperfectly) translated as “cross-talk” — a traditional two-person comedic performance that often features wordplay and references to Chinese literary classics, as well as singing and dancing. Cross-talk originated with street performers during the late Qing dynasty. In 1861, the Xianfeng Emperor died and the government declared a 100-day period of mourning, which meant all stage shows were canceled. Many artists resorted to illegal busking, and a Peking-opera performer named Zhu Shaowen hung up a sign in a public square: “I’m poor, and I’m not afraid to stand on the street corner and shoot the breeze,” goes one loose translation.

Zhu changed his name to Qiong Bupa — “poor and unafraid” — and became the first cross-talk hero. Performers soon discovered that pairs attracted bigger crowds. In one classic bit, two men (they were always men) try to perform a famous Peking opera, but only one of them actually knows the script; the other is faking it, while trying to make the competent one look like the fool. The closest American analogue is Abbott and Costello.

Cross-talk was booming by the time the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949. As a populist art form, it made an ideal medium for spreading standardized Mandarin and revolutionary ideology. Mao himself was a fan, summoning cross-talk masters to his house for private performances, including the out-of-favor traditional pieces.

The Cultural Revolution put an end to nonrevolutionary art of all kinds, and many of the old cross-talk scripts were destroyed or forgotten. But the form surged again after Mao’s death in 1976, as years of pent-up anger gave way to satire. One famous routine from the ’80s, “How to Take a Photograph,” mocked revolutionary slogans in an exchange between the proprietor of a photo shop and a customer:

A: “Serve the People!” Comrade, I’d like to ask a question.
B: “Struggle Against Selfishness and Criticize Revisionism!” Go ahead.
A: “Destroy Capitalism and Elevate the Proletariat!” I’d like to have a picture taken.
B: “Do Away With the Private and Establish the Public!” What size?
A: “The Revolution Is Without Fault!” A three-inch photo.
B: “Rebellion Is Justified!” O.K., please give me the money.

The proliferation of television sets in China turned many actors into household names, and spread cross-talk, previously concentrated in the northeastern cities of Beijing and Tianjin, to far corners of the country. But after the massacre of protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, provocative sketches disappeared from television and were banned in teahouses. Cross-talk entered a creative ice age. “It wasn’t funny anymore,” said Mark Rowswell, a.k.a. Dashan, a Canadian who rose to fame in China for his cross-talk performances in the late 1980s and ’90s. (Foreigners in China have all heard the backhanded compliment, “Your Chinese is good — but not as good as Dashan’s.”) The advent of the Internet has helped popularize cross-talk somewhat in recent years, but it lacks its former cultural influence.

Like many imports, stand-up comedy first made its way into China through Hong Kong. In the 1990s, the comedian Dayo Wong pioneered a form of stand-up that brimmed with political and cultural criticism. But stand-up didn’t truly arrive until 2012, when a program called “Post-’80s Talk Show,” starring the young slacker comedian Wang Zijian, debuted on the Dragon TV network. (The Mandarin word for “talk show” — tuokouxiu — is also used to mean “stand-up comedy,” causing considerable confusion.) Wang, who cut his teeth as a cross-talk performer, initially resisted the idea of a stand-up show. “I didn’t think it would work,” he told me. But the show turned Wang into a household name, at least in the households of young urban sophisticates.

By the time Joe Wong returned to China in the summer of 2013, the country was in the midst of a comedy boomlet. In addition to the rise of the Internet and the success of Wang’s show, the government played a role. After the bureau that oversees TV and radio restricted the number of “American Idol”-style music competitions and other foreign-influenced reality programming in a push to “build morality,” networks turned to comedy, declaring 2014 the “year of comedy” and rolling out shows with names like “Kings of Comedy” and “Who Can Make the Comedians Laugh?” Suddenly stand-up comedy was everywhere, even if people still didn’t quite know what it was.

“Why do people laugh?” Xi Jiangyue asked. It was the first day of a weekend-long stand-up comedy seminar, and Xi, the founder of the Beijing Talk Show Club, a group of a few dozen comedians that performs around Beijing, was starting with the basics. A half-dozen students sat in folding chairs on the upper floor of a community center in northwestern Beijing. A teacher from Guangxi Province had signed up in order to improve his public-speaking skills; a woman who worked at an advertising firm said she wanted to boost her confidence. The walls were lined with books (a biography of Karl Marx; Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes a Village”), and a tabby cat roamed free, nuzzling shins.

Xi, a compact, 33-year-old former information-technology specialist with fearsome eyebrows, sipped Red Bull — it was 10 a.m. on a Saturday — and let the question hang in the air. “When they’re happy?” one student volunteered. Another said: “When someone praises you.” A third said: “When the result is different from their expectation.”

Xi nodded encouragingly. The last student went on: “For example, ‘I read a book that says smoking is bad for your health — so I quit reading.’ ” The group applauded.

Many people have tried to define comedy, Xi explained. Sigmund Freud said humor was a release of built-up psychic energy. Henri Bergson defined it as “something mechanical in something living” — a Tourette’s patient, for example, or a priest letting loose a fart — and laughter as the response provoked by that phenomenon. The Chinese scholar Lin Yutang introduced the word “humor,” transliterated as youmo, to the Chinese language — distinct from satire (fengci), wit (jijing), ridicule (chaoxiao) and slapstick (huaji). In a famous 1934 essay, he defined it as an attitude that “emerges when those who are intelligent begin to be suspicious of human wisdom and begin to see human stupidity, self-contradiction, stubborn bias and self-importance,” and saw humor as a civilizing force. The great 20th-century Chinese writer Lu Xun said that “humor is funniness with feeling; funniness is humor without feeling.” For the purposes of the class, Xi said, humor is simply something that defies expectations.

To demonstrate, Xi divided the class into pairs. One person would read a statement, to which his or her partner would come up with a snappy answer. “Your hair is a mess,” a young woman said to her male partner. “I know, I’m handsome,” he replied. “How tall are you?” she asked. “I’m as tall as Yao Ming’s knee,” he said.

This continued for several minutes, with more awkward titters than guffaws. “It’s O.K.,” Xi said. “It doesn’t matter that your responses weren’t funny. The first step is to develop the habit.”

Xi ceded the floor to a fellow comedian named Song Qiyu, an impish 27-year-old with rimless glasses and a look of fixed amusement. He wore black sneakers with a gold Playboy logo. Onstage, Song is part stuttering Woody Allen, part deadpan Steven Wright, pacing nervously and deliberately butchering words with a thick, rural Shaanxi accent. He shushes the audience members anytime they laugh, which only makes them laugh harder.

Song had thought long and hard about comedy. He discovered stand-up when he saw a Joe Wong set online, and soon became obsessed with joke structure and the mechanics of humor. In 2011, he quit his job as a tutor and enrolled in a master’s program for drama at the China Arts Research Institute in Beijing, specializing in comedy. He first picked up a microphone in the spring of 2013. Less than a year later, he placed second in a comedy contest hosted by Jiangxi Television, for which he won 20,000 yuan, or about $3,250. He was now doing stand-up full time (with a little help from his parents) and hoped to one day host his own TV show.

As the students listened, Song explained how to write a joke. An economics major in college, he liked to illustrate every lesson with a chart or graph. He drew a table on the blackboard and at the top wrote “Joke Generator.” He then drew four columns and labeled them “Theme,” “Attitude,” “Skill” and “Performance.”

Song picked a theme: love. Attitude, he explained, could be any idea about love. For example: “Love is hard.” Skill meant fleshing out the idea. Why is love hard? “Love is hard because I’m a man,” Song said — a pun, since “hard” sounds like “man” in Chinese. Performance, he said, meant delivery. Song gets a lot of comic mileage from his neurotic, mumbly manner; the same joke told by someone else might die on impact.

Song then described how to structure a routine (illustrated with a vertical line with dashes branching off it) and how to sequence jokes, from second-funniest to least funny to funniest (an inverted para bola graph). He was full of advice: Keep it brief. Don’t joke about tragedy. Also, he said, comedians should take it slow early in their careers. For the first three to five years, they should tell short jokes. Around Year 6, they’re ready to tell anecdotes. Only after Year 8 are they ready to express their personal opinions about the world, “like George Carlin.”

If Wong inspired Song to tell jokes, Carlin made him want to do it for the rest of his life. A lot of comedians’ styles are just “joke, joke, joke,” Song told me. Carlin transcends mere joke-telling and taps into larger truths about the human experience. “What he does is high art,” he said. “The best comedians, their view of life is deep. I have the skills, but not enough knowledge.”

In stand-up, comedians like Song and Xi had discovered a vehicle for not only humor but also self-expression. “Cross-talk is just about laughing,” Song told me. “Stand-up is about thinking, too.” Whereas cross-talk actors mostly use scripts written by masters, stand-up comedians express their own opinions about the world; the form rewards uniqueness. And unlike some aspects of Chinese society, stand-up is refreshingly meritocratic. “If your jokes are funny, people laugh,” Song said. “If your jokes are boring, people won’t laugh, even if you’re a celebrity.” He argued that as China’s economy continues to grow, and more workers join the middle class, stand-up will inevitably flourish, as material comfort gives people a greater desire to express their opinions.

Even before starting the Beijing Talk Show Club, Xi was always independent — he started two businesses in college, both of which failed — and didn’t like working for other people. So in 2009, he quit his job in I.T. and threw himself into stand-up. His new life wasn’t lucrative, but that wasn’t the point: “I followed my own heart,” he said.

Tony Chou, a comedian in Beijing who works as a CCTV journalist by day, was similarly romantic about his decision to pursue stand-up. “I’m a free soul,” he told me. “I’m the only one from my college class doing a different job, pursuing my dreams. They’re all engineers. I don’t believe they all love engineering.” Chou went into journalism because he thought it would be a way to share his own view of the world. “That turned out to be wrong,” he said. “CCTV doesn’t need personality.” Stand-up, on the other hand, was all about being himself.

“China does not have stand-up comedy,” Zhou Libo told me, reclining on a couch in his wood-paneled trailer in the southern city of Hangzhou. A slender 48-year-old man with an expressive, almost cartoonlike face and slicked-over hair, Zhou was surrounded by remote-controlled helicopters — “my toys,” he called them. He had just finished filming an episode of his one-man TV show and had changed out of his bow-tie ensemble into a loose shirt, whose plunging neckline revealed a dangling sun pendant.

One of China’s best-known comedians, Zhou got his start in the 1980s as the precocious youngest member of a Shanghai comedy troupe specializing in cross-talk and other traditional styles of performance. He disappeared from the stage for a decade after going to jail for attacking his girlfriend’s father (“He swung first, but I was too fast,” he told me), then returned in 2006 with a new personal brand, which he called haipai qingkou, or “Shanghai clean talk,” featuring extended comic monologues on topics in the news. He now stars in the “Mr. Zhou Live Show” and has hosted and judged a number of other programs, including “China’s Got Talent.”

Zhou rejects the term “stand-up comedy” to describe his act because he does more than just talk: He sings, he dances, he does impressions. (Each episode of Zhou’s show ends with him crooning an earnest ballad.) “They can’t do what I do,” he told me, referring to stand-up comedians. Zhou said he’s skeptical of Joe Wong’s prospects in China. “I don’t think the Chinese market necessarily suits him,” he said. “His style is very American. He can talk, but Chinese people want to see someone like me.” He added: “Zhou Libo can give them excitement and deadpan jokes and opinions. What’s not to like?”

Zhou Libo relaxing with Schoko, his daughter’s dog.

I had gone to see Zhou because I heard he had a reputation for tackling thorny topics in his act. “The subjects I talk about, Chinese politicians don’t talk about, and foreign journalists don’t dare ask — or if they did ask, they wouldn’t get an answer,” Zhou told me. One of his best-known routines deals with corrupt officials and the absurdity of calling them “the people’s servants”: “Where do you have servants riding in cars while the masters ride bicycles? Where do you have servants living in villas while the masters live in assigned housing? … Where do you have servants throwing around their masters’ money without even informing their masters?”

Every episode of Zhou’s show concludes with an audience Q. and A., during which the microphone is passed around, hot-potato style: Whoever is holding it when the music stops has to ask a question. During one taping, whether by chance or design, I found myself holding the mike. I stood up and asked Zhou what he would do if he were president of China for a day, then braced myself for an incisive critique of the country’s power structure.

“I’d give everyone the day off,” Zhou said.

While Zhou may venture into sensitive territory, he rarely says anything truly controversial. (Even his “people’s servants” routine goes after an easy, government-approved target.) The reason, he said, is simple: “I’m patriotic. Wherever I go, I say: ‘China is good.’ ” He always gives his honest opinion, he said — but his honest opinion is unlikely to ruffle any official feathers. “I mock responsibly,” he said. “I’m not ridiculing.” Referring to comedians who take jabs at China or its leadership, he said: “They’re whiners, and they’re detrimental to the country. If I were a government bureau, I’d shut them down.”

The government bureaus are way ahead of him. In early June 2014, the week of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Joe Wong and a few other comedians were getting ready to perform at 69 Cafe, a small bar in central Beijing. Two officials from the local cultural-affairs bureau walked in and approached the organizer, and suggested that they not perform. The officials didn’t forbid it — it was just a recommendation, they said. The M.C. went onstage and announced that the show was canceled. “That’s not funny!” someone in the audience yelled.

Continue reading the main story A week earlier, two officials dropped in on a Beijing theater show and upbraided one of the comedians for cracking a joke about the Chinese flag. After that, the Beijing Talk Show Club began treading carefully. Cautionary tales arise periodically: In 2012, a Beijing blogger was arrested for tweeting a joke about that year’s national Communist Party meeting. This past April, a hand-held video of the CCTV host Bi Fujian — in which he sat at a private dinner singing a satirical, Mao-mocking version of an old revolutionary song — went viral. Bi was suspended and apologized for making comments that had a “detrimental impact on society.”

Every comedian in China knows that there is a line, but no one knows exactly where it is. There’s the obvious stuff — the “three T’s” of Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen — but the details are anyone’s guess. That’s how censorship works best: Keep the rules vague, and let everyone police themselves. Some comedians stay clear of the line. Others edge toward it, place a toe on the far side, then skitter away. Occasionally someone plows right across it, but the results aren’t always funny.

In practice, though, restrictions are usually felt only at high levels — on TV and in large theaters. In bars, comedians can say whatever they want, except during sensitive periods like the Tiananmen anniversary. “In China, sometimes you just have to wait a little bit, then you can do it again,” Joe Wong told me. In the meantime, controversy isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Song said: “The more you ban something, the more people want to see it.”

But most comedians I spoke with argued that in China, there simply isn’t much appetite for sharp-edged political comedy. “In the U.S., people are relatively free,” Wang Zijian, the young TV host, told me. “They have time to follow racial issues or politics. Everyone has an opinion to chip in. The role of comedy shows is very different from China. Here, we’re still at the stage of ‘Just make me laugh.’ ”

In this sense, Chinese and American styles of comedy still differ radically. Discomfort is central to American stand-up — think Richard Pryor or Bill Hicks, or even Steve Martin. But in China, it tends to backfire. During the CCTV New Year’s Gala in 2013, the normally friendly hosts decided, or were told, to make fun of each other. “It didn’t work,” said David Moser, an educator and commentator in Beijing who has long studied Chinese comedy. “They weren’t raised on satire, so it just sounded mean and weird.”

This, more than political restrictions, may be the biggest obstacle to the emergence of truly good stand-up in China: people’s unwillingness to set aside their pride and take a joke. “If I talk about the Beijing smog, people will say: ‘You’re losing face for Beijing,’ ” Wang Zijian told me. A famous actress once called up Wang’s producer, he said, and begged that they not tell any more jokes about her and her boyfriend. The producer agreed, wanting to preserve good relations.

In April, Joe Wong took the stage at a triple-decker riverfront theater in Tianjin. Since returning to China, Wong had discovered that the comic pose he honed in the United States — the guy who’s just trying to make sense of a crazy new world — translated surprisingly well to China, because the China he returned to bore little resemblance to the one he left two decades earlier.

Since then, Beijing’s official population had nearly doubled to 20 million, the city had added 10 subway lines and roads were clogged with cars. Neighborhoods had been razed, with luxury stores replacing older Beijing shops. People even looked different. “Some of the girls here are whiter than white Americans,” Wong said. They’d become funnier too. “People born after 1990, they have a lot of personality,” he said. “That was something I never experienced when I was in China. Everyone was pretty much the same.”

Continue reading the main story Wong also discovered that navigating show business in China was even trickier than in the United States. Big theaters required performers to submit their scripts in advance — sometimes months ahead of a show. If the theater owner didn’t like certain jokes, the management cut them.

The restrictions on TV were even tighter. “Is It True?” had given Wong a colossal audience and a steady paycheck. But the show was an awkward hybrid that combined stand-up with science experiments, and Wong found that he and the producers had competing visions. To appeal to a broad audience, they simplified complex jokes, or got rid of them altogether. Politics and religion were off limits, as usual, but even a harmless joke about infidelity was axed.

On the other hand, Wong found himself telling jokes that would never fly in America. “Here you can joke about fat people,” he told me. “One of my writers is overweight, so we just wrote jokes making fun of him.” It was also acceptable to joke about beating children, Wong said, and to compare people to animals.

Wong’s act had evolved considerably over the past year. He still talked about his life in the United States, and the strangeness of being back in China. But onstage in Tianjin, he was more animated, more vaudevillian. Telling a story about skiing, he pantomimed climbing up the mountain and taking the chair lift down. He bugged out his eyes during punch lines and mugged for the audience. He sang a song, a version of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” with the lyrics changed to reflect the daily irritations of life in China. The crowd loved it.

“I would not sing a song in America,” he told me later. “It’s so uncool.” Just as Wong had to learn what American audiences wanted — brevity, clarity, unexpected truths about American pieties — he was now learning how to perform for the Chinese.

Outside the theater hung a poster for the show featuring a smiling Wong surrounded by word bubbles, like the world’s biggest business card: “Wise Comedian Specially Invited by the American President,” “Top Performer on the Letterman Show,” “Host of CCTV’s ‘Is It True?’ ” “Ph.D. in Biochemistry.” It was a reminder that Wong’s appeal lay not just in his jokes but also in his remarkable decision to tell jokes for a living in the first place. He had achieved the Chinese dream — grow up in a tiny village, study hard, go abroad, get a high-earning job — and discarded it for something even more rarely achieved: his own dream.

After returning to China, Wong gave a televised speech titled, “So What if It’s Not Perfect?” In it, he urged young people to do what they love, without fear of failure. It’s a cliché in the United States, but it strongly contradicts the conventional wisdom in China, where most authority figures emphasize stability and striving to be No. 1. “I now realize the meaning of life is to work hard to find your own inspiration, and letting that inspiration drive you,” he told the audience, as they nodded along. Cheesy music played in the background.

Watching the video, I thought: A comedian would never do this in the United States. On the American stand-up circuit, ironic nihilism reigns. It’s also taken for granted here that people can, if they want, spend their lives telling jokes to drunks in dark rooms. But in China, that idea is still novel — and, actually, kind of beautiful. Wong’s career has been a radical experiment, and the results are still unclear. But what would comedy be without the potential for massive, humiliating defeat? “I am not thinking about going back,” Wong said.

每天的晨吟

承受过百年屈辱的，对一句笑话都留有戒心，很自然、很正常。

hegieer

从事业角度而言，黄西到中国内地发展，是个败笔。