The Chinese sense of humor

It takes some time to appreciate Chinese humor, but the Chinese have a sense of humor that is as rich and idiosyncratic as any other nation.

Take for example the armed guards, dour, flint faced and ramrod straight you find at Chinese airports. I quite often walk up to them and say in Chinese 'Boring, isn't it?' After he overcomes his initial surprise at a foreign  devil speaking the language of the Han people, the guard will invariably burst out laughing and say 'Yes, you're exactly right, it's very boring.'

One favourite form of Chinese humor is 'cross-talk'. Two men, usually elderly, sit on a stage and  trade quips. To be honest, understanding cross talk requires a level of competence in Chinese far beyond  my modest abilities, but if you listen to  it on the radio it's evident the audience think its hilarious.

Sometimes just why some things are funny is hard for outsiders to appreciate. One of my teenage pupils in Taipei said he had a very funny nickname -- it was Slow Ox. I asked him how he got the nickname and why it was funny and he said his friends gave it to him because they thought he was a bit dim.

Jackie Chan is popular all over China. Most mainland Chinese movies are so boring and the ticket prices are so expensive (and the counterfeiters are so diligent) that even the Chinese won't pay to see Chinese films. However, Hong Kong films are beloved throughout the Chinese disapora. My nephew Bruce, who is a martial arts exponent as well as a professor of sports physics at one of Taiwan's most prestigious universities, says Jackie Chan 's mastery of martial kung fu is very impressive. He is also funny. For movie industry insiders, he has a different reputation -- that some cast member gets killed on every movie he makes.

On my visit to Shaoshan, Mao Zedong's birthplace in Hunan Province, the favourite butt of jokes was 'Mr Shandong', a member of our tour group who was regarded as a clumsy, ignorant and credulous peasant. Peasants, no matter how long the Communists idealised them, remain one favorite material for humor.

I learned long ago, however, that Chinese do not understand the Australian sense of humor and I do not tell jokes to Chinese unless they have native speaker level English. I would probably go further and say no-one understands the Australian sense of humor except Australians. The vicious insults, character assassination, foul language that is said to compose Australian' humor' quite frankly does not appeal to me. I find this form of  linguistic jingoism to be one of the most unattractive elements of the Australian national character.

Chinese humor is often subversive. One cartoonist during the martial law period in Taiwan infuriated  Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek so much that he was imprisoned on Green Island, the penal settlement off Taiwan's east coast.  Understanding Chinese humor, with its word plays and tonal inversions, is often beyond all but those with an expert command of the language.

Chinese people are friendly, talkative and helpful. They have a robust sense of humor, whether it be cross-talk or Jackie Chan's slapstick. Unfortunately, getting the joke is often beyond all but the most expert linguists. Often, your Chinese friend  will help you out by adding after a statement 'kai wan xiao' -- 'I was only joking.'